Graphic: New York Times/Chicago News Cooperative.

Streetsblog has been following the Chicago parking privatization closely because it is the poster child for all that can go wrong with Public Private Partnerships, or PPPs. The basic idea behind a PPP is that the government leases public transportation infrastructure -- say a bridge, highway, airport, or parking meters -- that can generate user fees. In exchange for the fees, a private investor pays the government a large upfront fee or assumes the cost of improving the infrastructure. PPPs are popular in Europe, especially at airports.

Sustainable transportation advocates should care about PPPs for a number of reasons. First, politicians and bureaucrats are captivated by the fantasy that PPPs are the ultimate free lunch, generating billions in transportation investment at no cost to the taxpayer. President Obama's euphemism for PPPs is "creative financing." Here in New York, state officials have repeatedly presented a PPP as the way to raise billions for the astronomical cost of replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge. This is dangerous thinking. PPPs do inflict a cost, and it's a big one. Huge amounts of revenue that could be directed to public transit, or crucial road and bridge repair, are instead going to Wall Street.

The second concern is that PPPs allow public officials to skew the public planning and review process and put private profit before public benefit. A private investor has tremendous leverage over what gets built if they are the government's main financing option. The investor's goal is to make money, not to produce the greatest public benefit over many decades.

Despite the latest revelation, Chicago is only beginning to recognize the inherent problems with privatizations. According to the Times, Alderman Scott Waguespack introduced a measure that would require an "independent third-party valuation" of major asset lease proposals before any future privatization deal is completed. The legislation would require "a comparison of public retention and private leasing over the life cycle of the agreement." This could serve as an important safeguard, but so far, the measure only has 12 co-sponsors among the council's 49 other members.

When Michael Bloomberg was first elected eight years ago, I and many others thought such a wealthy mayor might assert his independence from developers who choose to serve their own self-interest at the expense of the city's long term needs. Six years later, the release of PlaNYC 2030 finally gave hope to that desire. The mayor put forth a vision that, despite some shortcomings, promised a framework for sustainable, equitable growth. For all the city's progress toward advancing those goals, however, it has taken several steps backward by continuing to build real estate projects that erode the walkable city. Mayor Bloomberg’s re-election provides an opportunity to correct these oversights and refine his administration’s legacy on building an equitable and environmentally sustainable city.

A rendering of the proposed Hudson Yards development on the far West Side. Only a hard-fought court battle against Mayor Bloomberg, the Department of City Planning, and other public agencies prevented this project from adding up to 20,000 parking spaces in Manhattan.

Unfortunately, creativity, innovation and commitment to the principles of sustainability stop with these few agencies. Other public servants charged with planning for the future of the city have abdicated that responsibility. The Department of City Planning, despite some exemplary work on open space design and enhancing opportunities for world-class architecture, has ignored planning for the New York City of 2030. Instead, it has focused on rezoning the city as if we still lived in the 1960s, using the language and planning concepts of that discredited era rather than preparing to meet the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

Together with private developers, the city's Economic Development Corporation and other quasi-government entities, the planning department has embraced outmoded redevelopment plans for Willets Point in Queens, Hudson Yards on the far West Side, Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, and Columbia University's expansion into Manhattanville without any substantive regard to the principles and goals of PlaNYC.

These large-scale development plans fundamentally ignore the issue of sustainability. And they cast the form of the city in concrete for a century or more.

In these developments, the street is nothing more than square footage added to permit greater building heights and densities. Streets in these developments divide rather than integrate neighborhoods. Traffic lights are recalibrated, for instance, to facilitate the flow of traffic and hinder pedestrian movement by reducing crossing times. Perversely, these measures are dubbed “mitigation” in the environmental review process. Without them, the development would not be allowed to proceed. This is because the developments include more space for car parking than needed -- far above the norm in New York City -- creating more traffic and necessitating such "mitigations."

This runs against the principles of good urbanism and drains the life out of the city. The street is the common denominator of every neighborhood in New York. Streets, more than buildings, make up the city’s patrimony -- its "genius loci." When I grew up in New York in the 1950s, streets were our parks, our gardens, and our athletic fields. They facilitated activity, exercise, and civic discussion. They were places that fostered social interaction and social cohesion. They met needs that transcend any particular era. As we move deeper into the 21st century, we need to reintroduce these functions into our neighborhood fabric.

What does this mean in practice? At the Atlantic Yards site in Brooklyn, for example, development that enhances streetlife and improves the public realm -- development consistent with the principles of PlaNYC -- would not close streets, as developer Forest City Ratner intends to do. Instead, as proposed in the UNITY Plan, the street grid of Fort Greene would extend through the Yards, weaving into the Prospect Heights grid to the south.

The UNITY Plan for the Atlantic Yards site.

To build a sustainable city, we need to think and plan on a small scale, not just the mega-project scale. We need to engage more New Yorkers in the process of building neighborhoods, not just the politically connected or wealthy. The place where everything comes together, where we all meet and interact, and where sustainable planning must begin, is the street. The mayor has the intellect and the openness to understand this. He now has four years to reinforce what his administration has done well so far. Four years to change direction from past mistakes. Four years to focus on what has been ignored until now.

Photo: @10/Flickr

Worsened gridlock follows automatically from making curbside parking cheaper. The lessened likelihood of being served a parking ticket can be expected to draw more auto trips into Manhattan and around town as well. The added congestion isn’t huge; most car trips not made are on account of other factors, and only a tenth of all parking tickets are being assumed away. But the impact will be visible.

Most of the estimated 334,000 hours lost, around 85 percent, will come from drivers outside the Manhattan Central Business District, putting an ironic stamp on Council Member Tish James’ reminder to the mayor that his narrow re-election was “a call from average New Yorkers for relief.”

Note: Readers who want to check the analysis in the BTA should head to the Parking worksheet, a dozen tabs from the back.

The latest beckoning driver distraction, from Roadify.

Horrified by the notion of Roadify members barreling down your block while performing tedious multi-step tasks on their cellphones? Not to worry. Taking a page from the mobile manufacturer playbook, the Roadify website includes not one, but two "don't text and drive" disclaimers. Problem solved.

Or, we could just charge a fair price for scarce curbside parking, so spaces aren't so hard to come by.

Parking Around Me has debuted in Park Slope, with the promise of eventual full city coverage. Roadify says it will expand its "social transportation" offerings to include airline and transit passenger info, but for now, it's all about the ever-suffering city motorist. Coming soon: the "meter maid" stalker!

To signal their displeasure with law enforcement, Council members David Weprin, Simcha Felder, and Vincent Gentile ripped up parking tickets on the steps of City Hall. Photo: Daily Politics.

According to Council Member Peter Vallone, Jr. the bills are "an attempt to legislate common sense and discretion." But really, what we have here is old-fashioned pandering combined with a failure to comprehend the consequences of giving away curb space.

The council calls it a "grace period," but what does it really mean to ban parking agents from issuing a ticket until five minutes after the allotted time expires? Well, if you drive somewhere and pay for 40 minutes of metered parking, now you get 45 minutes. The bill gives on-street parkers more bang for their buck -- a subsidy for the minority of New Yorkers who get around by private car.

With less turnover of metered spaces, drivers will double-park more and cruise around longer as they search for open spots. Whether you're walking, biking, riding a bus, or driving, you'll have to contend with more traffic clogging up the streets.

The expansion of parking placards for clergy will have the same effect -- more free curb space for an entitled class of drivers, with less to go around for everyone else. The bill flies in the face of placard-reduction policies that the Bloomberg administration began enacting in 2008 with an eye toward cutting congestion.

City Room reports that Bloomberg, predicting "chaos and enormous increases in contested tickets," is ready to veto the grace period bill. A council override would not augur well for the next four years of New York City transportation policy.

When it opened its doors this spring, the Gateway Center mall was plugged as a boon to the South Bronx. So invested was the Bloomberg administration -- along with city taxpayers, thanks to subsidies granted by the NYC Economic Development Corporation -- that the mayor himself participated in the grand opening of the center's Home Depot store.

In modeling the sprawling complex on the typical suburban big box slum, developer Related Companies seems to have made a tactical error. From a Times piece featuring Related honcho Glenn Goldstein:

Mr. Goldstein said that Related originally expected about 40 percent of the mall’s customers to arrive by public transportation, but so far a majority of customers had been traveling this way. Livery cab service is available for shoppers who make bulky purchases, and some stores, like Best Buy and Home Depot, provide delivery for a fee.

Who would have thought that a shopping center served by subway lines and city buses would attract so many transit-riding customers? Not Goldstein and company, whose 2,800 parking spots are proving to this point to be a lot of wasted space (likely in part because parking isn't free). Unfortunately, Related went all in with its auto-driven design by making entrance points unwelcoming to shoppers arriving on foot, as shown in these Streetsblog photo pool contributions from Jacob-uptown. Imagine how many more people would walk here if they had actually made this a walkable environment.

More pics, with commentary from the photographer, after the jump.

"The walkway is pitiful. Barely wide enough for two people standing still, much less walking past each other. It's sad how much space is dedicated to the horribly underused car entrance and how little space is given to pedestrians."

"Ped route to the big box stores through the parking garage."

"The awful mall actually has some nice wide sidewalks, perfect for vendors, street performers and all sorts of activity. Too bad they're under a highway."

NYC bike-share on the horizon? DOT says it will explore a "large-scale" public bike system for Manhattan and environs. Image: Department of City Planning.

In an update to the strategic plan released this month, DOT lays out several new benchmarks, including some glimpses of the agency's goals for the rest of 2009 and 2010. The document isn't available online yet, but Streetsblog has a hard copy so I thought I'd share a few highlights:

• Bike modeshare targets are more ambitious than before. The goal is now to double bike commuting by 2012 and triple it by 2017 compared to 2007 levels. The previous goal was to double cycling by 2015. If annual increases stay close to last year's 35 percent clip, the new target should be easily achievable, especially if the next item turns into something concrete...
• DOT will "explore opportunities for a large-scale public bicycle system in Manhattan and surrounding areas." The agency had previously signaled its interest in launching a bike-share network, but I believe this is the first official hint of the scale they're contemplating.
• 8-10 new rapid bus corridors will be selected by the end of this year. (DOT had already posted a timeline for this process on its website.)
• DOT will increase the number of 20 mph zones around schools from 25 to 75.
• More templates from the Street Design Manual will take shape on city streets. "Shared streets" are mentioned as a potential new design treatment.
  
• Summer Streets will expand "to additional days and areas."
• To keep cabs out of bus lanes, the city will make greater use of bus-mounted enforcement cameras. (The city launched a pilot enforcement program along these lines on 34th Street back in February.)
• Some single-space parking meters, which are being decommissioned by the thousands as more muni-meters are installed, will be converted to bike racks.
  
• PARK Smart, a performance parking program that DOT has piloted in Greenwich Village and Park Slope, will help manage the curb crunch in more neighborhoods.
  

Transportation advocates welcomed the new goals. "Increasing 20 mph zones around schools is really exciting," said Transportation Alternatives' Wiley Norvell. "It's a good, concrete metric for boosting Safe Routes to School. That's definitely something that's lagged and needs acceleration."

Norvell also applauded the accelerated timetable for boosting bike modeshare. "It's great to see the DOT setting more ambitious targets, given that the installation of bike lanes has ramped up cycling significantly," he said. "New York City needs to keep moving the goalposts when it comes to bicycling. The goals of 2006 were rendered obsolete by 2008. The goals of 2009 will probably seem obsolete by 2011."

Ke Hai Du. Photo: Daily News

In the unofficial battle for the most irresponsible, over-the-top media endorsement of motorist entitlement, the Daily News took the trophy this morning, declaring that drivers are within their rights to run down human beings who stand between their vehicles and on-street parking.

To many people accustomed to the norms of civilized society, this would seem a clear case of assault, if not something more serious. But to the News it's a game, which the victim rightfully lost when he challenged the "finders keepers" rule -- or, as News editors put it, "a basic and inviolable tenet of the universe."

What Du did is right up there with stealing a taxi from the person who hailed it, or bringing 15 items to the "10 items or less" register, or stopping at the top of a subway stairway to read e-mail, or backing up in an E-ZPass lane.

The lesson is clear: Park your carcass in a parking space, and you may end up as road kill.

Salt Lake City's new-urbanism epiphany -- fervently backed by Mayor Ralph Becker and the City Council -- appears to be catching static from an unlikely source.

Transit-oriented development isn't stymied by outdated zoning, unwilling developers or a lack of space. It turns out, banks, wedded to old-fashioned lending standards that stress parking, may pose the biggest blockade by denying financing.

The reason: Lenders operate from a tried-and-true principle that maintains more parking means less risk and a higher return on their investment. But ditching cars is the whole point of urban developers looking to create 24-hour live, work and play environments that hug light-rail hubs. 

Real estate lending standards: A work in progress. Photo: MSN.

That's right, the same sector that got such fantastic returns from the car-dependent suburban fringe isn't sold on the viability of neighborhoods where you can get around without driving. Salt Lake City banks are hardly the exception. Based on informal conversations I've had with people who deal with local lenders and developers, I can tell you that real estate finance in transit-rich New York City is far from enlightened.

If we're ever going to reverse the tide of car-centric development that is gradually suburbanizing New York, we'll need banks to change their assumptions. As Jensen reports, Portland shows that it can be done.

UCLA professor and parking policy superstar Donald Shoup.

This Tuesday, the San Francisco MTA released a long-awaited parking meter study, which calls for increasing meter hours in commercial districts where parking occupancy rises above 85 percent and businesses are open late on weekdays and Sundays. Afterward, Streetsblog called UCLA Professor Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking and arguably the world's foremost parking expert, and asked for his thoughts on the study.

Professor Shoup had read the document and called it "pathbreaking," lauding the MTA for being thorough and data-driven, and for embracing occupancy targets to manage parking supply.

Shoup also reiterated the importance of Community Benefit Districts (CBDs) as a tool for selling parking reform to the public. In CBDs, a portion of the new meter revenue collected in commercial districts is returned to that district for sidewalk repair, street trees, enhanced street cleaning, etc., so that businesses can see firsthand how parking revenue improves their streets.

Professor Shoup also pointed to Redwood City, Ventura, and Old Pasadena for best practice examples of occupancy-based parking policy changes that have revitalized neighborhoods and facilitated business. Here is an edited transcript of our interview. [For a longer version, head over to Streetsblog San Francisco.]

Matthew Roth: What are your impressions of the MTA's new parking meter study?

Donald Shoup: It's pathbreaking. There's never been anything like it anywhere before. I think they've done the right thing to say, 'we're aiming for an occupancy rate.'  You want the spaces to be well used, but readily available. Well used means almost full, but readily available means not quite full. You have to be very careful to make sure you get that right. They're willing to adjust it if they get it wrong. I think the right price for parking is sort of like the Supreme Court's definition for pornography: I know it when I see it. There's no way to say the price is right except by looking at the result and San Francisco is committed to change the price wherever they get it wrong.

I think they did it with a very careful goal in mind and that is: set the lowest possible price they could charge and still have spaces available on every block. So that's different prices at different times of the day and at different locations, but I think if they aim for this policy, if they've chosen the lowest price they can charge and still have available spaces, it means if they go any lower, all the spaces will be filled and people will say there's no place to park. And if they go higher than that, there will be a lot of vacant spaces. Some of the supply will be mismanaged. 

MR: How important are Community Benefit Districts for selling parking reform to the public?

DS: Well, I think it is the key to getting political support. As you probably know, Redwood City has this policy and Ventura in Southern California, they just started it. From the merchants' point of view, they think that the revenue return is the most important part of the entire policy. They realize that it's going to cut down on cruising and maybe greenhouse gas emissions, but the important thing to them is seeing improvements right in front of their businesses. Without that it seems to be hard to support the idea.

It's also true in Washington, D.C. They installed it around a new ballpark and they returned 75 percent of the revenue to the metered districts. And this can be for transportation improvements. I think that something visible and sharing with the community is very important. If they don't do that it's hard to show and prove and have pictures of the benefits.  

I think it's important for getting people to understand the workings of the program. I don't think the community benefit district will change anything about the right price for parking. I do, however, think they will make the policies seem much more reasonable to everybody. If they use the money to make sidewalk improvements, one of the most important transportation pieces of infrastructure in San Francisco. I think the sidewalks are almost as important as the bus system. If they said we'll use some of the money to improve the sidewalks and the streetscapes on the metered streets, everybody would see that the city is giving back something and not just taking. I think if you give back something that's very visible and very valuable, the metered communities will see the benefits right in front of their eyes. Everybody wants better bus service and more frequent bus service, but that's hard to see, especially if you're a struggling merchant. I think that it's easy to see very clean sidewalks, very well-policed sidewalks in front of your restaurant, rapid responses to any cracks in your sidewalks, maybe much more frequent cleaning.

MR: Some businesses complain that extending meter hours or raising rates will drive customers away, that they'll go to suburban malls where parking is plentiful and free. How do you contend with that assertion?

DS: You have to emphasize that the pricing is to keep the spaces almost entirely, but not quite, full. So you can't say the people are being chased away if almost all the spaces are full almost all of the time. You just wonder, where are they being chased? For the businesses, the important thing is that people are being chased away because the spaces will be occupied, but they will be occupied by people who will be willing to pay for parking if they can easily find a space.

If I were a waiter working in a restaurant, who do you think would leave a bigger tip, someone who will come only if they can find a free parking space after they have driven around long enough to find it, or someone that who is willing to pay for parking if they can easily find a space? I think the person that is willing to pay for parking is more willing to leave a bigger tip or pay more at a store or bring more business to the area than somebody who wants to be a freeloader and just won't come to your neighborhood unless they can get free parking. When you think about it, the kind of customers you're going to get is probably a little bit more free-spending if they can easily find a space and they're willing to pay for parking.  

In terms of the economics of it, Old Pasadena simply took off economically the year they installed meters. The sales-tax revenue is about six times higher than it was when they put in the meters in 1992. That is because, at least in Old Pasadena, the meter money has greatly improved the public infrastructure of that neighborhood. In San Francisco, they're talking about using most of the money for public transit, so there won't be the physical improvements. You're probably attracting a more free-spending group of customers and maybe more carpools, because they'll be splitting the cost of the curb parking. Maybe two dollars an hour won't seem like such a punitive payment if there are four people in the car and they're staying in an area for four hours. The solo driver will object to paying for parking. But if I were a business person, I'd rather see the cars arriving with four people in them rather than one.

MR: What should San Francisco, or any city trying to reform parking policy, do about time limits?

DS: The other thing I think that San Francisco is doing and that Redwood City did and that Ventura has done is eliminate any time limits on the meters. They removed the time limits and they rely on pricing to create turnover and vacancies and this has been the most popular part of the policy in Redwood City. People now don't have to worry -- a driver and three friends want to go for dinner some place and they park -- they don't have to worry that they have to get back to their meter in an hour or two hours. Whatever they're doing, they don't feel like they're pushed around so much by the city.  It still creates a lot of turnover because the price is higher, but the user is more in control of their life than when somebody who manages meters says you can only stay here for an hour or two hours.

The advantage of using prices to manage parking is that you don't need to have these arbitrary time limits. I think when people say they're going to run meters in the evening, it seems ridiculous because people want to park once and walk around for the evening. Turnover is not important for that, but pricing is important to make sure that some of the spaces remain available. So I would say that whenever you talk about running the meters in the evening, you have to say there's no time limit on them. You can put enough money in to stay for the entire evening, park once and go to dinner, a movie, a bar, and then walk around for as long as you want. You have to break this automatic assumption that a meter means that you have to leave in an hour or two hours.

MR: In the MTA study, during metered hours, Columbus Avenue had 71-81 percent occupancy.  Does that mean the meter prices are too high?

DS: Yes, I think it's quite common for meter prices to be too high, especially in the morning. Definitely on some days and at some hours the prices will definitely come down. 

MR: Is 85 percent occupancy target a firm benchmark? Are there situations where you want more or less occupancy?

DS: Well, it's short-hand. It just means you shouldn't have too much of an hour that is totally full. You shouldn't have much of an hour that is less than 70 percent, but somewhere around 85 percent. Sometimes it's going to be higher and sometimes its going to be absolutely full. What you'll see is variation around 85 percent, but I think what you mainly want is to make sure it isn't full more than 10 or 15 minutes out of any hour.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom Photo: Gawker

Mayor Gavin Newsom has been quietly pressuring MTA Chief Nat Ford to delay or prevent proposals to extend parking meter hours on weeknights and Sundays, despite a looming mid-year MTA budget deficit and studies that show it's good policy, Streetsblog has learned. ...

"The Mayor thinks it's the wrong time to make these moves," said Nathan Ballard, Newsom's communications director. "Right now, with the economy where it is, the burden on ordinary people for city services is already stretched to the max, and so he hasn't seen anything that convinces him otherwise. He's open to arguments, but he's still where he was."

The "we can't change policy in a bad economy" argument is familiar to Capitol Hill transportation watchers, who saw the Obama administration use the recession to rule out a gas tax hike or per-mile vehicle fee earlier this year.

But in Newsom's case, as Matt and Bryan point out, San Francisco is lagging behind its fellow major cities when it comes to charging for parking. In Los Angeles, where voters will soon be looking at Newsom's credentials, meters remain on until 2 a.m. New York City keeps meters on until midnight, and Washington D.C.'s stay on until 10 p.m.

And with the city transit authority facing possible fare hikes or service cuts in the wake of a budget deficit, it's tough to see how not extending parking meter hours doesn't hit non-car-owning voters where it hurts.

Apparently not. Lo Re appeared in the Post today, up in arms about the Park Smart pilot on Fifth Avenue, accusing the city of "killing small businesses." Park Smart charges motorists higher rates to park during the midday peak, freeing up curb space so drivers don't spend so much time cruising for spots. Also appearing in the Post story were Joe Leopoldi, whose hardware store is not even located in the Park Smart zone, and Judi Pheiffer of Bob and Judi's Coolectibles. These are the same handful of merchants Lo Re mentioned by name when I asked her who was opposed to the bike lane.

Catering to the parking whims of drivers strikes me as a poor business strategy for merchants in walkable, transit-rich Park Slope. It sure didn't guarantee success for Tempo, a dining establishment on Fifth and Carroll. They closed their doors for good a few days after I took this photo right outside their entrance.

Last year, the number of placards issued by the Department of Education -- some 63,000 -- was reduced to bring it in line with the number of on-street spots allotted to schools. The DOE cuts were part of a broader crackdown intended to bring order to a largely unregulated system rife with abuse, wherein placards issued regularly exceeded available spaces and parking agents often could not tell a legitimate permit from a fraudulent one.

While the United Federation of Teachers eventually came to an agreement with the city, CSA balked at the cuts, and won an arbitration ruling in August determining that the placards should be reissued under the terms of its contract. But as Gotham Schools reports, the ensuing two weeks brought no resolution, and yesterday CSA filed a lawsuit against the city, DOE, and Mayor Bloomberg.

"Nobody has gotten an answer from the City about why it won't honor the arbitration," a spokeswoman for CSA, Chiara Coletti, wrote in an email. Coletti said that the decision not to reinstate the 6,500 permits came from the mayor's office.

Jason Post, a spokesman for the mayor, did not address whether the city felt it was in compliance with the arbitrator's decision, but said the current system should continue.

"For most City agencies and their workers the system has worked well for over a year, yet the CSA has stubbornly tried to hold onto their perks and has refused to work with us to combat misuse and abuse. The current system for the Department of Education limits the number of placards to the number of parking spots at schools, a fair and reasonable policy that we think should continue. We have not yet received the legal papers for this case," Post wrote in an email.

In a press release announcing the suit, CSA President Ernest A. Logan said that, without the placards, administrators "who travel from school to school, particularly those working in the outer boroughs, could be forced to continue cruising around city streets for hours a day, polluting the environment, and sacrificing time that they need to serve our children."

And just how many administrators travel during the school day? Considering that CSA by its own account represents a total of about 6,400 school supervisors, it's obviously far fewer than the 6,500 placards -- or even the 5,000 reported by the Post -- the union is demanding. Not to mention the fact that the fewer permits issued, the less trouble floating administrators would have finding a spot. But who cares about facts and logic when you can just yell "My parking perk is good for the children!" and leave it at that. 

Image: SI for Kids.

But take heart, Met fans, at least our team provides bike racks at the ballpark. Not so the Yankees. Sarah Braunstein at Sports Illustrated for Kids reports on a recent outing to their new stadium:

Whenever I bike anywhere, I always check to make sure there is a safe place to park. First, I checked out the New York City Department of Transportation to find the closest bike rack to the stadium. The closest one is at the Bronx Supreme Court, about four blocks from the stadium.

I figured in a city with so many bikers, and with hundreds of miles of bike lanes, there had to be something closer. So I did what any adventurous biker would do and called the Yankees themselves.

The answer to all my questions was ‘NO.’ There are no bike racks at the stadium. There is no bike parking. They cannot offer indoor bike parking, even for reporters. There is no possibility of parking a bike at or in the stadium.

The Mets, Braunstein discovered, have ten bike racks outside CitiField. In the grand scheme of transportation sins, Yankee Stadium's lack of bike parking pales beside its wanton profusion of traffic-generating car parking. And the Mets, despite their bike racks, are admittedly no livable streets angels (though the approach from the Willets Point station to CitiField is way nicer than the walk to Shea used to be).

Mostly, I just hope the Orioles' bike-commuting number one starter, Jeremy Guthrie, reads this and gets a little more fired up every time he pitches in the Bronx.

CB 12 traded a Greenmarket for 24/7 parking privileges on 185th Street, which holds 19 cars. Photo: Brad Aaron

Earlier that month, the board's transportation committee declined to vote on the market, citing concerns over parking. Said committee member Jim Berlin: "There are thousands of people in the area who own cars, any of whom might park there at some point. We want to hear from the community and whether they want to give up their parking." 

Though there were only a few of them at the general meeting (three who weren't board members, to be exact), detractors put on a nasty public show, and the proposal was sent back to the parks committee. Two months ago, the Manhattan Times reports, the board signed off on a different plan: a Friday market on the sidewalk at Ft. Washington Avenue and 181st Street. But it's not going to happen, according to Greenmarket Director Michael Hurwitz.

"That is no more," Hurwitz said. "We found a location that would serve a bigger community."

That location is somewhere around W. 168th Street -- a market that was thought to be yet another greenmarket at the May Community Board 12 Parks and Cultural Affairs Committee meeting.

"The community totally supported the addition of a Greenmarket at 181st Street," said Elizabeth Ritter, chair of the Parks and Cultural Affairs Committee. She pointed out that the 181st Street location was approved by Hurwitz before discussion started about a market near the hospital.

"The community would love to have both," she said.

Had it not been for a relatively tiny number of entitled drivers, and their enablers, the community may have gotten its wish.

Photo: Best Recession Ever

All in all, it wasn't the money for nothing bargain the City Council seemed to think it was back in December when Morgan Stanley handed over a check for $1.157 billion. This manna from Wall Street plugged the city's gaping budget hole and allowed the council to avoid painful tax hikes and service cuts. It also enticed lawmakers in Los Angeles and Philadelphia, where officials were considering their own parking privatization deals.

In return for the upfront cash, Chicago leased its 36,000 parking meters for the next 75 years to the Morgan-led consortium, and granted it the authority to double and triple meter rates. By 2013 downtown meters are slated to double to $6 per hour; neighborhood meter rates are to double to $2 per hour.

The deal was pushed hard by Mayor Richard Daley. The core of his privatization argument was that Chicago lacked the political will to raise meter rates and that desperate fiscal times demanded unlocking the value of public parking. He noted that city meters were only generating about $20 million a year, and because of neighborhood resistance, meter prices hadn't gone up in 20 years. His conclusion was that Chicago had to outsource the political will to raise meter rates.

However, the inspector general's report concludes that, "If Chicago were to keep control of the parking-meter system and operate it under the same terms as the private company, the system would be worth approximately $2.13 billion (in present dollars)," or $974 million more than the city received. Ironically, another cost of Chicago parking privatization was that it quashed a number of neighborhood-supported parking improvement districts, in which higher meter fees were to be invested in local pedestrian, bicycle and transit improvements.

While public-private partnerships can be appealing because they require motorists to pay more of the actual cost of driving, are these deals really the only way to overcome political resistance to higher motoring fees?

Many Fifth Avenue merchants do see cyclists as customers, not obstacles. Photo: Ben Fried.

Basically, I heard many variations on the theme voiced by Bonnie's Grill proprietor Mike Naber: Delivery drivers were getting lots of tickets and fines "before the bike lane." In the interest of providing some measure of balance to local press reports that blame dips in retail sales on bike infrastructure or bus lanes, here's a sampling of what people told me.

Emily Isaac, owner of Trois Pommes Patisserie, receives about 10 deliveries per week. If the bike lane is causing her suppliers problems, they're keeping quiet about it. "I haven't heard a word or noticed anything," she said. When I asked if she'd be willing to adjust her schedule if it meant she could receive deliveries at the curb during specific times, she said "Yes." She also said that replacing one on-street car-parking spot on her block with space for bike parking would suit her just fine.

At 'Snice, a cafe at the corner of 3rd Street, owner Mike Walter gets three deliveries per day, on average. He thinks the suppliers have given up on trying to find curbside spots, and he has other concerns besides the bike lane. "I'm sure the double-parked trucks hurt bus service," he said. (The B63, which runs on Fifth Avenue, is the slowest bus line in Brooklyn.) "As far as the delivery guys, no one's complained to me that because of the bike riders they're getting tickets."

Between Carroll Street and Flatbush Avenue, Fifth Avenue is too narrow to accommodate a striped bike lane. It has sharrows instead. Revealingly, the merchants on this part of the strip also report that their suppliers receive parking tickets with regularity. So turning Fifth Avenue's Class 2 bike facility into sharrows, as CB6 district manager Craig Hammerman has suggested [PDF], would not accomplish much besides making the street more dangerous.

It's pretty clear that what's going on here is not a bike lane problem, but a delivery problem. Muslh Alomri, a manager at the Associated market on Fifth and Union (he's got sharrows, not a bike lane), would like nothing more than to have a bigger delivery zone in front of his store. The space he has now is equivalent to two parking spots. When the big rigs come to deliver milk, about five or six times a week, the back of the truck sticks out into the bus stop, and the truck driver gets a ticket. Alomri wants to expand the delivery zone to occupy three car parking spaces, but says he's been rebuffed by the city.

You may be asking: Don't his customers have to carry stuff away? Doesn't he need car parking nearby? In fact, said Alomri: "Most of my customers are walking customers. Maybe one out of a hundred comes in a car."

Just about every New York City neighborhood has to deal with the consequences of dirt cheap on-street parking. When you practically give away spaces at rock-bottom prices, it guarantees double parking and endless cruising for spots by bargain hunting drivers. Which is bad news for all the bus riders, cyclists, and delivery drivers who have to contend with the clogged curbs, extra traffic, and lane-blocking vehicles that result.

For the past month, Fifth Avenue in Park Slope has been experimenting with DOT's PARK Smart program, which adjusts the price of metered spaces during peak hours and promises to eliminate some of the curbside dysfunction. A few Park Slope business owners also see their neighborhood's PARK Smart pilot as a good opportunity to eliminate something else: the Fifth Avenue bike lane.

This January, at the same time that DOT and Brooklyn CB6 were discussing the launch of PARK Smart, the Fifth Avenue BID approached the community board about doing away with the Class 2 bike lane that runs from Carroll Street to 24th Street.

The contention from BID director Irene LoRe, proprietor of the restaurant Aunt Suzie's, is that the bike lane interferes with deliveries and customer access. Even though parked cars, not two stripes of thermoplast, are what prevent delivery trucks from parking legally. And despite the fact that, according to several Fifth Avenue merchants who were unaware of the BID's request, tickets for double parking were just as common before the bike lane arrived (about five years ago).

Nevertheless, CB6 District Manager Craig Hammerman told Streetsblog last month that he thinks the BID has a point. "Previously the trucks could double park; now that there’s a bike lane, you can't load or unload," he said, agreeing with the notion that the lane is causing headaches for business owners and delivery drivers. "The idea is to share the roads. We'd love to see some sort of compromise."

What sort of compromise, exactly?

Hammerman provided us with a letter [PDF] he sent earlier this year to LoRe and Judi Pheiffer, another local business owner. In it, he proposes converting the existing bike lane to a Class 3 route. That means cyclists would get sharrows instead -- road markings that don't carry the same visual weight or staying power as dedicated lanes. "It would seem to me," Hammerman wrote, that converting the bike lane to sharrows "would eliminate the existing conflict between the bicycles and the merchant delivery trucks."

Or it would simply expose thousands of people to more danger and risk. The proposed scenario wouldn't do anything to help delivery drivers find curbside spots, but it would force cyclists to kiss their dedicated space goodbye. In DOT's latest survey of Fifth Avenue bike traffic, conducted on a weekday in October, 865 cyclists were counted between 8th Street and 9th Street in one twelve-hour period. There's no indication that the agency will roll back this widely used safety measure, but it's worth noting that bike infrastructure has come under fire in a seemingly unrelated discussion of meter pricing.

In a phone call with Streetsblog, BID director Irene LoRe laid out her belief that customers and suppliers are collecting more parking tickets because of the bike lane. "You can get a ticket for blocking the bike lane," she said, claiming that parking enforcement is increasing costs for retail merchants on Fifth. "Eventually a [supplier] is going to put it into their price." (Note, however, that parking in a bike lane -- violation 48 -- doesn't even have a check-box on the New York City parking summons.)

LoRe expressed tentative support for PARK Smart but didn't agree with the proposition that parking dysfunction should be cured with a combination of market-rate meter prices and coordinated delivery zones. "Believe me," she said, "if you start creating loading zones, you're going to take away all the parking spots you created with PARK Smart." While LoRe said she would welcome bike infrastructure on another street (she suggested a protected path on Fourth Avenue), it became clear during the course of our conversation that she does not see bicyclists as potential customers, and that restaurants, in her words, "depend on customers coming by car."

We know from studies of Prince Street in Manhattan and Bloor Street in Toronto that businesses in many urban neighborhoods have more to gain from attracting pedestrians and cyclists than from providing cheap parking. Park Slope is not the same as SoHo, of course, but it is dense, walkable, easily accessible by transit, and full of people who ride bikes.

Plenty of merchants along Fifth Avenue don't share LoRe's take on the situation. Mike Naber, who's run Bonnie's Grill for 10 years, said his delivery guys do get about six tickets per week, but that the enforcement has little to do with the lane striping. "It was like that before the bike lane," he said. (We'll have more from other Fifth Avenue merchants in a future post.)

Better curbside management holds the promise of vastly improved streets -- pedestrians, cyclists, and bus riders stand to benefit enormously from properly priced parking and coordinated deliveries. So do many businesses, but myths and misconceptions still abound.

"Have placard-bearing drivers begun their own reclaiming of reclaimed public space?"

That is the question posed by Streetsblogger ddartley, who last week snapped these photos of a city government vehicle parked in the new Madison Square pedestrian plaza. He got just close enough to spot the placard behind the windshield when:

This guy wearing some sort of NYPD uniform showed up and got in and drove off. Okay, it's not like he was committing murder or anything, but every time a cop breaks a law for all to see, it's just a little more poison in the world. This suggests that even after these fancy new pedestrian-only plazas have been built, they are under threat from being parked on by placard-bearing NYC employees who remain, at least as far as parking, 100% completely above the law. Well, for now!

It's surprising, really, that it's taken this long for such behavior to come to light. What can, or what should, DOT do to nip it in the bud?

Photo: hotdogger13/Flickr

At issue was a rezoning provision that would have dramatically increased parking inventory for new Hudson Yards development by establishing parking minimum requirements. HKNA claimed the parking plan -- adopted in 2005 as part of the failed bid to build a far West Side football stadium -- violated a 1982 agreement to limit parking below 60th Street in order to keep the city in compliance with the Clean Air Act. 

The 2005 zoning, according to HKNA, would have permitted the construction of up to 17,500 new parking spots (estimates cited by neighborhood media pegged the number at closer to 20,000). Under the terms of the settlement, says an HKNA statement, "new development in the Hudson Yards will be limited to no more than 6,100 parking spaces" -- a number that, all things considered, "is expected to be approximately the same as would have been constructed under the 1982 zoning rules."

And for the first time, special permits for additional parking spaces will not be approved unless there is an actual shortage of parking in the Hudson Yards area. Currently there is no limit on special permits. The Departments of City Planning, Consumer Affairs, and Buildings will collaborate to keep an up-to-date inventory of parking spaces in the area and publish it on a web site.

The city has also abandoned plans for a 950-space underground garage originally intended for use by the stadium.

Needless to say, for a neighborhood already overrun with traffic congestion and parking garages, with attendant high levels of asthma to prove it, the settlement is welcome news. Here's hoping it might inspire the Bloomberg admin to reconsider its pro-parking push in other areas of the city.