Free parking spots in NYC could get meters under revenue-raising proposal

Roughly 750,000 currently free New York City parking spots could be metered under a revenue-raising proposal meant to encourage turnover on major avenues and commercial corridors.

The plan also would impose paid, annual parking permits elsewhere on some blocks available for drivers who live in the neighborhood.

The proposal, among several by the nonprofit Center for an Urban Future, argues that metering more spots would help businesses draw more customers as "drivers spend far less time searching for a spot." 

"The deployment could preserve free street parking in many residential areas where New Yorkers depend on their vehicles for day-to-day transportation, while focusing on commercial corridors and denser areas with good access to public transportation," the proposal said.

Most Long Islanders who come into the city ride public transportation, and with the congestion-pricing toll that went into effect last year, more people are choosing to ride mass transit into the city. 

"Long Islanders are accustomed to paying for parking in New York City, just like New York City residents," said Eli Dvorkin, the center’s editorial and policy director. "What would improve under an expansion of paid street parking is actually, I think, parking availability."

In the face of a projected multibillion budget shortfall, the city could raise at least $1.21 billion in additional revenue annually by metering a quarter of the spots that are currently free. Charging $75 a year from 10% of automobile-owning households could bring up to $132 million annually, the report says.

3 million parking spots

Of the roughly 3 million parking spots in the city, 80,000 are metered, generating $258 million in annual revenue, a haul that has been flat for a decade, adjusting for inflation.

"Gridlock" Sam Schwartz, the veteran traffic expert and former city transportation official, said city law empowers the mayoralty to expand — or contract — how many and which parking spots are metered, but that implementing residential parking permits would require legislation.

Schwartz said when he was in city government circa the 1980s, he expanded parking metering — charging for parking leads to the turnover of spots — but opposes residential permits because the idea makes it easier for New Yorkers to own cars, creates a new bureaucracy and fosters an expectation that a permit-holder deserves a spot.

San Francisco, Hoboken and Washington, D.C., are among the cities with residential parking permits.

And while not so much a justification anymore, there was a racial component back in the 1980s by some who wanted residential parking permits to stop outsiders from driving to a neighborhood, parking and riding the subway.

"It was largely white neighborhoods in the '80s that wanted residential parking permits to keep ‘them’ out — whatever they meant by them," said Schwartz, now chair of the transportation research program at Hunter College. 

Asked for comment, neither Mayor Zohran Mamdani's spokesman nor City Council Speaker Julie Menin's spokesman directly addressed the proposals.

Mamdani spokesman Sam Raskin said the administration "is committed to modernizing how we manage our curbs — reforming metering strategies and rethinking how curb lanes can better serve all New Yorkers."

Menin spokesman Jack Lobel said the council is continuing "to review solutions for both saving funds and generating additional revenue, including proposals surrounding street parking."

The world’s first parking meter was installed in Oklahoma City in 1935 — the "Park-O-Meter" — displacing the status quo system in which cops marked tires with chalk to track how long an automobile had been parked.

New York City followed 16 years later, in 1951, initially installing 25 parking meters on West 125th Street between Lenox Avenue and Seventh Avenue.

About 500 curious Harlem residents watched the acting mayor debut the meter by feeding a dime into it. Not everyone was in support.

"One of the objectors to paid parking," The New York Times reported at the time, "was Sugar Ray Robinson, middleweight champion, who said, ‘It's just another way of getting money out of people.’ "

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.