Hacker News Reader

Comment by ruddct | Hacker News Reader

Some context for those not in NYC:

* Illegal parking and idling are out of control throughout the city. This has been the case for years, but it’s reached new heights since the pandemic. Trucks and cars often idle because they’re parked illegally.

* The city DOT, for a variety of reasons, is reluctant to redesign streets to prevent this behavior (e.g. by adding loading zones)

* The police are reluctant to ticket for this behavior, and frequently idle in their police cars throughout the city.

If a bounty system feels desperate/problematic, it is. Our city agencies have failed to deal with this problem and people are pissed about it. My hope is that this program is a bandaid until larger structural issues with the DOT and NYPD are addressed. We’ll see.

View on HN

Loading zones would likely eliminate some free street parking and thus no one will do anything about it. Street parking is literally the third rail of NYC politics.

Walk down any street in Greenwich Village and you'll see a plethora of $100k+ cars. We continue to subsidize parking for literal millionaires because Dave in Crown Heights is afraid if we get rid of street parking in Greenwich Village they're going to come for his parking space next and he can't afford paid parking. Why does Dave need a car at all living in Brooklyn? Good question...

So we have people who park in the same place without moving for 11 years [1].

[1]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/new-york-street-bookselle_n_9...

NYCHA residents also get parking, as you'll notice if you glance at their vast parking lots, and they do it with taxpayer subsidy.

I'm not defending the vast street parking problem (although you underestimate how many of those cars parked in Greenwich Village are actually not residents there at all but traveling from outer boroughs or LI or NJ). But it's a little bit more nuanced than, rich people with all the cars.

The amount of cars in Manhattan swells considerably during the week due to commuters, for one thing. You can observe the traffic patterns on Google Maps each direction on the FDR, Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, etc.

Maybe resident parking permits should be considered.

who is Dave?

A friend of Alice and Bob.

Don't forget about Charlie before reaching out to Dave. One typically follows the alphabet

Likely a generic name for a resident.

No.

Street parking is figuratively the third rail of nyc politics.

Words and usage change (although I just read of literally being used in the late 18th century to mean figuratively). According to Marriam-Webster, one definition of literally is:

": in effect : VIRTUALLY —used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible"

> Why does Dave need a car at all living in Brooklyn?

This question bugs me quite a bit, mainly because it shouldn't matter why someone needs a parking space; there are many valid reasons that I'm sure you could think of if you spent even a minute thinking about it. If someone does actually need a parking space, there should be some way to have one that takes into consideration scarcity and other market forces so Dave can decide whether it is worth it to live there/continue living there based on his own needs and means. Many cities have systems for this that usually involve permits that need to be paid for and while I'm sure none of them are perfect, it's better than subsidizing spaces or outright banning them. And if the locality decides that there just can't be any parking spaces, so be it, but it should not be because those deciding are completely lacking empathy and are so unimaginative that they can't think of a reason why someone might want something as benign and common as having a car in a city. Driving, parking, private car ownership, etc as a whole and clearly imperfect, but the reality of public transportation, especially outside of cities and in the United States, is abysmal.

Who is the other person who has parked in the same place without moving for 11 years?

>”Dave in Crown Heights is afraid if we get rid of street parking in Greenwich Village they're going to come for his parking space next and he can't afford paid parking. Why does Dave need a car at all living in Brooklyn? Good question...”

Sounds like Dave is right to be worried. In the span of one sentence you went from mocking the notion that some people are defending millionaires’ parking because of a slippery slope that would lead to them losing their own parking, to begging the question on why this non-millionaire even needs a car.

Edit: It feels like something along the lines of: “Don’t be crazy, we are not coming after your parking stall. We are coming after your car.”

The missing bullet point here is that city employees and quasi city employees (i.e. members of the trades) are far and away the worst offenders on every traffic and parking rule in existence.

And that the NYPD in particular is the worst. I had the misfortune of living near a NYPD station in Manhattan for a few years. Illegal parking everywhere and there were a few red lights that they would run all the time in their police and personal vehicles.

I’ve seen personal cars just drive up and park on the sidewalk. Totally blocking everything. They just put their card saying “nypd” and nobody bothers it. Good luck having a wheel chair and getting by.

City employees unfortunately have a lot of voter power due to the unions, balanced against an otherwise very low voter turnout for Mayoral elections.

DeBlasio is said to have been very loose on parking enforcement of 'placard abuse' as they call it. It's pretty obvious downtown during the week and also downtown Brooklyn. The City picks winners and losers just like that.

Lots of examples here for people not in NYC https://twitter.com/placardabuse

The city is required to make 500 loading zones per year now [0]. Which is insignificant compared to the 120,000 blocks in the city.

[0]: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/01/14/up-next-for-dot-city-...

>Trucks and cars often idle because they’re parked illegally

Couldn't they just park illegally and not idle. I'm a driver who's parked illegally many a time and never even considered leaving the engine idling. Do you get some sort of ticket exemption if the engine is going?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com