Will the Tide Turn on City Parking Policy?

 
A few weeks back Atlantic Yards Report posted a compendium of recent writings that point to the contradictions inherent in, and problems resulting from, parking requirements for urban development plans.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s much-praised PlaNYC 2030 contains a glaring omission, a failure to address the antiquated
anti-urban policy that mandates parking attached to new residential
developments outside Manhattan, even when such developments, like
Atlantic Yards, are justified precisely because they’re located near
transit hubs.

Transit-rich Manhattan isn’t exempt from such requirements either, as the city fights in court to turn Hell’s Kitchen parking maximums into minimums.

AYR cites a December New York Times op-ed,
written by planners Alex Garvin and Nick Peterson, as one indicator
that awareness of the parking paradox is entering the mainstream. And yesterday, Metro published a piece questioning the value of Community Benefits Agreements. Touted as a way to smooth possible tensions between neighborhoods and developers through a give-and-take planning process, some argue that CBAs are being abused by builders and the elected officials who support their projects.

This New York style of deal making worries California attorney Julian Gross. “The entire future of the community-benefits movement could be threatened by CBAs being sidetracked and taken over by developers and electeds who want to steer and channel the community participation,” he said. 

One result, in the case of Atlantic Yards and the new Yankee Stadium, is an influx of cars essentially legislated into neighborhoods that don’t want them, even as the city preaches the virtues of sustainable growth. From that perspective, the hiring of DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and other planning dream-teamers can seem less a sign of hope than another symptom of the city’s schizophrenic approach to urban mobility — unless, whether due to publicity or change from within, a lot more stuff like this happens.

Photo: Photogrammaton/Flickr

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

City Wants 20,000 New Parking Spaces in Hell’s Kitchen

|
It seems inconceivable given the overwhelmingly positive developments of the past few weeks, but the city wants to increase parking in Manhattan by some 20,000 spaces, and is defending itself in court for the right to do so. The Bloomberg and Spitzer administrations are working together to hold on to a rezoning provision that would […]

State Opposes City Plan for Hell’s Kitchen Parking

|
In June we reported on the city’s effort to bring some 20,000 additional parking spaces to the Hudson Yards area on the far West Side, via a rezoning provision adopted in 2005. Though it’s a remnant of the failed stadium plan, the Bloomberg administration nonetheless intends to hold on the parking component, going so far […]

City’s Parking Expansion Sustains Nothing but Motoring

|
From the Tri-State Transportation Campaign‘s latest newsletter, three examples of how City Hall contradicts its stated Long-Term Planning and Sustainability goals with policies that foster more automobile dependence: The huge parking expansion associated with new Yankee Stadium construction has failed to attract any bids from private operators. The city has apparently scaled the seemingly uneconomic […]

City Planning Commission Approves 400-Car Garage for Hell’s Kitchen

|
Two weeks ago Streetsblog reported on the glut of public parking garages being built in Hell’s Kitchen, which threatens to worsen traffic conditions in one of New York’s most congested neighborhoods. The City Planning Commission could have set a precedent last Friday by denying a developer’s request to build a 400-car public garage as part […]

The New York City Parking Boom

|
The first in a three-part series on New York City parking policy. Last December, in announcing the goals of his Long-Term Planning and Sustainability initiative, Mayor Michael Bloomberg raised the terrifying specter of New York City commuters in the year 2030 stuck in an eight-hour "rush hour." This all-day traffic jam would become a reality, the […]