>>[...] a lot of people don't want to give up street parking spots for garbage containers.
This is an understatement. A New Yorker with a car that doesn't/can't pay the monthly indoor garage fees will fight tooth and nail for street parking.
This is an understatement. A New Yorker with a car that doesn't/can't pay the monthly indoor garage fees will fight tooth and nail for street parking.
NYC is one of the few places that has density in the US, and largely because it's old density. I feel like you're trying to paint this with a "see density bad" argument that is a lot more nuanced than you're making it.
The resistance to do anything but prioritize the convenience of a minority of drivers in cities like NYC while we look for "better" solutions (aka a solution that doesn't sacrifice their convenience) has already made a decision on the trade-offs.
If you actually want to provide the best benefit, we should start at the source and be looking at waste reduction. Instead of taking up 10% of the parking, it could be more feasible to take up 2.5% with smaller or less frequent dumpsters. You'd need less landfill space. You would hopefully have cheaper products through less material and less packaging. There's a lot of empty commercial real estate that could be repurposed, maybe for parking or residences with more modern waste management. There's likely other technologies that could be used for waste pickup at large buildings, like containers in the basement rolling out subsurface into the street and bottom loading into a truck via elevator. Or just more frequent pickup.
We could blame everything on cars. I feel that there are plenty of issues that are due to the old infrastructure that never envisioned all these uses or politics though. It seems other cities have figured this out just fine and kept their cars. Seems odd that NYC can't figure it out.
Frankly I think the fact that a private parking garage space costs $225,000 should make us question further why we are content giving up such valuable public street space so that one person can park their vehicle.
If it costs $225,000 to park your vehicle for a year in a parking garage, imagine how insanely valuable the ground-level spaces are that we casually give up to a handful of vehicles so they can run in to Starbucks on Broadway. And presumably you're nodding along saying yes, that's the best use of that space.
At least the T put the final nail in Charlie Baker's further political ambitions. Hopefully he'll stay at the NCAA, we're just going to have to ask college sports fans to take one for the team (pun intended) there.
The basic problem with the T is that it's a state agency. By which I mean, it depends on the support of the entire Massachusetts legislature, and if you are a legislator representing a district in western Mass, funding the T is a hard sell. Your constituents are going to be worried about crime, drugs, and unemployment, not a transit system that they'd have to drive for an hour to reach. The best you can do is make a general appeal to the Boston metro area as the entire economic engine of the Commonwealth, making its smooth running a win for all taxpayers in Massachusetts. Which, even though it's true, is not going to go over well with the public.
I've thought of one possible solution, which is to dissolve the T, blacklist and/or jail its top management as appropriate, and turn transit operations over to a new agency that's funded and run by only Boston-area communities who actually can point to a direct benefit from T service.
According to the Federal Transit Administration, the Boston subway has a FRR of 74%. This is not the entire MBTA, which would also include things like the bus service (it should not be a surprise to anyone that trains are more efficient than buses).
I'm not disagreeing with you on the premise that the state has mismanaged the T and that it should be turned over to a municipal agency, only that the situation is not quite as dire as it seems. Most other cities in the US would be over the moon if they had Boston-level transit (which, again, is saying something about how poorly the US has managed its transit infrastructure).
I'm reminded of some Terry Pratchett book about the Ankh-Morpork opera, in which the new owner of the opera house asks how they make money, and the manager says they don't--you make money other ways so that you can have things like the opera.
How would they pay for it? It's set up the way it is for a reason.
Fortunately, it's a good thing to realize that each neighborhood is different. The busy neighborhoods with the most trash (e.g. much of Manhattan) have the smallest number of car-owning residents because it's a lot of tall buildings, while the neighborhoods with the most car-owning residents (e.g. much of Queens) generate the least trash, because it's a lot of houses.
[1] https://www.villiger.com/en/products#underground-systems
Burying trash receptacles rather than reusing parking spaces may be cheaper, but it isn't guaranteed. It may also vary by borough (Queens in particular has less underground infrastructure).
this is an oxymoron
we just borrow other peoples' cars / use taxis
Some people do need a car for work, healthcare, education, living with disabilities, or many other reasons not mentioned.
Perhaps there is some tiny fraction that needs a care. Well, there would be enough on-street parking left for them.
What is far more common is the a bunch of people that don't need cars hide behind the mythical empathetic car-dependent person.