Residential parking permits in Long Island City and Brooklyn Heights? Park and Ride areas near train stations? Eliminating government parking placards? The NY Sun has a look a what the Bloomberg administration is considering to "sweeten" the congestion pricing proposal as it works to gain support for the plan (it's up for consideration in 6 weeks) and it includes all of the above. Reporter Annie Karni writes:
Residential parking permits could be established in Brooklyn Heights, Upper Manhattan, Long Island City, and other neighborhoods surrounding Manhattan's central business district — a concession to those communities that would discourage drivers from approaching the edges of tolled Manhattan and clogging up their streets to avoid paying the $8 congestion fee.
The city in the past has opposed residential parking permits on the basis that visitors would be unable to find parking. Permit parking has been used for years in cities such as Boston and Washington. In those cities, cars without permits can park for two hours or less.
Car owners, what do you think? And in a move that almost sounds like a response to government parking abuse website Uncivil Servants, the city is also allegedly looking at parking placard abuse. As for Park and Ride's, our guess is that these would be in the outer boroughs, though it would be funny to see the city buying space in Manhattan for parking facilities.
The Partnership for New York City released a survey that finds "That Lack Of Access To Mass Transit Is Not the Reason That Most New Yorkers Drive."
The poll, which was conducted between March 12 and April 4, 2007, found that just 17 percent of drivers take their cars into Manhattan’s CBDs because of inaccessible or inconvenient mass transit options.
Additionally, only 10 percent of drivers say that they avoid mass transit because it is too slow. In a clear indication that saving time is not a primary reason for driving, 61 percent of drivers say that mass transit would be as fast or faster than driving. That view is shared by 66 percent of drivers from both Queens and Brooklyn.
Give the F an express train maybe?
