Streetsblog New York City

As we reported last week, Maria Baez and a handful of other City Council members want to issue free parking permits to every public school teacher in New York City. As the system presently employs some 95,000 full-time teachers, in addition to 18,000 part-time teachers and paraprofessionals, Intro 894 would encourage hundreds of thousands of car trips per year just as the city is making efforts to reduce driving by government employees by reining in parking placard issues.

The bill got its first hearing from Community Board 12 in Washington Heights last night, where it was overwhelmingly rejected by the board's transportation committee.

"Most members of the committee did not want to bring even more cars into the neighborhood," Chair Mark Levine told Streetsblog.

If the Baez bill isn't going over in car-friendly Upper Manhattan, that may not bode well for its success elsewhere. But given that Alan Gerson, who presides over one of the most congested districts of the city, has signed on as an early co-sponsor, we'd be foolish to write it off.

Transit-riding New Yorkers, take heart. In these tough times, your City Council members are at this moment pushing a slew of bills that will make your lives easier. All you have to do is trade your MetroCard for a set of car keys.

In December and January, reports Gotham Gazette, no fewer than four bills surfaced that would facilitate parking in some way, whether or not it's actually legal.

Streetsblog has already written about the most egregious of these: Simcha Felder's on-street "grace period" proposal, which would effectively abolish time limits set by parking meters. But Maria Baez has slipped in a bill that could, if adopted, be more damaging. Baez, who represents District 14 in the Bronx (where three-quarters of households are car-free), wants the city to issue a parking permit to every New York City public school teacher. Not only would Intro 894 be disastrous in its own right, as Cap'n Transit points out, the net effect could be even worse.

If her bill passes, it's likely that the police, firemen and every other category of government employee will want their entitlements entrenched in law.

The Baez bill, of course, comes as the city has cut down on parking permits in order to reduce driving by government employees. Last year about 52,000 teachers had their permits rescinded, leaving some 11,000 with free on-street parking privileges, in addition to those who use 15,000 designated off-street spots.

Other parking-friendly proposals now in the hopper include Intro 897, from Daniel Garodnick, which would allow drivers who don't make their muni-meter receipts visible to challenge tickets by producing them later. A somewhat more encouraging bill is Intro 901, from John Liu, to order parking garages to set aside spaces for car-sharing programs like Zip Car. Great, Councilman Liu, but where's the bike parking mandate?

It's interesting to note common co-sponsor names on these bills. The "outer-borough" usuals like David Weprin aside, one stood out: Alan Gerson, representing traffic-choked Lower Manhattan, has signed on to Intros 894, 897 and 901.

Streetsblog reader Richard Conroy sends along these photos and writes:

Yesterday there was an article about Randi Weingarten saying teachers don’t abuse parking permits. I found that amusing since my daily commute takes me past P.S. 161 in Harlem where there are numerous vehicles parked on the sidewalk every school day. This school is on Convent Ave.

 

In her letter to the Mayor, United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten claimed that "teachers
are not abusers of parking permits, and to publicly suggest that they
are is deeply troubling." The letter was a response to the Mayor’s plan to reduce the number of city government parking permits and prevent unions from printing their own placards. 

At least they’re not parking on the playground, I suppose.

A car with a teacher's permit on the dashboard is parked beneath a "No Parking Anytime" sign. The license plate number does not match the one printed on the permit. (UncivilServants.org)

United Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten sent a letter to Mayor Bloomberg Friday expressing objections to his plan to reduce the number of city government parking permits and prevent unions and city agencies from printing their own. Weingarten's letter echoed Teamsters president Gary LaBarbera's recent assertion that "parking permits are a form of compensation for teachers"and other city employees (Is anyone paying taxes on that "compensation?" Is it accounted for in any city budget?)

In her letter, reprinted below in full, Weingarten makes three particularly remarkable claims:

1. "Teachers are not abusers of parking permits."
   A quick visit to UncivilServants.org (or your own neighborhood streets) shows Weingarten's blanket claim is, obviously, incorrect.
   
   
2. "Teachers do not clog areas such as lower Manhattan" with their personal vehicles.
   Not only are teachers' cars part of the Lower Manhattan traffic jam, in a city where 43 percent of elementary school kids are unhealthily obese, teachers and education officials have been known to clog school playgrounds with their personal vehicles. In one notorious case, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum intervened to stop city employees from using the Tompkins Square Middle School's playground as a parking lot in 2004.
   
   
3. Parking permits are necessary to "attract the best and the brightest to teaching" in New York City.
   Really? I'm no education policy expert and I'm sure that some teachers really do need to use cars for work, but do the world's best and brightest come to live and work in New York City for the convenient parking?
   

I think Weingarten and the unions may find that they are fighting a costly and losing battle here. The public has little sympathy for the maintenance of a city employee parking system that is so blatantly abused. Few issues draw the ire of such a broad range of New York City civic groups as city government parking placard abuse.

A recent Independent Budget Office report found that cops, firefighters and teachers drive to work at double the rate of any other group of New York City workers. Why?

As DOT Deputy Commissioner Bruce Schaller told Streetsblog in the very first post we ever published, "Free parking has a tremendous impact on the decision whether to drive or take transit." Moreover, among teachers working in Manhattan, "nearly all of these auto commuters have transit alternatives," Schaller said. His 2006 study found that ninety-five percent of the government employees driving into Manhattan from Brooklyn and Staten Island live in neighborhoods where the majority of their neighbors use transit.

No one is proposing eliminating teachers' permits. Rather, there just needs to be a more centralized and rational system for distributing parking permits based on real need. And there needs to be real enforcement. Hopefully Weingarten and the unions will realize that they are better off pushing for a parking "cash-out" law like California's than fighting to maintain their oft-abused parking privilege.

Here is Weingarten's letter to the Mayor in full:

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