There’s no such thing as a free lunch. And possibly soon, free parking.<\/p>\n
In an expensive city, one of the best bargains around is that so much street parking doesn’t cost drivers a dime.\u00a0But it may not stay that way for long.<\/p>\n
New York City is toying with the idea of charging to use any of the three million free parking spaces on city streets. Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal said it could help residents find spaces and raise money at the same time.<\/p>\n
“Over a billion dollars worth of revenue that could be generated. But this isn\u2019t about nickel and diming Manhattanites, but giving them a consistent place to park their cars,” said Hoylman-Sigal.<\/p>\n
The idea has been floated before, and seemed to get fresh life this week when the first deputy mayor sounded open to it.<\/p>\n
“It’s not a no,” said Deputy Mayor Dean Fuelihan, confirming that all revenue ideas are on the table with the city facing a giant deficit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We have to solve this structural problem and we need your help to solve the problem,” Fuelihan said.<\/p>\n
One person who doesn’t sound so on board? Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In a statement on Friday, he clarified that “you do not fill a $5.4 billion budget gap through parking meters, we need structural change at the scale necessary to put our city back on firm financial footing.”<\/p>\n
As for New Yorkers wondering if their days of parking free are numbered, there is one question that comes to top of mind: How much would it cost?<\/p>\n
“How high do they go as far as buying a spot. Do they have a set price so everyone can afford a spot or is it for the rich to buy?” asked driver Richie Cruz. “Somebody making $200,000 could afford a $30,000 space. But what about somebody down the block who makes the minimum salary? How could they afford a parking spot?”\u00a0<\/p>\n
City officials said all revenue-generating ideas are on the table, including parking permits and adding meters. But don\u2019t expect anything fast, with the current budget deadline in June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There’s no such thing as a free lunch. And possibly soon, free parking. In an expensive city, one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,56,63,65,64,87],"class_list":["post-156037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}