The Parking Landscape in NYC

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We'll return to Middle East coverage in about a half hour with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who will take my questions and yours about US policy and actions toward the current situation, including President Biden now planning to go to Israel tomorrow. Also, every Tuesday on the show this year, as many of you know, we're doing a climate story of the week. Today's coming up in about an hour when a meteorologist from Columbia University's Climate School talks about how the geography of our area affects our patterns of moisture as the planet warms. We're all experiencing those patterns now, and some people are grousing about it, like how it seems to rain every Friday and Saturday recently.

Our first segment today is partly climate-related too. An alternate side-of-the-street parking is in effect today in New York City. As they say on the newscasts, you must pay the meters. Well, the meters in Manhattan just got more expensive. New rates took effect yesterday. They'll be going up in the other boroughs too. In Queens on Friday of next week, Brooklyn, November 9th, the Bronx, November 22nd, and Staten Island, sometimes it's good to go left, Staten Islanders, I know you always do, November 28th. By how much? Well, it's not one number.

For parking in what they call Manhattan's core business district, the first hour went up from $4.50 to $5.50. If you stay there a second hour that costs $9 up 20% to $9 was $7.50. The rates are less depending on neighborhood. For example, what they call business districts outside Manhattan will double from $2 to $4 for the first hour and from $2.50 to $5 for the second. For a little historical nostalgic context as recently as 2009, you just put a quarter in a standalone meter for each 30 minutes. How should we think about parking? Why does New York or any city charge for it on public streets?

The opposite question could be asked too. Why do we allow the privatization of public streets by having any free parking for people's private cars when the same space might serve more of a public purpose by keeping it free only to buses and bikes? Then again having to pay for parking confers privileges on those who have more money, so round and round we go. Let's talk about the new meter rates and parking overall with two guests, Henry Grabar, staff writer at Slate, a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the author of a book just recently released called Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World.

Rachel Weinberger, the Peter W. Herman Chair for Transportation at the Greater New York think-tank called the Regional Plan Association. She's an internationally recognized expert in sustainable transportation with specializations in travel behavior, land use, transportation interactions, economic impacts of the transportation system, and you guessed it, parking policy. She has contributed to books such as Parking: Not as Bad as You Think, Worse than You Realize. Rachel Weinberger, Henry Grabar, thanks for coming on for this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Rachel Weinberger: Happy to be here. Thanks, Brian.

Henry Grabar: Thanks, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Rachel, how long has it been like this that parking rates are different in different neighborhoods set by City Hall?

Rachel Weinberger: It's actually a relatively recent innovation. You mentioned the trip down Nostalgia Lane to when it was a quarter. Don't hold me to account for the dates exactly, but I think as recently as maybe 2014/2015, it was pretty much a $1 per hour to park anywhere in New York City, regardless of whether it was a sleepy commercial street in Staten Island or if it was the heart of some busy business district like downtown Flushing, for example.

Brian Lehrer: Let me go right to a big-picture question. Rachel, for you as a parking expert and urban planner, what are the goals of on-street parking overall and metered on-street parking as a subset of that? Do these parking meter increases represent an intentional governing philosophy or just a way to raise revenue?

Rachel Weinberger: They represent an intentional governing philosophy to actually make it a little bit easier for people to find a parking place and spend less time circling. They date back to 1937 in Oklahoma City where a merchant was very upset that all of the parking spaces in front of his store were taken up by his employees and he implored the city council to install parking meters, so that the people who were going to be there for a long period of time, employees for example, would park a little bit of a distance and just walk to the store and then people who wanted to just come up for a quick hit would be able to have a space available. The city tries to set a rate now that allows for turnover so that lots of people, different people, can use that spot so that the economy can thrive more easily.

Brian Lehrer: Henry, I'll bring you in on the same question. What are the goals of on-street parking overall and metered on-street parking as a subset of that? Same question, do these parking meter increases represent an intentional governing philosophy like the one that Rachel just described or just a way to raise revenue as a lot of drivers will grouse that they are?

Henry Grabar: That's a great question. I think drivers often have the thought, the suspicion that the city is just trying to take their money with the parking meters. In fact, New York City makes more than twice as much money from tickets, towing, and booting than they do from the meters themselves. The system is very much designed in such a way that they expect you to break the law because there aren't enough places to park. I think the idea of raising the parking meter rates has two goals.

The first is, as Rachel says, to create a place to park on every block so that if you're a driver looking for a spot, you'll know that a spot will be available, it's just you're going to have to pay the market price for it and that in turn has a number of positive benefits. Not only does it reduce the time that people spend looking for parking and introduces a reliability to conducting business, delivering stuff in the city, et cetera, but it also reduces traffic because a lot of traffic is caused by people either looking for parking or giving up and double parking and thereby causing more traffic behind them.

The second purpose of raising the meters is in a way to solve that same problem that has always existed since the dawn of street parking, which is that people prefer to park on the street relative to garages. Garages in New York City are considerably more expensive than street parking. People will do everything they can to find a spot on the street instead of parking in a garage. That in turn creates lots and lots of traffic and it means that a lot of our garages are not as full even as people compete for the same precious spots on the street. By raising the price of street parking to correspond more closely with garage pricing, we can encourage more drivers to go first to a garage and leave those street spaces available for people who really need them.

Brian Lehrer: No surprise to either of you I'm sure the calls are starting to come in on this. Let me make sure every listener feels invited. Folks your call is welcome on the topic of New York City parking meter rates going up including your stories, your comments, and your questions about parking policy overall or in specific neighborhoods, even on specific blocks wherever you live in the city or elsewhere. 212-433-WNYC.

212-433-9692 for Rachel Weinberger who's a parking policy expert with the Greater New York Think Tank, the Regional Plan Association, and Henry Grabar, staff writer at Slate, a fellow at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, and the author of a book just recently released called Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. I can't say that title, Henry, without saying it like the way Joni Mitchell says it in the song. A normal person would say paved paradise, but I start to say that and it comes out paved paradise. Why was that the title of your book?

Henry Grabar: The idea behind the title was, I think you can hear it two ways. I think a lot of people obviously think about the Joni Mitchell song and they think about the idea that parking has consumed so much of our natural land, our urban landscape, and in some cases has become the single greatest portion of urban land use in some cities. The second part of it is, I guess, a lot of Americans really do want that parking. In a lot of cases, the parking that we have is a result of a preference that people express that free parking and ample parking was more important to them than all the things that it makes impossible, including safer streets, affordable housing, walkable neighborhoods, and so on. I hope the title is provocative, but it's also simply intended to recall a nice song that makes people feel good, unlike parking.

Brian Lehrer: For people who do or don't know the song, we'll remind that the next line is, and put up a parking lot. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot in particular, so it obviously relates to the theme of your book, and now thousands of people are going to have the earworm of that line from Joni Mitchell haunting them for the rest of the day. Rachel, I mentioned the old days and you mentioned when people put physical quarters into physical slots. Now we have the meters that cover a number of spots on the same block, of course, and you get the receipt for your windshield and you can pay by credit card. Also, the act, where you can bypass a structure on the street altogether. Have you seen that parking technology affect parking behavior?

Rachel Weinberger: That's a great question, Brian. I won't waste a lot of time. I have no answer for that. I think what it does do is it makes it easier for people to utilize the meters, but I haven't seen any specific change probably because it's never introduced alone. It's always introduced with some restructuring on the price.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe easier because you don't have to monitor how many quarters you're driving around with and make you feel like--

Rachel Weinberger: You don't have to choose either laundry or parking.

Brian Lehrer: [laughs] Henry, anything on that?

Henry Grabar: I think one of the big advantages of those systems is that they enable people to pay for parking as they need it, rather than forcing them to make a decision at the moment they leave their car about exactly how long they're going to be parked. That's part of a broader trend we're seeing towards technology making using metered street parking easier and more convenient. I feel pretty optimistic about this erasing some of the challenges that people have felt or the irritation people feel towards paying for parking.

Another example of this technology is the tech that allows people to reserve places in garages. That's another example of a way that parking is getting easier. I think paying for parking is getting easier. I hope what that means is that at the end of the day, people start to recognize that paying for parking while annoying and certainly a drain on your wallet, it also saves you a lot of time. If you think about the value of that time, then perhaps paying for parking begins to feel like it might work to your advantage sometimes.

Brian Lehrer: One way that it's easier if you use the app is you don't have to, as people often say, run downstairs to feed the meter. You could be in an office on the 19th floor and just refresh the app and you don't have to go down there. By the same token, Rachel, the second hours in the formula by the city that I read at the top are somewhat considerably higher than the first hours. It's now $5.50 for the first hour in the core business district of Manhattan, but if you stay there a second hour, that's $9. What's the public policy purpose of that?

Rachel Weinberger: That's actually something that I hinted at a little bit in my first comments. If you have an extended stay, then it makes more sense for you to park somewhere that might be a little further away, that might be a little cheaper for you, or in a garage, as Henry also said. When you have somebody who's going to be two, three hours at a location, then it makes better sense for them to be in a garage, leaving the curb space available for somebody who's doing a quick hit.

Brian Lehrer: I want to get from each of you before we start taking calls, what you think the goals of parking policy should be in a city like New York. I said at the top that this is related to conversations about the climate, obviously. I wonder what bucket of things, Henry, you first, you feel should inform parking policy in a city like New York. To what degree do the actual policies line up with that for you?

Henry Grabar: Great question. I think the broadest possible goal of the way we think about our parking policy should be to make the most of this precious point of access, that is, the curb. It's the intermediary between our streets and our buildings, between mobility and land use, between getting somewhere and doing something. We don't have that much of it. To give it up first come first served to everybody who wants to drive into Manhattan is unfortunately not a sustainable use of that land because there's too many people who want it.

I'll give you an example of this. I had a friend who used to teach public school on the west side of Manhattan, lived in central Brooklyn. Because he had a free parking space, he would drive his car every day from central Brooklyn to the west side of Manhattan to teach, despite the fact that he could very easily have taken the subway. Of course, when you're given free parking, that's one of the key determining factors in deciding whether you are going to drive or you're going to use public transit or get around some other way.

When we think about how we allocate this parking, we should be thinking, who are the users who need it most? Who are the users who really could benefit most from maximizing the utility of that limited real estate? I'm thinking about, in the crowded Manhattan core, it's deliveries, it's New Yorkers with disabilities, it's buses. It's uses like that, ambulances and emergency services. Those are the users who we ought to be prioritizing. Pricing is one way to sort out the discretionary uses and get those people taking transit, but it has to come with a reallocation of street space. I hope that's part of this policy as well.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting comment, by the way, from a listener via text message after you talked about one of the reasons for metered parking originally being that merchants saw that their own employees were taking up the free parking spots in front of the stores and that didn't leave enough parking for customers. The apps that make it easier to extend your parking period without going back to your car work in the opposite direction of that. Just interesting and seemingly true detail pointed out by a listener who wrote in.

Rachel, your answers to the same question? What should the goals of parking policy really be in a city like New York? How much do the city's current policy line up with what you as a parking policy expert think they should be?

Rachel Weinberger: First, just a comment on the app. The app won't actually let you extend beyond the time limit, so you don't get a third hour, unless three hours of parking are allowed. In addition to what the price is, many of the streets have a one-hour or two-hour limit on them.

Brian Lehrer: You can refresh once, but you can't refresh indefinitely.

Rachel Weinberger: Then you can't anymore. In terms of what the parking policy should be, it's important to keep it in the entire context of what the right-of-way should and shouldn't be used for. The right-of-way is the entire street canyon, it's from building to building. It is legally there for the public benefit.

First, the city has to decide, what is the best use of that. It's a fixed and limited resource, and what is the public benefit? Increasingly, we have new demands on that space. It could be, since we're on the sustainability question as well, for bioswales, or other rain-catching basins. It could be for outdoor dining. It could be for other kinds of outdoor gathering. There's lots and lots of different competing demands. It could be for deliveries. It could be for commercial deliveries. It could be for passenger pickup and drop-off. I think, Brian, you mentioned it could be for bus lanes, or maybe Henry. There's lots and lots of different ways that space can be used.

Then you'd think about what's in the residual. I agree with Henry that what you want to do is make the most of it. If the city's policy is to price it so that it turns over, I always say it helps people share better. I think the city has not always been aligned with what I think the goals should be, but I think the city is getting there. The city, in addition to raising the meter prices, has recently released a curb management action plan where, and they currently are working with the Columbus Avenue BID, the intention is to work with the communities and think creatively about the many different uses of the right-of-way and how it is best allocated.

There's a lot of New Yorkers. The majority of them don't have cars. Particularly, Manhattan where the crunch is, only 22% of households own cars. The physics of cars are impossible for the expectation around parking and the expectation of free parking. It strikes me that people are happy to buy water, which comes right out of the tap, but you ask them to pay for parking and it gets everybody quite agitated.

Brian Lehrer: Speaking of quite agitated, Henry, listener writes, "How dare he devalue the teacher's commute? Perhaps the teacher used the car to benefit students with additional materials transported to class in some way."

Henry Grabar: That is a great point. I don't begrudge teachers driving to work at all. I think the teachers should, however, be given an option to take that parking privilege as a cash bonus as part of their salary. I think part of the problem is that they're given the parking spot, but they're not given an equivalent reward if they don't drive, and so they often do drive to take advantage of what they recognize is a pretty valuable perk. That perk isn't extended to people who don't drive, and in that sense, just encourages a lot more driving and also has a way of penalizing teachers who decide to take transit or ride a bike or something like that.

Brian Lehrer: If you're just joining us, we're talking about parking and parking policy, with the news that the parking meters started going up in New York City yesterday, in Manhattan yesterday. They'll be rolled out, these increases, in the other boroughs gradually over the next month or so. John in Greenpoint is calling in with a story about parking in his neighborhood. John, you're on WNYC. Hello.

John: Hey, thanks for taking my call. I'd like to share a frustration that many of us in Brooklyn are facing. I understand the need for parking meters in high-density commercial districts like Manhattan and business districts like that. The city really is making a push to make parking miserable for everybody across the board. That's mainly because the Department of Transportation has been completely captured by Silicon Valley-backed not-for-profit think tanks.

They are really just trying to push private vehicle ownership away and make everybody dependent on Uber and Lyft and rideshare apps. What has happened now and what people are starting to see in Astoria and Brooklyn is the DOT sneaking in parking meters in strictly residential districts. It's becoming an issue. It's adding to traffic in the neighborhoods which by the way, benefits car apps, and it's more money with congestion pricing and it's getting a little bit ridiculous. In the long run, who is this going to benefit?

Brian Lehrer: John, do you think that it's as simple as government responding to the special interest of the rideshare services as opposed to government trying to discourage automobile use altogether, which I think in general, I'm not sure about Mayor Adams individually, but I think which many policy experts would say is a good thing.

John: It really depends on a case-by-case basis. If you want to push people out that are dependent on cars and push them into other neighborhoods and create traffic otherwise that wouldn't exist, then there's the answer. Overall, what's the benefit of just adding parking meters in just strictly residential areas? Who is that good for?

Brian Lehrer: John, thank you. Rachel, you want to take that and is the city doing that?

Rachel Weinberger: Sure. I'm happy to take that. I'll start by noting that in Paris, it costs to park anywhere in every neighborhood in any spot. There's definitely--

Brian Lehrer: Really, in front of your own, let's say, single-family house.

Rachel Weinberger: Love it, Brian. That's almost like a soft pitch. You talked earlier about privatization of the public right of way. I may rent or own my home, but do I rent and own the parking space in front of it? If I'm in a three-family home, which I happen to actually be in, and my lot is 17 feet wide, that fits one vehicle, not three, so somebody doesn't get to park. Those are just sort of the physics of it. I don't really think that the city has a particular objective of making parking miserable for everybody.

I do think that we do have some environmental goals. The city does, and the state certainly does, and it's not really a question of trying to push ownership away so much as trying to level the playing field for transit and for active transport modes and for micro transit scooters, bicycles other things like that, that can help us get around the city in more efficient ways.

Space efficiency. You can get a lot more bicycles or scooters in the same space that you could use a car. Then when you get to the other end, you can also park them more efficiently. In terms of getting people around, there's space efficient and environmentally efficient ways, much more so than the car, which we have privileged for the last many, many, many, many years. All those micro-mobility options aside, nothing beats the buzz for the subway really for getting people around.

Brian Lehrer: We will continue in a minute with Rachel Weinberger and Henry Grabar parking policy experts, more of your calls. We'll also get Henry's paradox, I guess you'd call it the astronomical numbers that I'm going to invite him to lay out from his book about the number of parking spots per household in the United States and why people feel like they can't find a spot. Anyway, stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue to talk about parking. In particular, the increase in the parking meter rates that started to take effect in New York City yesterday, Manhattan yesterday. Gradually there'll be rolled out in the other boroughs over the next month or so, but using that as a hook to talk about parking writ large as public policy. Henry Grabar is one of our guest staff writer at Slate and author of the new book Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World, and Rachel Weinberger a parking policy expert with the Greater New York think tank called the Regional Plan Association. Let's take another call. Here's Dale in the Bronx. Dale, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling in.

Dale: Hi Brian. I'm a long-time listener. This is one of my lately pet peeves with this entire issue of parking here in New York City in general. I do believe, in your earlier caller, I do believe that there is a group or a philosophy that's taking a hold of the Department of Traffic to make just driving miserable in general for the last two or three administrations to make it very hard for people who drive, not maybe so much in Manhattan, but certainly in the outer boroughs. The solution that the gentleman was suggesting that as an alternative to pick a garage versus parking on the street, that doesn't work for a lot of places. A lot of solutions, I think, that work for Manhattan, they simply don't work for areas.

I've lived in almost all five boroughs in the Bronx, I live currently in the Bronx, but in Queens, in downtown Brooklyn, in certain areas of Brooklyn, there's literally no garage parking in some neighborhoods at all to suggest that people are just taking up space for parking because they're just taking it up because it's cheap. It's not they're taking up because it's cheap. It's the only parking that's there. In my neighborhood, there are cars that are parked because there's too many people who do own cars, but they own cars in places in Queens, in places in the Bronx, and in certain places in Brooklyn because you need a car in order to conduct your life or to do your business or whatever it is that's not just centered in Manhattan.

To treat those neighborhoods or to have this overarching policy or philosophy that you have to give the street back or take the street back from people who are just selfishly taking up space for cars, it's just a bad attitude to have. It's why a lot of people really don't like the Department of Traffic. They don't think that the Department of Traffic is really working to control traffic. They think that the Department of Traffic is just working for a particular special interest.

Brian Lehrer: Dale, thank you for your call. Rachel, you can respond to any of that that you want. One of the questions in there that I think we haven't quite addressed yet is to what degree is paid parking. While it discourages parking in ways that planners might think is good for the world, is it also a regressive tax hitting poorer people harder than the better off who can shrug off the paid parking?

Rachel Weinberger: There's a lot of questions and issues embedded in all the comments from the callers and it's nice to see people are thinking about this. I think that though, when we are looking at it from our own personal perspective that micro viewpoint, it looks like that. It certainly feels like it's harder to get around. I think to Dale's point, increasingly what have been parking garages have been torn down, built into other things, housing has gone up. There's a real question then again, is a resource allocation question. Is it more important to have fewer people in New York City with more convenient parking or accommodate the population growth?

These all come up when you're looking then at the macro picture, which is what is the city's policy? What is the state's policy? Many people don't know, for most land uses, historically, there have been minimum parking requirements. Meaning when you build something, when you do a development, you have to include a certain amount of parking. In the 1980s, New York City did away with that for Manhattan construction. Boston did the same and so did Portland. The reason that they did that is the planners at that time and the decision-makers, the electeds, understood that having all that parking did in fact lead to more driving, which is very polluting.

They put that in as a bid to comply with the Clean Air Act requirements. It's not that it's a war on cars per se, but it's a question of the people who are having to make decisions. Certainly, the Department of Transportation falls into this category about how to manage the environment, how to protect it, and also how to make sure that people still can move around the city in some of the more efficient ways that I was mentioning in my answer to the previous caller. I think when we just think about how hard it is to park, and I got up at 5:30 this morning in order to move my car so that my calendar would be clear to come on this radio show, it's a pain in the neck but it isn't personal.

Brian Lehrer: We once did a whole call-in given the time of day that the show is on, just for people sitting in their cars, listening to the radio, waiting for alternate side of the street parking regulations to flip so they could get out. Henry, I told the listeners that I would tee you up for the stats from your book on how much parking per household there is nationally in the United States and that is a paradox that people feel they can never find a spot.

Henry Grabar: Yes, Brian, there is really a lot of parking in the United States of America. For those of you New Yorkers who are getting frustrated with the parking situation, you could consider moving to Des Moines, Iowa, which has 20 parking spots per household. Parking makes up 28% of the land in downtown Louisville, 29% of downtown Kansas City, and that's just the parking lots that are used exclusively for parking. That doesn't even count on-street parking or anything like that.

There really is an abundance of parking in this country. Estimates are that there are between three and eight spaces per car. There's really plenty of space to park on a national level. Obviously, [chuckles] coming from New York those statistics probably don't sound very familiar to you. New York has about a little more than two million registered vehicles.

How many parking spaces are there? Well, we've never actually really counted. Estimates are that there are about three million spaces on the street and perhaps another couple million off street. That might be two spaces per car, but then of course there are a lot of commuters to the city as well, so there's obviously a lot of competition. I want to come back for a moment to this idea that New Yorkers need their parking spots to do their work.

I think this is something you hear a lot when you hear about the idea that parking is being repurposed for other uses. Just one in four of workers in New York City commute by car, truck, or van. It's not a majority of commuters in any of the five rows except for Staten Island. New York is in an unusual position in that the parking on the street really is car storage. It's not people who depend on their car for work every day.

In fact, if you did depend on your car for work every day, it wouldn't matter to you that the street in front of your house was metered between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM. I think when we think about the city, the question that we should ask is, with so many other competing demands on that space, including by the way from the city's 1.4 million bus riders who could really use some BRT lanes on streets like Utica Avenue, Fordham Road, 1st Avenue, et cetera, that weren't, in reality, full of parked cars, why are they less entitled to this space than a single car owner who leaves their car there?

Brian Lehrer: To wrap it up and sort of follow up on that, and obviously we are not going to solve parking in New York City in this conversation. We didn't even touch on the outdoor dining sheds and how they have started a whole new layer of the street use wars in New York, but a few people have brought up, Rachel, and you mentioned how they have paid parking even in front of your own home in Paris.

A few people are bringing up the idea of parking permits for some neighborhoods. One listener texts in the spring of this year, state Senator Mike Gianaris who's from Queens among others, supported legislation to issue parking permits in some neighborhoods. Can you talk about that idea? The writer says, "It seems to dovetail well with the point your guest was making."

Rachel Weinberger: Well, I'm happy to comment on residential permit parking and start right out with, I'm not actually a fan. I think that I heard it best expressed by a Chicago older woman a number of years ago where she said, it's a real beggar thy neighbor policy. In reality, if you live in a thriving commercial district, as I do, I love other people to come and support my businesses because I can't support them, and the people of the neighborhood cannot support them.

The permit problem, there's multiple. One is, again, it privatizes the public right of way. The other is in a lot of neighborhoods, it's just a hunting license. I did an estimate for the Upper West Side a few years ago, and there are more vehicles owned by Upper West siders than could fit in the amount of linear feet of curb. That is if you didn't have a bus stop even, or a fire hydrant. There just are, in some cases, more cars than really fit on the street. To me, it doesn't make sense to restrict people to only living, parking, buying, shopping, and visiting in their own neighborhood where they have a permit.

Brian Lehrer: There we leave it with Rachel Weinberger, who is a transportation expert at the New York area Think Tank, the Regional Plan Association, and Henry Grabar, staff writer for Slate, a fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and author of a book just recently released called Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. Thanks so much for coming on both of you.

Rachel Weinberger: Thanks, Brian.

 

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