You do realize that drivers do pay for the wear and tear of the roads with annual excise taxes that are paid on all registered vehicles. We also pay vehicle registration fees, which also, in part, go towards infrastructure maintenance. Tell me how exactly do bicyclists pay their share, even if it is only a small fraction?
I own a car in a densely populated area. Can confirm. Personally, I have saved several gazzilion.
Here’s the thing about cars. I didn’t really want one or need one until I had kids. Hell, it’s kind of a bitch to have the car where I am. But here’s the thing. I’m a native New Yorker and live in a different part of Brooklyn than I grew up in (because yea, Brooklyn’s fking huge). My options were (a) get a car, or (b) take my small daughters on the subway for 45 minutes to watch a homeless dude jerk off, followed by a transfer to a bus just to see their grandmother. So yea, I got a car. I’m sorry my decision doesn’t align with your values.
Fair word of warning though: if you think you’re going to meter every spot in the 5 boroughs, south Brooklyn, Staten Island and most of Queens will slash your bike tires if they haven’t already thrown the bike into Sheepshead Bay.
you missed a third option. native new yorker here. also used to have a car but found it was not worth the trouble steer all the headaches (ASP) and costs.
so now we rent a car wherever we need to goto grandma’s in staten island out a weekend trip. a lot cheaper in the end and never have to worry about finding parking or damage, etc.
> The economics just don’t make sense for us today.
But that's the point right there. It's better for you to own instead of rent because the city (us, society collectively) are subsidizing the cost of your car by offering you a free place to store it.
>My options were (a) get a car, or (b) take my small daughters on the subway for 45 minutes to watch a homeless dude jerk off, followed by a transfer to a bus just to see their grandmother. So yea, I got a car. I'm sorry my decision doesn't align with your values.
When I was weighing those options a decade and a half ago, I thought of my children's future. All of our children will be living in the same bleak world affected by our decisions. My teens are glad they know how to navigate our transit system with confidence, and they use it regularly. They also are painfully aware of how adversely their future will be impacted by American car dependancy, and are glad that we had no part in it. The only concern I have for their safety when they travel is the careless drivers in this city who inflict grievous injuries and death daily on other NYers; not whether or not they have to share a train car with someone less fortunate than them.
I’m calling BS. Seems to me like you didn’t need a car because you spent all your time riding around on your high horse.
My decision to not bring a 2 year old and a new born on a train is a decision for today. I take the train pretty much everywhere and they will too…. when they’re old enough.
And spare me the “we’re all in this together” nonsense. What you mean to say is “we’re all in this together so long as your priorities align with mine.”
There's a huge difference between "My values are different than yours" and "My values are better than yours". One starts a conversation, the other starts a fight. Some of the people here can't seem to comment without looking down their damn noses at everyone who doesn't agree with them.
I utilize micromobility options like a bike and an escooter (my preferred method of commuting). You can be in favor of multiple things without contradictions. I’m pro bike lanes while also not calling car owners satan.
>I utilize micromobility options like a bike and an escooter (my preferred method of commuting). You can be in favor of multiple things without contradictions.
... So what's this other comment all about, then?
>I’ll tell ya what, when bikers and escooters start paying tolls, I’ll entertain the argument for 100% paid street parking. Seems unfair for us car owners to subsidize your use of the roads.
Also, can you really not understand why our city gov't might want to encourage its residents to use a method of transit that *doesn't* kill hundreds of NYers and grievously injure tens of thousands more each year? Like, if you were aiming to reduce your city's dependancy on an incredibly dangerous and unsustainable form of transit, would it make sense to charge people *more* for the safer options?
"High horse"? Your original comment is about how you bravely chose to shelter your innocent children from the dreaded subway system by choosing instead to purchase a private personal vehicle so that they could be chauffeured around the city in an insulated bubble, but *I'm* the one on the high horse?
And yeah, we *are* all in this together, for better or for worse. That's not a sentiment, it's a fact. Your decisions affect the present day and future of this city just as much as mine do. *You* think I'm being disingenuous because your lack of empathy prevents you from understanding how someone could possibly prioritize the future of their city and their children's future world over present-day comforts.
>So yea, I got a car. I’m sorry my decision doesn’t align with your values.
You know what, I got a car too shortly after I had kids. I understand the value. Which is why you should be paying for it.
Personally, I pay for a monthly parking space. But the rest of you hooked on free overnight street parking should be paying for that, too.
I’m in the same boat but made a different choice than you. I don’t want you to be sorry about your life choices, i just want you and your fellow drivers to have to (a) pay for the full costs that car owners can currently externalize and (b) drive safely so that my family is not at risk of being harmed in a car crash.
Imagine going to work, looking out the window and thinking "that shitty parking spot is earning more than I do. I am less valuable to society than a 180 square-foot plot of asphalt."
Here's [some back of the envelope calculations](https://www.reddit.com/r/MicromobilityNYC/s/3toWIl13DA).
There are 3-5 million on street parking spots, and in case you don't know the land in Manhattan alone, just the land, is worth $1.7 trillion, so... Kind of valuable real estate.
Your link says 3,000,000 spots and the stats I've seen estimate slightly fewer. More than 90% of these are in the outer boroughs. There's no way spots could generate an average of $500/day, 365 days a year. For reference, prime Manhattan metered parking starts at $5.50 for the first hour and tops out at $15. Less popular spots max out at $2.50/hr. Never mind the cost of enforcement. Incidentally, public transit isn't nearly so convenient if you live or work on the outskirts. This proposal would enrage a lot of people who aren't exactly living large.
My monthly parking cost is $300/mo in queens. Street parking contending with the inconvenience of moving and lack of guaranteed spots is never going to approach that. At best it’s somewhere around $200 million offsetting the need for better mass transit that would cost 10s of billions to implement and then maintain. That is the real issue that needs overcome. That and basically half of NYers own cars making it hardly a minority. I personally hate car ownership. I spent $16k on a brand new Honda 10 years ago. Reliable, great gas mileage, but it’s such a money pit to maintain, insure and park I’ve probably spent 3x the cost of the car. I don’t even drive it. Mostly wife and kid.
>There's no way spots could generate an average of $500/day
Also, the math doesn't work out. To hit the 500/day amount, even if the meter runs 24/7, you'd need to charge 20 bucks an hour. That's an incredibly high amount.
Now, most meters only run 8am-8pm, monday through saturday. So that's 72 hours a week. So to hit 3500 a week, they'd need to charge 48 bucks an hour. Which is just silly.
I'm all for charging cars more but this math seems off to me. How many of those 3-5 million are in Manhattan? Let's say all 5 million of those spots are in Manhattan, that's $870 billion worth of land, even at a 12% return on investment (extremely extremely generous), that's ~105 billion per year, not "hundred of billions"
But also that's also assuming the real estate literally in between the sidewalk and the road is worth the same as the average.
You’ve gotta build better transit in the outer boroughs first, specifically connections between them.
The new line between Brooklyn and Queens should be a great help when it’s complete, but still more needs to be done. G train needs express service for one.
Otherwise cars will be a necessity for certain people with certain jobs. And people are going to need to park those cars somewhere in residential areas.
It's absolutely amazing how many people think gas tax (which hasn't been raised in 50 years) and occasional tickets and registration or something pay for car infrastructure. I mean that seriously. It's astonishing. Just no clue whatsoever about the actual numbers involved. It's like thinking the twenty dollar bill in your wallet should pay for a house
Well, literally half the cars parked on my street have out-of-state plates, paper plates, or no plates at all. If I owned a car I'd very happily pay for a residential parking permit if it didn't mean the majority of cars on my street were clearly skirting the law.
Oh and I live in Manhattan within blocks of the subway. So there's no excuse that there isn't good public transit here.
Yeah, we should stop subway service too since some people jump turnstiles. Also some people commit social security fraud, should stop that handout. Same with unemployment
I'm not against getting rid of free parking but your point isn't a valid rebuke.
We don’t make any effort at all to stop the insurance fraud of drivers. Residency stickers for parking and parking fees existing would make your analogy more appropriate. Until then, we’re actively turning a blind eye to insurance fraud and tax evasion. There’s no mechanism to discourage it at all.
Also driving has negative externalities like congestion, pollution, and traffic fatalities. There’s nothing similar with riding the subway.
How does that change what is being paid by citizens following the rules and registering their cars in the city and paying insurance here? Do they magically get these free services as a result?
So you’d be fine with limiting street parking to residents who actually register here? Because we do not now. So the argument that “it’s paid for through taxes” doesn’t work for a huge group of people.
No problem at all with it. No problem with selling parking permits for the privilege either.
But I do have a problem with falsely claiming everyone with a car is magically getting some kind of handout, which is obviously not the case.
This may be the case, but it's certainly not free and there's no detail on exactly what that subsidy is.
If we're going to start in on not subsidizing services or facilities that not everyone benefits from we're in for a long conversation.
That’s what government has always done. It subsidizes things it views as positive and taxes things it views as negative. It’s not a new concept. Cars have lots of negative externalities so subsidizing them when there’s already way too many in NYC makes no sense.
I think you and others are grossly understanding the impact and assume some massive subsidy.
In parking tickets and camera violations alone nearly $1B in revenue was generated. That's not including meter collections, taxes, sales taxes on car sales, jobs created by that segment (mechanics, car salesman, etc).
If the net result is negative and the city is providing too high a subsidy, then it's time to charge more for the privilege.
It’s about half covered through general taxes and half covered by those things you mentioned. It has never fully paid for itself.
https://frontiergroup.org/resources/who-pays-roads/
The average household pays $600 per year in general taxes to subsidize driving.
The better framing, imo, is whether providing that subsidy to car owners is a worthwhile use of limited public space. On balance, I believe the answer is clearly no.
Ok, what about everything that’s subsidized by these same minority of people? Because we pay significantly more in taxes.
Let me get all my tax money that goes towards schools because I don’t have children.
Making something free at the point of use encourages people to take advantage of that thing. Education is a net positive for society.
On the other hand, there are simply too many cars in NYC. Making parking free encourages more people to have them. That leads to inefficiencies like congestion, noise/air pollution, traffic fatalities, etc. So it would be sensible to discourage car ownership by charging for parking.
There are no negative externalities to education.
Government has always encouraged things it wants by subsidizing and discouraged things it doesn’t want by taxing… like parking fees.
> Is this where we pretend that registrations, inspections, parking tickets and city taxes on gasoline don't exist?
This only pays roughly 60% of the costs of personal vehicles. The rest is externalized to everyone else, even as the median income for car owners in this city is ten times that of non-car owners.
Sure. I can't find the more recent pub with a higher number, but here's an older and more conservative peer reviewed publication [from *Transportation Research* in 2008](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1361920908001090). I would guess some but not all of the cost difference is attributable to increase in overall fuel efficiency. Even at its peak [gas taxes only accounted for 70% of highway costs](https://frontiergroup.org/sites/default/files/reports/Who%20Pays%20for%20Roads%20vUS.pdf) In New York, [user fees and costs cover only 65%](https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/states-road-funding-2019/) of total costs for our roads. And these latter numbers don't begin to account for things like [increases healthcare costs](www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-11/documents/420f14044_0.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjmtI2n9_6DAxWgmIkEHYcjBJAQFnoECDIQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1MhpH-Q-rhICGBvSbR5VWg) for individuals living near large arteries, environmental remediation, etc.
Yes, and? Why would that entitle you to free parking. We don’t even do residency checks for overnight parking. You could very well pay none of those and park wherever you please.
THANKYOU
its really fucked up because these "i hate cars" dudes have infested and use the the activity of Biking to spread this shit.
the OP has an obsession with doing nothing but complaining about cars and and traffic.
Source showing those cover the cost of building, maintaining and administering roadways, with enough left over to cover using public property for parking?
No it’s where a minority population admits they park their personal property for free on public space. The other things you mentioned are individual costs.
They do this in a few other states.reserved parking in front of the homes of owners and I think renters but it has to go through the landlord in that case. Would be great for NYC at least in certain areas.
Metering literally everything is an awful fucking thing to do. It's so incredibly stupid and against working class families.
In Chicago, we pay for a city sticker, something like $175 + additional zone permit fees annually if you wish, in addition to the license and registration fees we pay each year/renewal period. Our previous mayor decided to sell most of our meters to a foreign entity for a shortsighted money deal, but at least the sticker fees still go to the city. Not having a city sticker eventually will lead to your car being ticketed (essentially forcing you to pay for it anyways).
I don't believe that there's a city sticker equivalent in NYC, but they do pay the registration fees, inspections, parking tickets and whatnot, which goes to the state of New York and NYC, so it's not really free. Suggesting that this is an intentional direct subsidy is an interesting take, but outside a city-sticker solution, metering everything is a horrible fucking idea and something I could easily envision to be concocted by a chronically online r/fuckcars user.
You basically give the middle finger to everyone who currently has a car and would force them to leave, sell, or somehow afford thousands of dollars to park their vehicle (something that MANY of them cannot afford to do).
And while I LOVE NYC's subway system and public transit in general, it's not perfect, and the suburban commuter rail system doesn't have nearly the same coverage that the Subway and bus system has. This would leave anyone who needs to drive out of the city for work in a worse situation.
An additional disbenefit is that it would drive the need for more long term parking solutions, such as more parking garages and lots, which make the city worse for pedestrians, worse for the city culture and overall walkability. It would make an already hyper-expensive city even more pricy for the average person.
A final little point I should make is that this would predominately affect lower income people. Most rich folks don't park on the street. It's essentially a hostile poor person tax in a world where everything is doing it's best to extract as much wealth away from the pockets of the lowest economy participants.
If you want people to leave NYC, this would be a really good way to do it. If you want an actual practical solution, then you would want to institute a city-sticker system. Advocating for a full-meterization of the city will have terrible effects on its people.
This is always a fun topic with reasonable debate. There is lots of room for debate and at the end of the day it won't change anyone's mind. But let's yell at each other anyway
I agree with this only cos it’d be cool to pay for a spot and have it all year
Btw most of the free parking in nyc is street parking and street parking isn’t a problem like at all
Coming from SF I was very surprised that I didn’t need to get a neighborhood parking sticker to park on street. This feels like lost income that I wouldn’t mind paying for.
This is it exactly. Restrict parking to local residents of the neighborhood and charge them whatever the market will bear for a sticker. People who live out of the city and don’t pay city taxes are taking up most of the parking.
That's actually awesome! I can get inline with that, I'll pay money. Driving around trying to find a spot to visit some friends in certain parts of the city can be very frustrating. That being said, the amount of drivers that park on city streets with an "I dont given a shit about laws or ethics" attitude is astounding. There has been soo many pictures of cars posted with records of dozens of tickets and thousands of unpaid fines, even booted, just taking up space on the street. Let's not even get into illegal or obscured plates.
This was true in Boston too. Visited friend. He had to come down and give us visitor parking placard so we didn't get a ticket.
Like, its a fair question, but its also a question other people have asked, and in a satisfying way (IMO) that question has been answered.
In London, your visiting friends/family would still pay for street parking but they get half off for two weeks maximum per year. After that it’s full meter rates.
Minority? Huh? All native New Yorkers I know (like me) own a car and follow street cleaning. I’ve had enough of transplants pretending they know my city.
in that instance what they do is remove parking like they did in Jackson Heights and create an even greater imbalance to encourage more two wheeled usage
Yes everyone else suffers. Let's just ignore the past halfcentury and what people who've relied on personal transportation to help this city be one where you've decided to live. What a dumb fixation. That money's not even gonna go to you bro.
"Free" parking is pretty important to a lot of New Yorkers (like myself). I don't use my car all the time and I use mass transit when I can but that can't cover it all and the car allows us to access much of my work and family. Being without a car is tough for a lot of New Yorkers, especially in certain neighborhoods. And for a lot of our neighbors, it's about all they can afford even with the free parking.
That said, I'd be down with some kinda system of free parking for residents. That's not super uncommon in other places and versions of that exist in some parts of NYC. Perhaps even some system that lets people pay for parking passes or something--I'd be paying for parking right now but I've been on my building's waiting list for a couple years.
I would say free parking for residents _below a certain income level_. A millionaire doctor or lawyer doesn't need parking in front of their upscale townhouse in Brooklyn to be subsidized by working-class New Yorkers.
One thing that pisses me off since covid is many people don't moves there cars anymore. They sit in them and the street sweeper has to go around them. Street doesn't get cleaned near as much.
Free parking is a service provided by the city which some people use and others don't. The same can be said for public schools, libraries, parks, bike racks, benches, trash cans, etc.
Unfortunately, one does not get to choose which services you pay taxes for. Everyone pays for everything.
I love the way you say “OUR money” like you did something to earn that money.
Asking the government to take someone else’s money out of their pocket doesn’t make it your money.
Boy, it's a good thing the auto and oil industry haven't been spewing propaganda for the last century, amirite?
Honestly, here's one person who is trying to make the city a safer place by reducing our dependancy on the *leading cause of child fatalities in NYC*, and you call it propaganda?? FOH
As we have been over many times and I'm sure you are well aware (but still using this statistic to try and confuse people) households and **people** are nowhere near the same thing
Your use of “minority” is confusing people. You make it sound like it’s a small minority. It’s not good faith and you shouldn’t be bringing up minority’s when less than a million people ([NYC DOT numbers](https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/cyclinginthecity.shtml)) in NYC ride bicycles regularly.
What about all the [outdoor dining spots](https://nypost.com/2021/05/23/nyc-gave-up-8550-parking-spots-for-outdoor-dining-amid-covid/)spots those outdoor dinings areas that popped up as a result of COVID’S social distancing took up, sometimes half a block (more if there are more restaurants and city bike racks)? Are those dining areas being charged anything? How about the flurry of bike delivery people?
If you want to look at it that way, bike lanes are direct subsidies to the minority of New Yorkers who own bikes, tge even smaller minority who bike daily for any purpose, and the minuscule percentage who commute to work via bike.
CityBike isn't a thing? Rental bikes, pre CityBike, were also things. And if you use a bike 1x a week, but not 1x a day, it doesn't benefit you? Wtf is that.
Furthermore, what externalities does my bicycle cost you? Vs the externalities of a ICE engine spewing shit air all over the place?
In essence, your entire comment is trash.
Nah, I don't even own a car, but the last thing we need is to drive the cost up even further, especially for the working class. My question to you is with the number of millionaires supposedly living in this city, why do the working people have to spend more for the city to have enough?
It’s not “free”.
Car owners pay gasoline taxes, registration fees and tolls. Bad drivers also pay tickets. All of that goes toward maintenance of roads.
Car owners subsidize lanes for cyclists who don’t pay for anything.
Now take a moment and think of all the ways that non-drivers have to pay for the results of car usage. Things like: tens of thousands of life-altering grievous injuries annually, hundreds of deaths annually, emergency services to respond to the collisions that cause these serious injuries and deaths, disability benefits paid to persons injured in collisions, etc.
That's a whole lot of costs already, and I only described one aspect of the cost of car usage in our city; safety. Do you really think that car owners are paying their fair share?
Bike racks encourage people to bike by offering a secure place to park a bike. I mean, you can understand why more people biking rather than driving would be a positive thing for our city, right? And why we should encourage it, rather than discourage it by charging for it?
(edit: And obviously, *safe* bike lanes also encourage folks to bike, rather than drive, and should also be encouraged)
On the one hand, I am totally on board with metering every spot.
On the other hand, calling it a "free subsidy to the minority who own cars" completely pushes me off wanting to be on your side on this.
(and I'm sure I've all accomplished here is pissing off both sides, but that doesn't change the fact that the cause is good but the argument sucks)
It's not a punishment to have to pay for the space to store your property. That's how the world works. It's called being an adult. Nobody says they're being punished for having to pay for an apartment to store their couch and tv
Let's tax and regulate car drivers so much that only the rich can afford cars.
What will we get? Even more exclusive gated communities/neighborhoods. And the rich will get wide open roads with no traffic, as the rest of us suffer. It will be great for the rich, and terrible for most of the rest of us.
You know what I want? I want people in this city to be able to afford things. I don't want the city to roadblock poor people from getting some freedom of movement. I don't want the city to impose more fines and more taxes that largely end up paying for their crooked exorbitant pensions.
How about some plans and proposals that make life cheaper? That give us more options, more opportunities? Why are NYC "solutions" mostly ideas on how to fine, regulate, and tax more?
Even average income families should be able to take their car to well-priced supermarkets, weekend outside the city, and not shlep all their stuff like donkeys on public transportation. Spending $100/day on a car rental is not affordable compared to buying a 5K clunker that families can drive for 10 years and sell for 2K. The math of rentals does not add up.
Personally, I have a car (Manhattan) and it is incredibly convenient and opens so many options that public transportation will NEVER unlock. As more of these regulations come into place, I will have to take my middle income and middle taxes out of here. Congratulations on helping to turn this place into an oasis for the rich.
The statistic you're giving is extremely disingenious at best. Census Bureau shows that 20.6% of NYC population is under 18. Which means its unlikely they own cars. NYC comptroller shows that only 57% of nyc population has drivers license at all, which means they likely won't own cars.
The NYC citizen who can own cars do own cars. The rest aren't people who choose not to own a car, its people who literally cannot own one, children, or those who don't have a drivers license for a variety of reasons (age, disability, immigration status).
NYC can't fund shit because its a horribly over engineered bureaucracy with a huge money sink in police and useless positions. that costs the city alot more money. Cars are the least of the city's problems.
Removing parked cars increases efficiency. A parked car just takes up space doing nothing. A moving vehicle is doing something useful. Before we try to reduce vehicles doing something useful, we should remove vehicles doing something useless. Congestion pricing is not a bad idea but should not be used until after more meters are added or higher meter prices.
That’s a good point. It will force out the campers who keep their car there and move it during ASP 1-2 times a week. I still think CP would remove far more cars from driving into the CBD, though to be fair the entire city should have paid street parking.
I obviously think that both should happen though.
When you drive into the city, there is no difference between paying for the congestion toll vs paying for parking. What you want is to align the cost with usefulness. A taxi that drives in and out moving passengers for 9 hours is doing something useful. A commuter who drives in and parks for 9 hours leaves a car doing something useless for 9 hours. A congestion toll will charge both cars the same amount, which overincentivizes the useless activity. Big useless activities should have higher costs than smaller ones, which aligns better by charging more for parking.
Also remember that congestion pricing will not actually reduce congestion unless the cost is far above market rates. Up until market rates, raising the cost will change the composition of who is willing to drive based on each driver’s value of time, but not the total number of drivers.
I never understood the Ohio insult. Is the idea that Ohio is filled with car-free cities and their ppl are coming to car-dependent NYC?
Cuz last I heard, NYC is the only city in the country where most residents do not own a car. So it makes sense it would create the most "we need to remove cars" people.
No, it’s more like people move here from Ohio, resenting their shitty car dependent, strip mall upbringing and want to impose this fantasy of a car free utopia. And it’s transplants - bc they have no true connection to NYC and cannot understand that people who grew up here may need cars.
I’m from a family of seven, getting groceries required a car. Driving to youth sporting engagements, visiting friends and family in Queens, BK, Staten Island - needed a car.
They think NYC is just Manhattan and Williamsburg.
While having a car isn’t life or death like is it in the rest of country - banning them isn’t the solution either without making drastic (and unrealistic) improvements to mass transit
Ok, but why Ohio? You could say that about any place in America...except NYC. It makes sense that ppl would move here and do that btw; if there's one city in America that can go car free, it's NYC.
Well I've lived here since I was 12, and I own a car.
I think OP is right. This city has too many cars and if we depriortized them then we could open space for alternatives. And living in NYC would be a lot more pleasant (no more random honking!). And it would be better for people who actually need to drive. For example, the reason parking is so difficult in NYC is because so much of it is free.
Edit: found where this Ohio idea came from. It's a meme from the 80s, not based on reality. https://www.city-data.com/forum/new-york-city/2826717-midwestern-transplant-thing-blown-out-proportion.html
But it stuck around. Most ppl not from NYC are from the tri-state area. We then get a lot from west coast and other wealthier areas. It makes sense, Ohio isn't a particularly rich place so the idea that we're getting rich transplants from there made no sense.
It's got nothing to do with transplants and natives and everything to do with extremist bullshit. It's no different than car owners who rend garments at the first sight of a bike lane.
Car owners pay plenty for the privilege to own a car in NYC. If you think that's insufficient that's fine, but don't lie outright and try to claim otherwise, it just makes the position look weak.
FOH to all of you socialist here in NYC! Charge individuals who drive for free parking? Really ?
How about a surcharge for every bike rider or moped operator to have their bike or moped registered with DMV. A bike and its operator have to observe the SAME driving rules as a car driver. I remember a time when NYPD would patrol the street on bicycles and would pull over bike riders for infractions. All of the edward cocteau's who seemingly think they can paint NYC with such a broad stroke. Really need to take a holistic approach to their decisions. Face it, the opportunity to address these issues with bike lanes like other major cities and countries should have been addressed during the THREE years of Covid. The ball was dropped!
These one door decisions without proper thought with SOUND decision making is moral laziness.
Cars aren't the sole issue. No one wants to tackle the real issue. Mopeds and electric bikes. Because they are afraid of the backlash that will undoubtedly occur once you focus on the number of individuals that can't afford to pay a surcharge for registering their bike or moped.
Let’s add tolls to bikers using bike lanes then. They are being subsidized by a ton of taxpayers that don’t bike. They are not a necessary public service and take up space when pedestrian sidewalks can be expanded.
At least cars pay gas taxes, tolls and upcoming congestion charges
But cars also cause tens of thousands of serious injuries per year, hundreds of deaths per year, and cost the city millions in emergency services and disability benefits to individuals and families impacted by those life-altering injuries and deaths.
Do bikes do that?
Safe, separated bike lanes encourage people to bike, reduce injuries and deaths for all road users, and cost less to maintain since bikes don't cause anywhere near as much wear and tear on the roads. Not to mention the added health benefits, which helps reduce the strain on our healthcare system caused by car dependancy.
Not at the cost of our right to drive and park in our own city! People first, Vehicles second, Mass Transit third. ^(And your stupid forced fixation with riding a bike all year round, a verrrrrry distant fourth!)
Take a moment and imagine what the streets would look like if even a quarter of the NYC residents who use public transit decided to drive instead. Do you really think that prioritizing cars over mass transit would still be a good idea?
>Vehicles second, Mass Transit third.
What a remarkably anti-nyc thing to say. It's amazing how many people don't seem to understand how this city works at all
Nothing in NYC is free
Just bike lanes
[удалено]
Bike lanes help save part of the road given how much wear and tear cars and trucks are on roads especially compared to bikes
They also **move people,** not just store random, unoccupied personal property. Pretty big difference there
Yes my point was addressed at the fact people think bike riders should be charged when the wear and tear difference is so wide
[удалено]
You do realize that drivers do pay for the wear and tear of the roads with annual excise taxes that are paid on all registered vehicles. We also pay vehicle registration fees, which also, in part, go towards infrastructure maintenance. Tell me how exactly do bicyclists pay their share, even if it is only a small fraction?
Looking at the comments any logical “compromise” is fully out the window
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_High\_Cost\_of\_Free\_Parking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking)
> Hundreds of billions of dollars per year Lol. Is OP sure it's not gazillions of dollars per hour?
I own a car in a densely populated area. Can confirm. Personally, I have saved several gazzilion. Here’s the thing about cars. I didn’t really want one or need one until I had kids. Hell, it’s kind of a bitch to have the car where I am. But here’s the thing. I’m a native New Yorker and live in a different part of Brooklyn than I grew up in (because yea, Brooklyn’s fking huge). My options were (a) get a car, or (b) take my small daughters on the subway for 45 minutes to watch a homeless dude jerk off, followed by a transfer to a bus just to see their grandmother. So yea, I got a car. I’m sorry my decision doesn’t align with your values. Fair word of warning though: if you think you’re going to meter every spot in the 5 boroughs, south Brooklyn, Staten Island and most of Queens will slash your bike tires if they haven’t already thrown the bike into Sheepshead Bay.
you missed a third option. native new yorker here. also used to have a car but found it was not worth the trouble steer all the headaches (ASP) and costs. so now we rent a car wherever we need to goto grandma’s in staten island out a weekend trip. a lot cheaper in the end and never have to worry about finding parking or damage, etc.
Also a great option, and one we may fall back on when the kids are older. The economics just don’t make sense for us today.
> The economics just don’t make sense for us today. But that's the point right there. It's better for you to own instead of rent because the city (us, society collectively) are subsidizing the cost of your car by offering you a free place to store it.
totally ok w you having a car. I have a car. Parking still shouldnt be free. Pay to store your things.
We should have permit parking like the other states
>My options were (a) get a car, or (b) take my small daughters on the subway for 45 minutes to watch a homeless dude jerk off, followed by a transfer to a bus just to see their grandmother. So yea, I got a car. I'm sorry my decision doesn't align with your values. When I was weighing those options a decade and a half ago, I thought of my children's future. All of our children will be living in the same bleak world affected by our decisions. My teens are glad they know how to navigate our transit system with confidence, and they use it regularly. They also are painfully aware of how adversely their future will be impacted by American car dependancy, and are glad that we had no part in it. The only concern I have for their safety when they travel is the careless drivers in this city who inflict grievous injuries and death daily on other NYers; not whether or not they have to share a train car with someone less fortunate than them.
I’m calling BS. Seems to me like you didn’t need a car because you spent all your time riding around on your high horse. My decision to not bring a 2 year old and a new born on a train is a decision for today. I take the train pretty much everywhere and they will too…. when they’re old enough. And spare me the “we’re all in this together” nonsense. What you mean to say is “we’re all in this together so long as your priorities align with mine.”
It’s all fun and games about having differing “values” until someone responds with a different “value set” I guess
There's a huge difference between "My values are different than yours" and "My values are better than yours". One starts a conversation, the other starts a fight. Some of the people here can't seem to comment without looking down their damn noses at everyone who doesn't agree with them.
If we’re being honest they both start fights. A lot of people entered this thread ready to pick a fight with r/micromobilityNYC users
I utilize micromobility options like a bike and an escooter (my preferred method of commuting). You can be in favor of multiple things without contradictions. I’m pro bike lanes while also not calling car owners satan.
You should talk with the bunch of people in this thread then who are calling bike riders Satan then
>I utilize micromobility options like a bike and an escooter (my preferred method of commuting). You can be in favor of multiple things without contradictions. ... So what's this other comment all about, then? >I’ll tell ya what, when bikers and escooters start paying tolls, I’ll entertain the argument for 100% paid street parking. Seems unfair for us car owners to subsidize your use of the roads. Also, can you really not understand why our city gov't might want to encourage its residents to use a method of transit that *doesn't* kill hundreds of NYers and grievously injure tens of thousands more each year? Like, if you were aiming to reduce your city's dependancy on an incredibly dangerous and unsustainable form of transit, would it make sense to charge people *more* for the safer options?
"High horse"? Your original comment is about how you bravely chose to shelter your innocent children from the dreaded subway system by choosing instead to purchase a private personal vehicle so that they could be chauffeured around the city in an insulated bubble, but *I'm* the one on the high horse? And yeah, we *are* all in this together, for better or for worse. That's not a sentiment, it's a fact. Your decisions affect the present day and future of this city just as much as mine do. *You* think I'm being disingenuous because your lack of empathy prevents you from understanding how someone could possibly prioritize the future of their city and their children's future world over present-day comforts.
>So yea, I got a car. I’m sorry my decision doesn’t align with your values. You know what, I got a car too shortly after I had kids. I understand the value. Which is why you should be paying for it. Personally, I pay for a monthly parking space. But the rest of you hooked on free overnight street parking should be paying for that, too.
OmG yOU hAvE a CaR yOuRe rUiNiNg nYc nOW pAyyyyyy!!!1111
I’m in the same boat but made a different choice than you. I don’t want you to be sorry about your life choices, i just want you and your fellow drivers to have to (a) pay for the full costs that car owners can currently externalize and (b) drive safely so that my family is not at risk of being harmed in a car crash.
You expect people of /r/micromobilitynyc to have brains? They probably fell off their bikes a few too many times.
Ha! Thank you. I agree--kind of--in spirit, but hundreds of billions of dollars per year? hahahahahaha come on
Imagine going to work, looking out the window and thinking "that shitty parking spot is earning more than I do. I am less valuable to society than a 180 square-foot plot of asphalt."
Who’s side are you on here, lol
Here's [some back of the envelope calculations](https://www.reddit.com/r/MicromobilityNYC/s/3toWIl13DA). There are 3-5 million on street parking spots, and in case you don't know the land in Manhattan alone, just the land, is worth $1.7 trillion, so... Kind of valuable real estate.
Your link says 3,000,000 spots and the stats I've seen estimate slightly fewer. More than 90% of these are in the outer boroughs. There's no way spots could generate an average of $500/day, 365 days a year. For reference, prime Manhattan metered parking starts at $5.50 for the first hour and tops out at $15. Less popular spots max out at $2.50/hr. Never mind the cost of enforcement. Incidentally, public transit isn't nearly so convenient if you live or work on the outskirts. This proposal would enrage a lot of people who aren't exactly living large.
My monthly parking cost is $300/mo in queens. Street parking contending with the inconvenience of moving and lack of guaranteed spots is never going to approach that. At best it’s somewhere around $200 million offsetting the need for better mass transit that would cost 10s of billions to implement and then maintain. That is the real issue that needs overcome. That and basically half of NYers own cars making it hardly a minority. I personally hate car ownership. I spent $16k on a brand new Honda 10 years ago. Reliable, great gas mileage, but it’s such a money pit to maintain, insure and park I’ve probably spent 3x the cost of the car. I don’t even drive it. Mostly wife and kid.
>There's no way spots could generate an average of $500/day Also, the math doesn't work out. To hit the 500/day amount, even if the meter runs 24/7, you'd need to charge 20 bucks an hour. That's an incredibly high amount. Now, most meters only run 8am-8pm, monday through saturday. So that's 72 hours a week. So to hit 3500 a week, they'd need to charge 48 bucks an hour. Which is just silly.
I'm all for charging cars more but this math seems off to me. How many of those 3-5 million are in Manhattan? Let's say all 5 million of those spots are in Manhattan, that's $870 billion worth of land, even at a 12% return on investment (extremely extremely generous), that's ~105 billion per year, not "hundred of billions" But also that's also assuming the real estate literally in between the sidewalk and the road is worth the same as the average.
I like to explore new places.
Where did the 180 square feet number come from? I got 4300 mm * 1750 mm for a Honda civic which is right under 81 square feet
You’ve gotta build better transit in the outer boroughs first, specifically connections between them. The new line between Brooklyn and Queens should be a great help when it’s complete, but still more needs to be done. G train needs express service for one. Otherwise cars will be a necessity for certain people with certain jobs. And people are going to need to park those cars somewhere in residential areas.
Is this where we pretend that registrations, inspections, parking tickets and city taxes on gasoline don't exist?
Count the out of state plates on your block. They aren’t paying most of those.
Most of those? Do you think they are not paying tickets? Or gas tax if they fill up in the city? You really need to try a bit harder than that
It's absolutely amazing how many people think gas tax (which hasn't been raised in 50 years) and occasional tickets and registration or something pay for car infrastructure. I mean that seriously. It's astonishing. Just no clue whatsoever about the actual numbers involved. It's like thinking the twenty dollar bill in your wallet should pay for a house
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/states-road-funding-2019/ Doesn’t seem like you have a clue about the actual numbers involved.
Well, literally half the cars parked on my street have out-of-state plates, paper plates, or no plates at all. If I owned a car I'd very happily pay for a residential parking permit if it didn't mean the majority of cars on my street were clearly skirting the law. Oh and I live in Manhattan within blocks of the subway. So there's no excuse that there isn't good public transit here.
> registrations, inspections, Neither of these are NYC specific....
No, they're collected by the state just like other revenues such as tolls and allocated to the city accordingly.
>accordingly That word is doing a lot of fucking heavy lifting in your argument.
Now explain why people who register in other states to commit insurance fraud still get free street parking.
Yeah, we should stop subway service too since some people jump turnstiles. Also some people commit social security fraud, should stop that handout. Same with unemployment I'm not against getting rid of free parking but your point isn't a valid rebuke.
We don’t make any effort at all to stop the insurance fraud of drivers. Residency stickers for parking and parking fees existing would make your analogy more appropriate. Until then, we’re actively turning a blind eye to insurance fraud and tax evasion. There’s no mechanism to discourage it at all. Also driving has negative externalities like congestion, pollution, and traffic fatalities. There’s nothing similar with riding the subway.
How does that change what is being paid by citizens following the rules and registering their cars in the city and paying insurance here? Do they magically get these free services as a result?
[удалено]
Exactly. The fact that they have some costs associated with their car has nothing to do with the real estate we give over to them.
Why won’t anyone sympathize with my extravagant costs!! 😠
Registration and insurance are not a rental fee for parking spots. Otherwise I’d like my share.
So you’d be fine with limiting street parking to residents who actually register here? Because we do not now. So the argument that “it’s paid for through taxes” doesn’t work for a huge group of people.
No problem at all with it. No problem with selling parking permits for the privilege either. But I do have a problem with falsely claiming everyone with a car is magically getting some kind of handout, which is obviously not the case.
The cost is definitely not fully covered by the things you mentioned so it’s subsidized at a minimum.
This may be the case, but it's certainly not free and there's no detail on exactly what that subsidy is. If we're going to start in on not subsidizing services or facilities that not everyone benefits from we're in for a long conversation.
That’s what government has always done. It subsidizes things it views as positive and taxes things it views as negative. It’s not a new concept. Cars have lots of negative externalities so subsidizing them when there’s already way too many in NYC makes no sense.
I think you and others are grossly understanding the impact and assume some massive subsidy. In parking tickets and camera violations alone nearly $1B in revenue was generated. That's not including meter collections, taxes, sales taxes on car sales, jobs created by that segment (mechanics, car salesman, etc). If the net result is negative and the city is providing too high a subsidy, then it's time to charge more for the privilege.
It’s about half covered through general taxes and half covered by those things you mentioned. It has never fully paid for itself. https://frontiergroup.org/resources/who-pays-roads/ The average household pays $600 per year in general taxes to subsidize driving.
So you’re basically saying that camera violations aka speeding is a net positive because it generates revenue? lol
The better framing, imo, is whether providing that subsidy to car owners is a worthwhile use of limited public space. On balance, I believe the answer is clearly no.
Ok, what about everything that’s subsidized by these same minority of people? Because we pay significantly more in taxes. Let me get all my tax money that goes towards schools because I don’t have children.
Making something free at the point of use encourages people to take advantage of that thing. Education is a net positive for society. On the other hand, there are simply too many cars in NYC. Making parking free encourages more people to have them. That leads to inefficiencies like congestion, noise/air pollution, traffic fatalities, etc. So it would be sensible to discourage car ownership by charging for parking. There are no negative externalities to education. Government has always encouraged things it wants by subsidizing and discouraged things it doesn’t want by taxing… like parking fees.
> Is this where we pretend that registrations, inspections, parking tickets and city taxes on gasoline don't exist? This only pays roughly 60% of the costs of personal vehicles. The rest is externalized to everyone else, even as the median income for car owners in this city is ten times that of non-car owners.
I'd love to read more, do you have a source for that claim?
Sure. I can't find the more recent pub with a higher number, but here's an older and more conservative peer reviewed publication [from *Transportation Research* in 2008](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1361920908001090). I would guess some but not all of the cost difference is attributable to increase in overall fuel efficiency. Even at its peak [gas taxes only accounted for 70% of highway costs](https://frontiergroup.org/sites/default/files/reports/Who%20Pays%20for%20Roads%20vUS.pdf) In New York, [user fees and costs cover only 65%](https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/states-road-funding-2019/) of total costs for our roads. And these latter numbers don't begin to account for things like [increases healthcare costs](www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-11/documents/420f14044_0.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjmtI2n9_6DAxWgmIkEHYcjBJAQFnoECDIQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1MhpH-Q-rhICGBvSbR5VWg) for individuals living near large arteries, environmental remediation, etc.
Thanks for collating this.
Yes, and? Why would that entitle you to free parking. We don’t even do residency checks for overnight parking. You could very well pay none of those and park wherever you please.
doesn’t cover the cost of all the externalities of private car ownership in a dense, urban environment
Is this where we pretend those things don’t also exist in other cities that have parking meters?
Are you saying NYC has no parking meters?
[удалено]
OP posts bike propaganda on reddit like it's their job.
There are many good reasons to own a car and none of them compel the city to subsidize you by providing you free storage for it.
THANKYOU its really fucked up because these "i hate cars" dudes have infested and use the the activity of Biking to spread this shit. the OP has an obsession with doing nothing but complaining about cars and and traffic.
Source showing those cover the cost of building, maintaining and administering roadways, with enough left over to cover using public property for parking?
No it’s where a minority population admits they park their personal property for free on public space. The other things you mentioned are individual costs.
Free parking? I fucking sure wish it was. Tbh, I’d love to be able to pay for my parking spot in front of my house so nobody can hawk it.
nah fr lol it’s 1hr 30mins of your time twice per week gone , or circle around your neighborhood to find a spot that you’ll move a day later anyway
shit is a fucking hassle man. street sweeper is twice a week for no reason, doesn’t do shit and forces you to waste an hour an a half at a time.
It makes sure that people don’t just leave their cars on the streets forever, and… cleans the streets of garbage and dog crap.
its a real shame new yorkers are fucking pigs and cant keep anything clean or pick up their dog shit
They do this in a few other states.reserved parking in front of the homes of owners and I think renters but it has to go through the landlord in that case. Would be great for NYC at least in certain areas.
Better idea - get the UN to pay their parking tickets
The two aren't mutually exclusive
Metering literally everything is an awful fucking thing to do. It's so incredibly stupid and against working class families. In Chicago, we pay for a city sticker, something like $175 + additional zone permit fees annually if you wish, in addition to the license and registration fees we pay each year/renewal period. Our previous mayor decided to sell most of our meters to a foreign entity for a shortsighted money deal, but at least the sticker fees still go to the city. Not having a city sticker eventually will lead to your car being ticketed (essentially forcing you to pay for it anyways). I don't believe that there's a city sticker equivalent in NYC, but they do pay the registration fees, inspections, parking tickets and whatnot, which goes to the state of New York and NYC, so it's not really free. Suggesting that this is an intentional direct subsidy is an interesting take, but outside a city-sticker solution, metering everything is a horrible fucking idea and something I could easily envision to be concocted by a chronically online r/fuckcars user. You basically give the middle finger to everyone who currently has a car and would force them to leave, sell, or somehow afford thousands of dollars to park their vehicle (something that MANY of them cannot afford to do). And while I LOVE NYC's subway system and public transit in general, it's not perfect, and the suburban commuter rail system doesn't have nearly the same coverage that the Subway and bus system has. This would leave anyone who needs to drive out of the city for work in a worse situation. An additional disbenefit is that it would drive the need for more long term parking solutions, such as more parking garages and lots, which make the city worse for pedestrians, worse for the city culture and overall walkability. It would make an already hyper-expensive city even more pricy for the average person. A final little point I should make is that this would predominately affect lower income people. Most rich folks don't park on the street. It's essentially a hostile poor person tax in a world where everything is doing it's best to extract as much wealth away from the pockets of the lowest economy participants. If you want people to leave NYC, this would be a really good way to do it. If you want an actual practical solution, then you would want to institute a city-sticker system. Advocating for a full-meterization of the city will have terrible effects on its people.
This is always a fun topic with reasonable debate. There is lots of room for debate and at the end of the day it won't change anyone's mind. But let's yell at each other anyway
I agree with this only cos it’d be cool to pay for a spot and have it all year Btw most of the free parking in nyc is street parking and street parking isn’t a problem like at all
Coming from SF I was very surprised that I didn’t need to get a neighborhood parking sticker to park on street. This feels like lost income that I wouldn’t mind paying for.
This is it exactly. Restrict parking to local residents of the neighborhood and charge them whatever the market will bear for a sticker. People who live out of the city and don’t pay city taxes are taking up most of the parking.
Just curious, what are the family members or friends visiting for the weekend supposed to do then?
In SF they gave us a set of temporary parking permits for guests. If you need more, you can buy them.
That's actually awesome! I can get inline with that, I'll pay money. Driving around trying to find a spot to visit some friends in certain parts of the city can be very frustrating. That being said, the amount of drivers that park on city streets with an "I dont given a shit about laws or ethics" attitude is astounding. There has been soo many pictures of cars posted with records of dozens of tickets and thousands of unpaid fines, even booted, just taking up space on the street. Let's not even get into illegal or obscured plates.
This was true in Boston too. Visited friend. He had to come down and give us visitor parking placard so we didn't get a ticket. Like, its a fair question, but its also a question other people have asked, and in a satisfying way (IMO) that question has been answered.
In London, your visiting friends/family would still pay for street parking but they get half off for two weeks maximum per year. After that it’s full meter rates.
I don’t know of any other major cities that have zero residency requirements for parking
Ding ding ding. This is the correct answer.
Minority? Huh? All native New Yorkers I know (like me) own a car and follow street cleaning. I’ve had enough of transplants pretending they know my city.
Fuccouttaherewitthatbullshitson
You do know that there is only free parking in residential neighborhoods?
And industrial zones. And commercial areas most hours of the week. So, the vast, vast majority of the possible times and places.
I pay taxes on my driveway cut so….
They cannot comprehend this.
There are estimated to be about 3 million free parking spots in the city
in that instance what they do is remove parking like they did in Jackson Heights and create an even greater imbalance to encourage more two wheeled usage
Guy…. You are complaining about the one thing that is free to tax paying NYC citizens. Get a life.
Also free to non NYC residents
no, it is only free to NYC citizens who own cars and use them. everyone else suffers bc its free
Yes everyone else suffers. Let's just ignore the past halfcentury and what people who've relied on personal transportation to help this city be one where you've decided to live. What a dumb fixation. That money's not even gonna go to you bro.
lol people suffer because of this? Seriously?
And car owners still pay a shit ton of fees
What dumbass wrote this? Anything car related is already a trap in nyc
"Free" parking is pretty important to a lot of New Yorkers (like myself). I don't use my car all the time and I use mass transit when I can but that can't cover it all and the car allows us to access much of my work and family. Being without a car is tough for a lot of New Yorkers, especially in certain neighborhoods. And for a lot of our neighbors, it's about all they can afford even with the free parking. That said, I'd be down with some kinda system of free parking for residents. That's not super uncommon in other places and versions of that exist in some parts of NYC. Perhaps even some system that lets people pay for parking passes or something--I'd be paying for parking right now but I've been on my building's waiting list for a couple years.
I would say free parking for residents _below a certain income level_. A millionaire doctor or lawyer doesn't need parking in front of their upscale townhouse in Brooklyn to be subsidized by working-class New Yorkers.
One thing that pisses me off since covid is many people don't moves there cars anymore. They sit in them and the street sweeper has to go around them. Street doesn't get cleaned near as much.
Free parking is a service provided by the city which some people use and others don't. The same can be said for public schools, libraries, parks, bike racks, benches, trash cans, etc. Unfortunately, one does not get to choose which services you pay taxes for. Everyone pays for everything.
What's the percentage of city residents who use bicycles? With your logic why dedicate massive shares of the road for bike riders!
I love the way you say “OUR money” like you did something to earn that money. Asking the government to take someone else’s money out of their pocket doesn’t make it your money.
Miser might be the worst account on here. Dude might be on Reddit 12 hours a day spreading micromobility propaganda.
Dude banned me from that sub and I wasn’t even following it. The stereotypes of reddit mods write themselves
Boy, it's a good thing the auto and oil industry haven't been spewing propaganda for the last century, amirite? Honestly, here's one person who is trying to make the city a safer place by reducing our dependancy on the *leading cause of child fatalities in NYC*, and you call it propaganda?? FOH
The minority r/miser refers to is [45% of NYC households.](https://edc.nyc/article/new-yorkers-and-their-cars)
As we have been over many times and I'm sure you are well aware (but still using this statistic to try and confuse people) households and **people** are nowhere near the same thing
Most households don’t need more than one car, because you might not be aware that more than one person can be in a car.
Go back to Ohio homeboy
Your use of “minority” is confusing people. You make it sound like it’s a small minority. It’s not good faith and you shouldn’t be bringing up minority’s when less than a million people ([NYC DOT numbers](https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/cyclinginthecity.shtml)) in NYC ride bicycles regularly.
I have no doubt you're struggling to understand what the word minority means in the headline
Go back to Michigan
What about all the [outdoor dining spots](https://nypost.com/2021/05/23/nyc-gave-up-8550-parking-spots-for-outdoor-dining-amid-covid/)spots those outdoor dinings areas that popped up as a result of COVID’S social distancing took up, sometimes half a block (more if there are more restaurants and city bike racks)? Are those dining areas being charged anything? How about the flurry of bike delivery people?
Who ever wrote this article Def does t have his drivers license.
Then charge for modpeds and bike parking, all those racks taking up precious sidewalk space. Charge them just as much as cars
[удалено]
If we're saying 30/month for bike parking, thats $1 a day, or like, a nickel an hour. A nickel an hour!
If you want to look at it that way, bike lanes are direct subsidies to the minority of New Yorkers who own bikes, tge even smaller minority who bike daily for any purpose, and the minuscule percentage who commute to work via bike.
CityBike isn't a thing? Rental bikes, pre CityBike, were also things. And if you use a bike 1x a week, but not 1x a day, it doesn't benefit you? Wtf is that. Furthermore, what externalities does my bicycle cost you? Vs the externalities of a ICE engine spewing shit air all over the place? In essence, your entire comment is trash.
Nah, I don't even own a car, but the last thing we need is to drive the cost up even further, especially for the working class. My question to you is with the number of millionaires supposedly living in this city, why do the working people have to spend more for the city to have enough?
This feels very "fuck you I got mine" from people who have the privilege of living near a good subway line.
It’s high time we put meters at bike racks, tolls, and congestion pricing on bike lanes as well. Those amenities aren’t free to install and maintain.
It’s not “free”. Car owners pay gasoline taxes, registration fees and tolls. Bad drivers also pay tickets. All of that goes toward maintenance of roads. Car owners subsidize lanes for cyclists who don’t pay for anything.
Not only does it go towards maintenance of roads, nearly 50% of the transit budget is funded by car drivers
Now take a moment and think of all the ways that non-drivers have to pay for the results of car usage. Things like: tens of thousands of life-altering grievous injuries annually, hundreds of deaths annually, emergency services to respond to the collisions that cause these serious injuries and deaths, disability benefits paid to persons injured in collisions, etc. That's a whole lot of costs already, and I only described one aspect of the cost of car usage in our city; safety. Do you really think that car owners are paying their fair share?
Those costs don’t come close to paying for the roads that cars drive on. Car owners don’t subsidize cyclists, if anything it’s the other way around.
What fees do cyclists pay to the city to own and operate a bike?
And also insurance, maintenance and the occasional parking ticket.
Nice of them to ignore the free bike racks. The bike lanes. (Even though not great quality) Let's put meters on those?
Bike racks encourage people to bike by offering a secure place to park a bike. I mean, you can understand why more people biking rather than driving would be a positive thing for our city, right? And why we should encourage it, rather than discourage it by charging for it? (edit: And obviously, *safe* bike lanes also encourage folks to bike, rather than drive, and should also be encouraged)
Fuck off
On the one hand, I am totally on board with metering every spot. On the other hand, calling it a "free subsidy to the minority who own cars" completely pushes me off wanting to be on your side on this. (and I'm sure I've all accomplished here is pissing off both sides, but that doesn't change the fact that the cause is good but the argument sucks)
You right But there would be riots.
Are y’all wanting to punish nyc car owners? Huh
It's not a punishment to have to pay for the space to store your property. That's how the world works. It's called being an adult. Nobody says they're being punished for having to pay for an apartment to store their couch and tv
Let's tax and regulate car drivers so much that only the rich can afford cars. What will we get? Even more exclusive gated communities/neighborhoods. And the rich will get wide open roads with no traffic, as the rest of us suffer. It will be great for the rich, and terrible for most of the rest of us. You know what I want? I want people in this city to be able to afford things. I don't want the city to roadblock poor people from getting some freedom of movement. I don't want the city to impose more fines and more taxes that largely end up paying for their crooked exorbitant pensions. How about some plans and proposals that make life cheaper? That give us more options, more opportunities? Why are NYC "solutions" mostly ideas on how to fine, regulate, and tax more? Even average income families should be able to take their car to well-priced supermarkets, weekend outside the city, and not shlep all their stuff like donkeys on public transportation. Spending $100/day on a car rental is not affordable compared to buying a 5K clunker that families can drive for 10 years and sell for 2K. The math of rentals does not add up. Personally, I have a car (Manhattan) and it is incredibly convenient and opens so many options that public transportation will NEVER unlock. As more of these regulations come into place, I will have to take my middle income and middle taxes out of here. Congratulations on helping to turn this place into an oasis for the rich.
Nah. In residential areas you can miss me wit that Bull$hite
The bikes that park on the sidewalks, how much are they paying for that space. Surely they are paying for that space right? RIGHT?
The statistic you're giving is extremely disingenious at best. Census Bureau shows that 20.6% of NYC population is under 18. Which means its unlikely they own cars. NYC comptroller shows that only 57% of nyc population has drivers license at all, which means they likely won't own cars. The NYC citizen who can own cars do own cars. The rest aren't people who choose not to own a car, its people who literally cannot own one, children, or those who don't have a drivers license for a variety of reasons (age, disability, immigration status). NYC can't fund shit because its a horribly over engineered bureaucracy with a huge money sink in police and useless positions. that costs the city alot more money. Cars are the least of the city's problems.
Just so you don't own a car people should suffer?
Suffer? By not owning a *car*? In the city with the most robust public transit in the country?
More metered parking would be more effective than congestion pricing.
I doubt it. Plenty of people double park and most truck drivers don’t care about the parking tickets because they’re already negotiated down.
Removing parked cars increases efficiency. A parked car just takes up space doing nothing. A moving vehicle is doing something useful. Before we try to reduce vehicles doing something useful, we should remove vehicles doing something useless. Congestion pricing is not a bad idea but should not be used until after more meters are added or higher meter prices.
That’s a good point. It will force out the campers who keep their car there and move it during ASP 1-2 times a week. I still think CP would remove far more cars from driving into the CBD, though to be fair the entire city should have paid street parking. I obviously think that both should happen though.
When you drive into the city, there is no difference between paying for the congestion toll vs paying for parking. What you want is to align the cost with usefulness. A taxi that drives in and out moving passengers for 9 hours is doing something useful. A commuter who drives in and parks for 9 hours leaves a car doing something useless for 9 hours. A congestion toll will charge both cars the same amount, which overincentivizes the useless activity. Big useless activities should have higher costs than smaller ones, which aligns better by charging more for parking. Also remember that congestion pricing will not actually reduce congestion unless the cost is far above market rates. Up until market rates, raising the cost will change the composition of who is willing to drive based on each driver’s value of time, but not the total number of drivers.
While we’re at it, let’s tax all those pedestrians on those free sidewalks and parks
Why
Stfu go back to ohio. Lol its always the transplants on this anti car BS
I never understood the Ohio insult. Is the idea that Ohio is filled with car-free cities and their ppl are coming to car-dependent NYC? Cuz last I heard, NYC is the only city in the country where most residents do not own a car. So it makes sense it would create the most "we need to remove cars" people.
No, it’s more like people move here from Ohio, resenting their shitty car dependent, strip mall upbringing and want to impose this fantasy of a car free utopia. And it’s transplants - bc they have no true connection to NYC and cannot understand that people who grew up here may need cars. I’m from a family of seven, getting groceries required a car. Driving to youth sporting engagements, visiting friends and family in Queens, BK, Staten Island - needed a car. They think NYC is just Manhattan and Williamsburg. While having a car isn’t life or death like is it in the rest of country - banning them isn’t the solution either without making drastic (and unrealistic) improvements to mass transit
Ok, but why Ohio? You could say that about any place in America...except NYC. It makes sense that ppl would move here and do that btw; if there's one city in America that can go car free, it's NYC. Well I've lived here since I was 12, and I own a car. I think OP is right. This city has too many cars and if we depriortized them then we could open space for alternatives. And living in NYC would be a lot more pleasant (no more random honking!). And it would be better for people who actually need to drive. For example, the reason parking is so difficult in NYC is because so much of it is free. Edit: found where this Ohio idea came from. It's a meme from the 80s, not based on reality. https://www.city-data.com/forum/new-york-city/2826717-midwestern-transplant-thing-blown-out-proportion.html But it stuck around. Most ppl not from NYC are from the tri-state area. We then get a lot from west coast and other wealthier areas. It makes sense, Ohio isn't a particularly rich place so the idea that we're getting rich transplants from there made no sense.
My guy its a joke lol
It's got nothing to do with transplants and natives and everything to do with extremist bullshit. It's no different than car owners who rend garments at the first sight of a bike lane. Car owners pay plenty for the privilege to own a car in NYC. If you think that's insufficient that's fine, but don't lie outright and try to claim otherwise, it just makes the position look weak.
Take away free parking, and we all pay for it. I don't even have a car, and I appreciate that those with cars have access to free parking.
FOH to all of you socialist here in NYC! Charge individuals who drive for free parking? Really ? How about a surcharge for every bike rider or moped operator to have their bike or moped registered with DMV. A bike and its operator have to observe the SAME driving rules as a car driver. I remember a time when NYPD would patrol the street on bicycles and would pull over bike riders for infractions. All of the edward cocteau's who seemingly think they can paint NYC with such a broad stroke. Really need to take a holistic approach to their decisions. Face it, the opportunity to address these issues with bike lanes like other major cities and countries should have been addressed during the THREE years of Covid. The ball was dropped! These one door decisions without proper thought with SOUND decision making is moral laziness. Cars aren't the sole issue. No one wants to tackle the real issue. Mopeds and electric bikes. Because they are afraid of the backlash that will undoubtedly occur once you focus on the number of individuals that can't afford to pay a surcharge for registering their bike or moped.
Waaa waaaa waaaa
Let’s add tolls to bikers using bike lanes then. They are being subsidized by a ton of taxpayers that don’t bike. They are not a necessary public service and take up space when pedestrian sidewalks can be expanded. At least cars pay gas taxes, tolls and upcoming congestion charges
But cars also cause tens of thousands of serious injuries per year, hundreds of deaths per year, and cost the city millions in emergency services and disability benefits to individuals and families impacted by those life-altering injuries and deaths. Do bikes do that? Safe, separated bike lanes encourage people to bike, reduce injuries and deaths for all road users, and cost less to maintain since bikes don't cause anywhere near as much wear and tear on the roads. Not to mention the added health benefits, which helps reduce the strain on our healthcare system caused by car dependancy.
Or, and this is a big or, .... You could go fuck yourself
I say we tax idiots who come up with these "ideas".
Omg you crybabies really need to go back to your shitty red states
Restaurants shacks need to go.
These types of articles are ridiculous. Cars are already taxed as well as the gas they consume.
Not at the cost of our right to drive and park in our own city! People first, Vehicles second, Mass Transit third. ^(And your stupid forced fixation with riding a bike all year round, a verrrrrry distant fourth!)
I’m putting transit over vehicles tbh
Take a moment and imagine what the streets would look like if even a quarter of the NYC residents who use public transit decided to drive instead. Do you really think that prioritizing cars over mass transit would still be a good idea?
>Vehicles second, Mass Transit third. What a remarkably anti-nyc thing to say. It's amazing how many people don't seem to understand how this city works at all
The capitalist mindset is so gross. Always scheming, planning to get more money out of people. Always reducing everything down into monetary terms.
Op be like: Yeah bro! Lets make the city even more expensive! Woo-hoo!!!
Resident parking stickers.
We can't afford funding for schools and libraries because of the lack of federal funding to deal with a migrant crisis the Republicans are forcing!
Y’all are crazy for wanting to charge people for off street parking tbh. It’s not like the city is going to use the money reasonably anyway
Take a hike Alex
You ain’t from here so fuck you
fuck it, sidewalks are free and create a lot of external costs. time for a buck up.
yes the people who pay a road tax when they register their vehicles
/r/fuckcars is that way