Many people, including local community groups, advocates of mass transit and elected officials are preparing to lobby for residential parking permits that would allow residents to park on the smaller streets in many Brooklyn neighborhoods.

The NYC DOT has said "No"…

DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall is soon leaving her position, but while in power she has vetoed attempts at issuing residential parking permits. Part of her reasoning is that she believes that these parking permits would preclude visitors from driving to these neighborhoods as they will be unable to find parking.

…but many experts disagree

According to Erik Feder, The Parking Expert, "I have been deeply involved in all aspects of NYC parking for many years now and have also recently researched Boston, as we will be adding this city to our website soon. From my findings, I see no reason why a system similar to the one implemented in Boston would not work in Brooklyn. In Boston, select streets have signs that say ‘Residential permit parking only’ while still others have this same regulation but also add a provision for ‘2 hour visitor parking’ during specific times of day and days of the week".

The real reason that the NYC Government is against this

There is one factor not being mentioned very often that is a simple explanation why the NYC Government is against the idea of residential permits in Brooklyn: money. NYC earns well over $500 million annually SOLELY from parking ticket revenue. The more parking problems they solve, the less money they make. Just look at the issues concerning parking ticket quotas that have come up over the years. Mayor Bloomberg himself indicated that although there weren't quotas per say, there were "performance standards" (a rose by any other name), because the City needed to get the money from somewhere to fund maintenance, improvements, etc.

NYC makes too much money from parking tickets to ever address parking problems in an efficient manner.

Copyright 2007 Rhythmo Productions