Sunday funday at the NY Times: this time, an op-ed about parking spaces and why they should be eliminated

From "The High Price of Parking" by Alex Garvin and Nick Peterson:

AFTER years of traffic jams and air pollution, New Yorkers are finally starting to rethink the role of cars in our city. Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC initiative has suggested programs like congestion pricing, new bike lanes and expanded mass transit. But city policy has not yet addressed a confusing tangle of off-street parking rules that still quietly encourage automobile use. These requirements not only add to congestion and pollution, they also make life in the city more expensive for every New Yorker.

In most of New York City, a developer who puts up a new building is required to provide a minimum number of parking spaces. These requirements were first put in place in 1950, when the prevailing wisdom was that the automobile would be the transportation mode of the future.

Planners and civic leaders believed that New York had to make itself car-friendly if the city was to grow and prosper. So it responded by requiring developers to build off-street parking for their tenants. These new rules, which varied according to the uses and location of the buildings, seemed like sound planning at the time: force the parking onto private property and solve the public’s problem.

Read more.