Planning advocates recommended doing away with parking requirements and "unbundling" the cost of parking from the price of housing. "There's no reason for parking to be paid for by people who don't own cars," said Tri-State Transportation Campaign director Kate Slevin, adding that the construction of parking should be "a choice rather than a necessity."

Minimum parking requirements are especially ill-suited to affordable housing developments, said Elena Conte of the Pratt Center for Community Development (pictured at the mic). "[A parking minimum] really makes no sense at all for communities where less than 20 percent of households own cars, because it drives up the cost of housing and takes up valuable space that otherwise could be used to create additional units or public space."

Representatives of Environmental Defense and the New York League of Conservation Voters rounded out the proceedings, calling on the city and state to take stock and head off the traffic-congested future that excessive off-street parking threatens to bring about. "We're building the infrastructure to encourage more people to drive with very little understanding of the environmental impacts," said Josh Nachowitz of NYLCV.

T.A.'s Paul Steely White tied the issue to preserving New York's streets for people on foot, noting that more off-street parking means less sidewalk integrity: "Curb cuts enable cars to drive across the sidewalk and block the sidewalk; it erodes the pedestrian environment."

Major planning groups, including the American Planning Association, the Regional Plan Association, and the Municipal Art Society, have also signed on to the report and urged Mayor Bloomberg to revise the city's ad-hoc policies governing off-street parking. According to one organizer behind the effort, this marks the first time all three organizations have lined up behind the same transportation reform.

Streetsblog will have more soon on the recommendations being advanced by this coalition.

We've received several reports that Friday's anti-pricing rally on the Queens side of the 59th Street Bridge, spearheaded by City Council Member Tony Avella, was a bust.

According to our sources, of the council members slated to attend -- Avella, Leroy Comrie, Melinda Katz, David Weprin "and other possible members of the Queens Delegation" -- only Avella and Weprin showed up. Pro-pricing folks who came to either counter-protest or just express support for pricing, including those from Queens, were reportedly yelled at and accused of being "undemocratic" by Avella. Environmental Defense was on hand to measure air quality and found that "contaminants were sky high."

Notably absent from the proceedings was Councilman Eric Gioia, who represents the district where the rally took place. Here are a few possible reasons why, as enumerated in testimony to council members by DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

• Without congestion pricing, western Queens will not see a 39% reduction in its most severe traffic jams, and a 6.1% reduction in total traffic.
  
• Without congestion pricing, western Queens will not receive new bus routes from Middle Village to South Ferry in Lower Manhattan, and from Jackson Heights to Penn Station.
  
• Without congestion pricing, western Queens will not get improved service on the Q60 bus route.
  
• Without congestion pricing, western Queens will lose 46 new subway cars that would increase service frequency on the E and F trains.
  
• Without congestion pricing, western Queens may lose state-of-the-art train control on the #7 line, that would allow trains to operate at higher speeds and run closer together, for better, more frequent service.
  

This is what Avella, Weprin and other hard-working council members are trying to take away from Gioia's constituents today. Will Gioia himself be among them?

Together at last: Pre-congestion pricing short-term transit enhancements and MTA capital projects in one map! The graphic comes courtesy of the Regional Plan Association, which made the map for an insert touting pricing [PDF] placed in the Legislative Gazette this Monday by Environmental Defense, TWU Local 100, and the Straphangers Campaign. This is what's at stake in Monday's City Council vote.