Brodsky and Weprin must go to bed at night worrying that the middle class will one day wake up and realize who’s really taking their money. But with you to direct our anger in the wrong place, Sandra, they can sleep soundly.

“About the RPZ Program

Curb space is part of the public street system, and as such it is a public good that is available for all people to use. To restrict the use of curb space for just some people to park requires a compelling reason. The Residential Parking Zone (RPZ) Program was created to help ease parking congestion in residential neighborhoods while walking a fine line to balance the needs of all people to be able to use the public streets.”

Some community councils (boards) there even allow for the assignment of guest placards for a $35/yr fee. Not all of them do, however.

I’d probably be against this due to fraud/placard concerns, but if it’s done in a way that’s bar-coded and perhaps assigned on a day to day basis (for example, you could buy this permit online for a particular car + date and print it out for a fee) then maybe it could be a good idea. This same technology could be implemented to prevent placard fraud.

I might be getting ahead of myself there though.

http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/parking/parkingrpz.htm

That was jmc, though I think he has a point. That New York city car owners can not afford (or do not want) to pay for a residential parking permit program like Boston’s is a joke. Most of them, who don’t share your easy access to parking anywhere in the city, are chomping at the bit to pay $10 a year (or ten times that) to free up spots near their homes. Your opposition to residential parking permits is, in several ways, eccentric.

I happen to like the RPP opt-in, which is based on lots of experience elsewhere with gaining public support for parking changes and traffic calming. A citywide policy would be a lowest common denominator policy or it won’t pass council. Also, big differences in land use should be reflected in local parking plans.

My plan would lose the money only because they didn’t move on it. It would have qualified on VMT measure. Just as I am sure that a larger amount of Fed aid would be available than the one shot CP revenue for constructing the Cross Harbor Freight Tunnel, removing 1 million trucks from our streets per annum.

I am not reading the plan wrong. At no time will there be more than one side of the street restricted to permit holders per day. Where there is alternate side of the street parking already in place, on those streeets, it will be on the opposite side. That is actually the way they are proposing this.

And Doc, shocking as this may be to you, the heavy cost of the program is not the stamps and stickers and signage. It is the personal that will review each and every application ion the smooth bureaucratic style that we do things in this City to be sure that the person requesting the permit actually qualifies for it. Unless you think they should be sold to just anyone, in which cae what is the point.

And I havent heard ANYONE here disagree that before proposing sch a plan, they should have SOME clue as to what it would actually cost.

Lew from Brooklyn

2. Lew your proposals would lose us the $350 million in Federal Funds. It would take a lot of other taxes to cover that, eh?

3. By letting the CB’s implement RPP we are opening the system up to a the input of NIMBY=types and to a mass-confusion of different rules block-by-block. Mayor Mike find your mojo and implement ONE RPP plan for the ENTIRE city with consistent rules.

4. I still push for two-way tolls at every crossing into Manhattan, including the East and Harlem River bridges.

5. Is Brodsky’s stupid taxi increase bill dead yet? If it passes I for one would DRIVE throughout Manhattan because it would be cheaper than round-trip taxi fares. A lot of dumb ideas have been discussed but this one takes the cake…the clearest idea of a tax on the poor and miidle-class yet proposed.

We also have a shortage of organs from young, healthy people. Encouraging motorcycle and scooter riding would help alleviate this shortage.

The RPP has a lot of complicated, costly, 21st century components.

1) Putting up signs.

With the increased costs of steel, this might be prohibitively expensive.

2) Printing stickers.

Stickers are expensive! Just ask any 8-year-old girl.

3) Mailing the stickers to residents who apply on the DOT website or by 311.

Stamps are 41 cents… alas!

Oh, also, the parking attendants are going to need more sticks of chalk to mark the tires of the cars that are parked in RPZs.

Oh dear. I’m glad they haven’t looked at how much the program will cost. This is probably because they know that it will INCREASE revenue to the city. (Parking tickets to people who stay overtime!)

Please read the article before posting. The regulation is only for about 90 minutes in the morning, Monday through Friday.

“The man who can read but does not has no advantage over the one who cannot.”

In what sense of the phrase does giving away a valuable public resource to private interests constitute the “free market”? If we were really going to ensure that “capitalism should win”, as you suggest, shouldn’t the city get out of the parking business altogether? We could sell off all the curbside parking spaces to private interests and let them lease out at market rents. That would truly be capitalism, right?

What you seem to be proposing is the free allocation of scarce resources to a privileged few — a phenomenon more typically associated with communism or socialism, not capitalism.

I completely agree with Minerva (#29). They are taking away our rights.

The $10.00 estimate does seem very low… But they don’t even know what the RPP plan will cost to start up, maintain and police!

What do you do when you have out of town friends/family visit?

I’m so sick of those bridge-and-tunnel plebeians parking their econo-boxes on the nice streets for 24 hours.

“the poor” ? This is what you think of the majority of New Yorkers, those that ride transit and live in rentals? That explains a lot. I’m not going to disparage the actual poor by saying I’m insulted. But I suppose I could get into character and read about your parking-perked-out Infiniti with a rush of projected class envy, Lew.

This is the way people used to talk about SUVs, by the way, before the vehicles were recognized as embarrassing. It was claimed that critics were just jealous, that they weren’t opposing the surging popularity of the vehicles (encouraged by idiotic subsidy) on actual principle. No, it was because they simply could not afford to enjoy the glory of driving a gas guzzling, hastily modified pickup truck around America’s cities and suburbs. (uh…) And yet, here we are in 2008, and it is obvious to almost all that the SUV saga was a seriously stupid environmental wrong turn. On top of that it shortened rather than extended the American automotive age, by making our auto companies even more irrelevant when their one trick ponies ran out of gas. (How’s your Infiniti? Is it the “crossover”?) Most devastatingly, the harmless lil’ SUV fad contributed to a jump in oil consumption that provoked a new (and terminal?) crisis. Oops.

That fall from grace is spreading to all personal autos in New York, and it’s pretty freaking awesome. You think we’re all poor because we walk, bike, and ride the train, that we do it out of poverty rather than responsibility and convenience? Well don’t get too comfortable in your silvery superiority complex. Congestion pricing or not, the unpaid consumption of the country’s most valuable space by cheaply-made and pathetically short-lived rolling hulks of metal is not long for this world. If it’s not reckoned with now, you might regret spitting at the chance to pay a fair price.

This is conflict to one of NYC’s programs of Free Parking on Sunday/holiday in order to attrack more people to shop in NYC. Believe that many people will also avoid going to NYC because of the charge. Mr. Mayor, do you know how much I have been enjoying free parking on Sunday and going to NYC? Your program is asking “outside” people to stop going into NYC. I already need to pay for the tolls from other state(s). It will be too much for me to pay for tolls, the new charge and recent high rates of gasoline. It doesn’t mean that I have a car so that I have to pay for more charges. A car to me is a necessary tool for going out. You might ask us to take trains/subway/buses but this is not convenience to people from other states. There are less trains running during the weekend and evening hours so that I cannot stay in the city for long and need to worry about the returning time. In short, I will not have fun in the NYC anymore. Please understand.