Image via Crain’s

Someone in the Bloomberg administration needs to sit the mayor down and explain to him the relationship between parking and driving.

Streetsblog has followed Bloomberg’s parking escapades on the West Side of Manhattan and in the South Bronx. Now, the man behind PlaNYC wants federal stimulus funds to finish a new six-story parking garage for the New York Botanical Garden.

Crain’s reports:

The garden started the project over the summer, paying $13 million to design the facility and acquire the site at the intersection of Webster Avenue and Bedford Park Blvd. in the Bronx. Since then, everything was put on hold, leaving a big hole in the ground.

To complete the parking garage, executives at the garden have set their hopes on the stimulus plan expected soon from Washington. They are asking for $20 million—the remaining amount needed—and have been put on Mayor Bloomberg’s list for federal stimulus money.

Though more people are visiting the garden, revenues are down. Apparently management believes more parking will bring more money. So why not take that $20 mil and instead use it to improve the streetscape from nearby bus and subway hubs, making for a more pleasant walking
experience?

Instead of taking a transit-oriented approach to boosting the garden’s bottom line, the new garage will bring more cars, which will lead to more air pollution and other attendant dangers for people in the Bronx. And once again, if the mayor has his way, taxpayers will help foot the bill.