A survey conducted by the Transportation Dept. and released yesterday [pdf file] illustrated the sorry state of parking in lower Manhattan. The survey showed that the number of cars far exceeded the number of available parking spots in the financial district, unless one possessed a city parking placard.
In the area it covered, largely the area south of Canal Street, there were only 1,105 metered parking spaces and 871 unregulated spaces available to the drivers without placards, for a total of 1,976 spaces — far fewer than the number of cars pouring into Lower Manhattan every day. In the financial district and the South Street Seaport area, there were only 138 parking spots for the general public. Battery Park City had 201, and TriBeCa had 326.
By contrast, there were about 11,000 spaces in Lower Manhattan available for drivers with placards, including spots designated for authorized vehicles, loading zones, no-parking zones, and all the metered and unregulated spaces open to the public. Many placards allow free parking in metered spaces.
Reducing the number of placards issued by the City has been a goal of Mayor Bloomberg's second term. The Mayor wants to reduce the number of placards issued to civil servants by 20%. Currently, there are more than 140,000 vehicles with free-parking placards, not including counterfeit and expired emblems.
The study showed concretely just how bad the parking situation downtown is. For example, in Battery Park City during a weekday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., more than half of all cars are parked illegally. And the number of placards related to law enforcement agencies is double the number of parking spots reserved for law enforcement, causing a spillover effect where those vehicles crowd out thousands of other spaces for un-credentialed drivers. Mayor Bloomberg intends for the 20% placard reduction project to be completed by September of this year.
