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Comment by automatoney | Hacker News Reader

For those unfamiliar with NYC, street parking is free basically everywhere so the space cars take up is already heavily subsidized.

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This 100%. Free public parking in NYC is the elephant in the room that no one wants to address. Tolls won’t fix that. In some areas of the outer boroughs, 40% of the traffic at any given time are people looking for a spot. The city also still hasn’t figured out utilization of the curb for deliveries and drop offs resulting in normalized double-parking almost everywhere. Curb space need to be efficiently priced and this would fix a host of issues — same goes for outdoor dinning, otherwise its value will be captured by landlords anyways.

I anticipate the rollout of congestion pricing will wind up accelerating some changes to the way parking works: areas on the margins of the congestion zone will likely see a surplus of commuters looking to park where they can avoid the toll, which will have the effect of making proposals like paid resident parking permits much more palatable to car owners who currently oppose them.

They really need to eliminate free street parking, especially in dense neighborhoods like midtown.

NYC is remarkably car friendly for a place so unsuited for it.

The most expensive waterfront property in the world is cannibalized by 2 coastal roads in West St & FDR drive. Unlike Europe, the roads are littered with massive SUVs, clearly out of proportion from the roads and built environment around them.

When alternate means of transport and cars interact, cars get precedence. There are no BRT lanes, especially on the crowded LaGuardia -> JFK -> WTC -> Newark corridor. Cycling infrastructure in Manhattan is under-developed despite being completely flat and the availability of a robust bike-sharing setup.

yeah this fact alone is so mind-bending. imagine if that waterfront on both sides of Manhattan you could just easily walk to with out the freeways! very sad.

In the city, especially downtown its basically not free anywhere. It's always metered. Only free at nights and weekends

Maybe I'm oblivious to them, but I don't think I've seen meters in Soho/Chinatown/LES and I definitely don't remember them in the East Village. Are they more in the Tribeca/Fidi area?

The classic meters at every spot are largely gone and have been replaced by block-based, app-enabled meters run by ParkNYC [https://www.parknycapp.com/].

$4.50 for 1 hr, $12 for 2 hr street parking.

You can continue to buy in one hour increments to save a little too if you remember to keep checking the app.`

That's true in the outer boroughs, and on a lot of the streets above 59th but it's not at all true for downtown.

Can you please cite this because I don't think it's actually true. Park avenue is free but other areas charge you money per hour to park a car

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