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Comment by souterrain | Hacker News Reader

It’s mind boggling how much affordable parking there is in Manhattan. I was doing some work in Staten Island and had an appointment in Manhattan later in the day, leaving via NJ, so I drove and was able to find parking for less than $50 in the financial district.

This should have been impossible, and I should have been forced to leave my car where it was, take a bus to St. George, and get on the ferry.

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If you convert to monthly at that daily rate, parking costs $1550/month. If you figure your car’s share of the space in the garage is on the order of ~250 sq ft (the space itself plus a portion of the lanes in the garage), that seems about inline with what studio apartment housing goes for (quick google search turned up 500 sf studios in the $2500-$3000 range)

I’m just loosely estimating here but $50/day for vehicle storage seems like about what I would expect it to cost based on other land use in Manhattan. But of course none of it would be possible without a massive subsidy in the form of public road access.

$50 for parking is affordable?

It's a steal. We're talking about Manhattan, there aren't many corners of the world where rents and land values are higher.

Yes, because when you factor in the cost of transit and the schedules its either cheaper or the same to drive in dollar terms or way cheaper in terms of time.

Everyone gushes about how awesome transit is, but that’s only true for a few areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn. If you need to take a trip that isn’t in the happy path, a car is way better.

Uber gets me from the Upper East Side to LGA in 20-25 minutes. Public transit takes over an hour, requires changing from bus to train to train to train.

I used to pay $200 for my car per month at a garage. Not bad considering that a NJ monthly pass for me would have been over $400.

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