New York Has 81,875 Metered Parking Spaces, And Millions of Free Ones

Today’s New York Post story about City Council Member David Greenfield’s desperate push to squeeze a few more parking spaces out of New York City curb space reminded us of this neat little chart, which shows the total number of parking meters in the city, broken out into single-space meters and muni-meters. If Greenfield and other council members want to get serious about opening up curb space, they need to take a hard look at these numbers.

The chart, put out by the city as part of its request for ideas on how to privatize its infrastructure, shows the total number of metered parking spaces increasing from 72,010 in 2006 to 81,875 in 2010. (That increase, most likely, isn’t due to adding meters to significant new stretches of the curb, but from single-space meters getting converted to muni-meters, which allow more cars to fit on a block.)

That’s an incredibly small number when taken in context. There are between 3.4 and 4.4 million on-street parking spaces in New York City, according to an extremely rough estimate by parking policy expert Rachel Weinberger, based on her field work in Park Slope and Jackson Heights.

Using those numbers, only 1.9 to 2.4 percent of all on-street spaces have a meter. Everywhere else, drivers can store their private vehicles on valuable public property at no cost, moving them only when alternate side parking rolls around. That’s an enormous giveaway of public space, and it also makes it harder for drivers to find parking. As long as there’s no price on so much scarce curb space, the search for an open spot is going to be pretty tough in a lot of neighborhoods.

Of course, it’s almost as scandalous that no official count of on-street parking exists. San Francisco became the first major city in the nation to tally all its parking last year, but New York has not followed suit. Right now, the city is turning to the private sector ostensibly to get as much as it can out of its parking infrastructure. Truly maximizing New York’s valuable curbside space, however, seems like it will be impossible as long as the city leaves some 98 percent of it completely unpriced and untracked.

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

STREETSBLOG USA

Introducing the Parking Reform Mayoral Candidate

|
Meet Bill Peduto, a leading mayoral candidate in Pittsburgh who is also a serious urbanist, according to our sources in Pennsylvania. Jon Geeting at Network blog Keystone Politics recently caught Mr. Peduto — who’ll be running in the Democratic primary in May — endorsing performance parking. Peduto, right there on his website, in a section […]

No Parking Slope

|
The B67 bus veers around a double-parked van blocking a car parked in front of a fire hydrant as a Bugaboo-pushing nanny strolls by Councilmember David Yassky and Transportation Alternatives director Paul Steely White calling for more sensible parking policy this afternoon in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Every drivers knows that it can be nearly impossible […]
STREETSBLOG USA

Curb Appeal

|
Alan Durning is the executive director of Sightline. This post is #15 in the Sightline series, Parking? Lots! Imagine if you could put a meter in front of your house and charge every driver who parks in “your” space. It’d be like having a cash register at the curb. Free money! How much would you collect? Hundreds […]

Parking Meters: The Congestion Pricing Controversy of 1932

|
By now we’re all familiar with the litany of complaints about the City’s new traffic control plan: It’s an unfair and burdensome new tax; it’s going to kill retail business and hurt the little guy; and most of all, it’s just plain "un-American." That, of course, is what critics are saying about congestion pricing in […]
STREETSBLOG USA

There’s a (Parking) Place for Us

|
This post is #14 in the Sightline series, Parking? Lots! Alan Durning is the executive director of Sightline. There are places in this world the savvy traveler would never drive with any hope of finding street parking: Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, for example, or just about anywhere in downtown Los Angeles. That’s what you […]

Chicago-Style Parking Plan Could Raise $5 Billion Plus for NYC

|
According to a senior municipal bond analyst at a leading Wall Street firm, New York City could raise between five and six billion dollars immediately if it privatized its parking meters as Chicago is doing. Whether privatization is the right way to unlock New York City's parking riches is debatable. What's not in question is that curbside parking in New York and most U.S. cities is grossly underpriced and could potentially be a crucial source of revenue for much needed transportation improvements.