A Manhattan community board broke a record for attendance on Tuesday night — and proponents of reallocating public space from private vehicles celebrated a bruising victory in the emerging war over the future of New York City's on-street parking spaces.
Following several hours of heated debate, the Upper West Side's Community Board 7 voted in favor of a resolution calling on the Department of Transportation to assess alternative uses of curbside space in the neighborhood.
The proposal has touched off a firestorm of controversy over the last year — leading to clashes at public and private meetings over the allegedly biased wording and fiercely contested revisions. While supporters say the time has come to reexamine policies around curbside space in a neighborhood where roughly three-quarters of residents don't drive, opponents see the resolution as the beginning of a coup against their traditional access to free parking on city streets.
“It’s time to stop demonizing car owners," said Jay Adolf, a member of CB7 who voted against the proposal, which passed by a 22-12 margin with 3 abstentions. The study, he added, "is a stalking horse to further the interest of getting rid of free parking,” and therefore a "monumental waste of time."
But a slim majority of the 62 people who'd lined up to speak at the neighborhood meeting held a different view. They note that as the climate crisis bears down on New York, the city should be doing more to incentivize drivers to embrace public transportation. Curbside reform could cut down on the rampant double-parking and congestion, while unlocking enormous amounts of the streetscape — space that might be used for new loading zones, daylighting intersections, making room for city buses, pedestrian plazas or storing trash that otherwise piles up on the sidewalk.
"My street cross section consists of about two feet of sidewalk filled with garbage and rats, then 30 feet of space that’s used only by people who drive, and then another 2 feet of sidewalk filled with rats and garbage," said Avi Hoffman, a resident of 80th Street between Amsterdam and Broadway. "I think its crazy that, especially in light of climate change and people worrying about air quality, we don’t take the opportunity to study what we can do with that 30 feet of street that’s most of our public space. "
Many worried that when congestion pricing kicks in next year, drivers entering the core of Manhattan will begin circling the neighborhood looking for free parking. The resolution calls for the city to study the possibility of residential parking permits or metered surge pricing — ideas that some opponents of the study say they would support.
"We’re for residential parking permits, but what we’re not for is the continued elimination of parking spaces,” said Tag Gross, founder of the pro-driver group Common Sense Streets. The organization was created to counteract the "attacks and mythology" of safe streets activists, he told Gothamist. “The impact on the environment of Upper West Siders and their cars is nothing. Go to China, where I’ve been on business, and I can’t leave my hotel room because it’s dangerous.”
(Following the vote, Gross wrote to members of Common Sense Streets: "Guys, we may have lost this round, but it is a small battle and where we have really won is that they have inadvertently woke us up, brought us together and galvanized us!...The good news is alt side is suspended tomorrow; It’s Wednesday!”)
Others pointed out that free parking was not always a feature of New York City life. Until the 1950s, motorists were forbidden from storing their cars on the street overnight. Many did so anyway, prompting Police Commissioner Arthur Wallander to remark in 1947 that "public streets being used as garages" was among the "gravest problems facing the city."
Today, there are an estimated five million parking spots in New York City, including three million on-street spaces — the equivalent of a dozen Central Parks worth of land.
Following the lead of several other cities, some New York leaders have begun to experiment with the idea of converting some of that land away from free parking. Council Speaker Corey Johnson, whose "streets master plan" will soon add hundreds of miles of new bike and bus lanes to the city, spoke this summer about the need to "reclaim that space and use it for the public.” (Johnson later clarified that he does not support removing all free street parking.) But even as the push for curbside reform grows, much of what's being discussed at CB7 appears to be a non-starter at City Hall.
Asked about the resolution in November, Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters: “If we’re going to tell people they can’t park on their street, no, that does not ring true to me. I think we need to keep finding every solution to reduce the use of motor vehicles in New York City, and I’ll look at a whole range of things, but if you go so far as telling people they can’t park on their street, no, I’m not there.”
A spokesperson for the Mayor's Office did not immediately respond to questions about whether his position could change now that the study has been approved.
For now, at least, the impassioned community discussions seem to be opening some New Yorkers' minds to the revolutionary potential of their own curb — and a new paradigm in which widely available free street parking is no longer a foregone conclusion.
"It's not an issue that I'd ever even thought about until very recently," said Gerry Kermouch, a longtime Upper West Side resident. "I’d never considered that there was a time in New York when parking wasn’t a God-given right."
"I grew up with a great appreciation for parked cars — they were very useful in designating first and third base during stickball games," he added. "So I don’t have a bias against cars. But I think we should study the issue."
