Apparently, we have come to accept the destructiveness and sociopathy of American car culture as so thoroughly normal and mundane that even when a guy intentionally uses his SUV to try to kill five people after a fight, we still call it an "accident." This little gem was found by Starts & Fits in today's New York Times:

May 18, 2006
Man Strikes 5 With S.U.V. in North Bellmore, N.Y.
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
A man intentionally ran over five people in North Bellmore, with an S.U.V. after a fight last night, the Nassau County police said. The driver fled the scene of the accident , at 2800 Pacific Ave. But the police later located the vehicle they believed was involved in the accident in Garden City and took the driver in for questioning. The victims were taken to Nassau University Medical Center, the police said. One was in critical condition, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Boy, the parking squat post really seems to have hit a nerve in the comments section. In some ways, it is not surprising. Working and writing on these issues for a few years now I have found that New Yorkers are increasingly supportive of the idea of creating better pedestrian, cycling and bus facilities. Yet, when you point out that, very often, the best ways to translate this support into action involve making it even more difficult, costly and inconvenient to drive and park private automobiles in the city than it already is, the support quickly evaporates, no matter the potential benefits.

When, on top of that, you also point out the extraordinary costs of our automobile-dominated transportation system, it often just makes people feel kind of bad and defensive. This is why I have learned to try to focus on the benefits. No one wants to be reminded that they are, in a small but significant way contributing to global climate change, the war in Iraq and their neighbors' kids' asthma every time they turn their ignition key. So, despite the seeming innocence of setting up lawn chairs in a parking space, it is not a surprise that the parking squat would provoke some strong, emotional reactions. The squat challenges some very fundamental assumptions about how Americans and New Yorkers live their lives. American culture teaches explicitly and implicitly, over and over, that owning, driving and parking a motor vehicle is perfectly normal, good and absolutely necessary. The parking squat challenges all of that. That is hard for people to hear.

One commenter questioned the economic argument of the parking squat. I will try to respond to that and a few other comments:

The market rate price for a private parking space in Park Slope runs between $500 and $1,200 per month. People pay a lot of money for a parking space in New York City. On-street parking on the vast majority of the streets in Park Slope, on the residential blocks, is totally, completely, 100% free. On the commercial avenues parking costs about $1/hour for about eight hours of the day. That is $8/day or about $250/month. But people looking for long-term storage of their cars can't really use metered spaces anyway. These motorists are either paying a huge monthly fee for private space or they are trolling the streets looking for a free spot.

So, there is an enormous discrepency between the market rate price of parking and the on-street price of parking in most of New York City. This inefficiency in the market for automobile storage space creates a lot of irrational and destructive behavior. For example, many motorists clog the city's streets (especially during morning rush hour when street cleaning takes place) spending countless hours, gallons of gas and pounds of carbon emissions circling their neighborhood searching for free parking space. This uniquely New York behavior was even memorialized in Calvin Trillin's hilarious novel, "Tepper Isn't Going Out."

The irrationality and dysfunctionality of New York City parking policy and parking's role in generating automobile traffic and congestion is beginning to become a major topic in academic, policy and planning circles. UCLA professor Donald Shoup kick-started the public discussion with the recent publication of his book, "The High Cost of Free Parking," in which he details, among other things, the vast waste of time, gas and carbon emissions spent simply "cruising" for parking in dense urban areas. Next Wednesday, May 24, the NY Chapter of the American Planning Association is hosting a roundtable discusion, "No Time to Stop! Moving People Through NYC" that will focus on many of these parking issues, including the idea of how pricing and permits can be used to rationalize parking policy in New York.

The bottom line to the ecomonic argument is that space is one of the most precious commodities in New York City. Yet, we give away automobile storage space nearly for free. In neighborhoods like those of north Brooklyn where a fair number of residents have personal wealth, traffic congestion is a major problem, transit, biking or walking into the Manhattan business district is a viable option, and where the public would benefit from more space being dedicated to things like bus lanes and even cafe tables, it doesn't make sense to give away such vast tracts of public space for the free storage of personal motor vehicles.

Likewise, as New York City grows, develops and densifies -- a necessity for New York's economic survival -- we are seeing that there are better, more efficient and more socially and economically productive uses of our public space than automobile storage. Automobile-dependency is, in many ways, becoming a brake on New York City's growth. Virtually, every big development in town is being fought on the grounds that it will generate too much traffic. We need to make our streets work more efficiently as people-movers. Personal automobiles won't allow us to do that.

We know from Shoup and others that making parking free, cheap or abundant helps to encourage automobile use. And automobile use in a crowded city is costly and destructive in many ways. On the micro level our car dependency produces an inefficient, gridlocked transportation system, horn-honking, car alarms and diminished quality of life, third world level asthma rates, and enormous personal expense in the form of gas, insurance and maintenance. On the macro level our car dependency is helping to produce global climate change, resource war and political instability in oil-producing regions, and a lack of funding for other more efficient modes of transportation like a national rail system or our local bus systems, for example.

So, while, on one level doing a parking squat is inherently a little bit silly, I think it is also a great way for people on the super-micro local level to challenge some ingrained assumptions about how we run our city and to take action on some of the most pressing local and global challenges that we face. Clearly, the event touched a nerve.

Finally, one commenter called the event a "protest" but I do not think that is an accurate description. The squat didn't look, feel or sound like a protest. No one was angry, holding signs or chanting for powers-that-be to take some specific action. In fact, people seemed relaxed, mellow and enjoying the alteration of New York City land use policy that they were themselves creating right there and then. Rather than a "protest" the parking squat seemed a lot more like a "celebration" or a "reclamation." The event was just a bunch of people parking their bodies and their bikes in a space that the city has, without a whole lot of thought, discussion or analysis, handed over to a minority of New Yorkers to store their automobiles, their space-hogging, gas-guzzling, air-polluting, glacier-melting private property.

Below is an update from Ken Coughlin, Chair of Transportation Alternative's Car-Free Central Park Committee, to campaign supporters.
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Things have been happening, as I'm sure many of you are aware. The details and our analysis are below, but before getting to that, I have a personal message for all supporters of a car-free Central Park. If you read no further, please read this, and forward it on:

The next few weeks will decide whether Central Park will be car-free this summer, and, by extension, how quickly we will win a park that is permanently free of traffic. Even though you and thousands of other park users favor a car-free park, persuading elected officials to act against the interests of even a handful of drivers can be surprisingly difficult. YOU are the only force that will persuade them to do this. They have heard that 102,000 people signed a petition in support of a car-free park. But claims of signatures on pieces of paper are one thing; real voters who contact them are another.

As they decide how to vote, the Council members will be looking closely for evidence of continued strong support. If instead they sense apathy or indifference on this issue, they are unlikely to stick their necks out and vote against the interests of motorists.

Toward the end of this week, Transportation Alternatives will be sending out an action alert. There may also be follow-up calls for action. To win a car-free park, we all must respond. I know that you have heard this message before, but a successful advocacy campaign absolutely depends on persistent effort. No one can say whether we will prevail in the next few weeks, but I can guarantee you that we will fail unless we continue to demonstrate to elected officials that thousands of New Yorkers want Central Park to be car free, at least for this summer.

NOW THE NEWS:
As you may know, City Council members Gale Brewer and John Liu have introduced a bill, Intro. 276, mandating a car-free summer in Central Park from June 24 to September 24, 2006, as well as car-free afternoons in Prospect Park during the same period. On May 8, the day before the Council Transportation Committee's scheduled hearing on the bill, Mayor Bloomberg announced a six-month pilot plan to ban traffic from portions of Central Park's loop road that are already little used by cars. As of Monday June 5, 2006, vehicles will no longer be allowed on Central Park's East Drive north of 72nd Street in the morning or anywhere (apparently) on the West Drive in the afternoon. (In addition, Prospect Park's West Drive will be closed to traffic in the mornings.)

The mayor's announcement was clearly an effort to drain support from the Council bill by giving car-free supporters something while maintaining the loop road as a traffic artery. Whether this strategy will succeed remains to be seen. While any reduction in car usage is welcome, most of the loop road will continue to be flooded with cars during prime recreational hours. Worse, recreational users who may believe they are exercising in a totally car-free park will suddenly encounter traffic, perhaps with disastrous consequences. The administration is now boasting that the loop road is free of traffic "75 percent of the time." We don't know how they arrived at this figure. Between prime recreational hours of 7 am and 7 pm, the loop road is entirely free of traffic exactly 0 percent of the time. Considering that the park is officially closed from 1 am until 6 am, even under the new rules the loop will be entirely free of traffic for only seven hours -- from 7 pm to 1 am and from 6 am to 7 am (assuming the entrances are opened and closed on time).

The Council hearing went forward as planned the following day. The Transportation Committee, chaired by Liu, first heard from Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall. Although Weinshall had stood alongside the mayor the day before and said that "people come to New York City's parks to get away from the hustle and bustle of urban life," at the hearing she declared that Central Park's loop road was an "essential traffic artery" and that its closing would cause "significant" disruption. Pressed by Council member Daniel Garodnick for a definition of "significant," Weinshall and First Deputy Commissioner Michael Primeggia offered only more vague portents of traffic tie-ups.

They were followed by a panel of three independent traffic experts who believe that closing the Central Park loop road to traffic will lead to an overall reduction in traffic on city streets. Under questioning from Garodnick, consultant Bruce Schaller said that "shrinkage" -- the percentage of cars now using the park that would effectively disappear from the street grid if Central Park were closed -- could reach 100 percent. Schaller said that the Department of Transportation's assumption of 15 percent shrinkage was too pessimistic.

Other witnesses speaking in favor of the bill included Columbia University professor Patrick L. Kinney, an expert on the human health effects of air pollution. Noting that fine particles from car exhaust can lodge deep in the lungs and cause lung cancer, heart disease and asthma, Kinney said "moving traffic off of the park loop roads will significantly reduce health risks for people using the park, especially those exercising along the loop roads."

Since this was just a hearing, the committee's stance on the bill was hard to read. We know that Liu and Brewer are 100 percent behind Intro. 276. At a press conference prior to the hearing, both spoke strongly in favor of it, as did Brooklyn Council member Bill de Blasio and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, whose latest newsletter to Manhattan residents twice mentions his support of a car-free Central Park. We believe Intro. 276 also has the support of East Side Council members Garodnick, Jessica Lappin and Melissa Mark Viverito. The big question mark is Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who may hold the key to not only the bill's passage but its passing with enough votes to overcome an almost certain mayoral veto. Quinn has not yet made her position known.

It is likely that the Transportation Committee will vote on Intro. 276 in late May, and, assuming it passes, a full Council vote will come shortly thereafter.

Again, prior to these votes the Speaker and other Council members will be paying close attention to the level of popular support the bill has. We need to show them that New Yorkers want nothing less than a safe and pollution-free Central Park loop road this summer.

Ken Coughlin,
Chair
Transportation Alternatives' Car-Free Central Park Committee

Otis White's Civic Strategies newsletter reports on a Los Angeles-based real estate developer, Rick Caruso, who is finding that the most effective way to get big development projects done is to work with neighborhood and community groups on plans and designs from the very beginning rather than shutting them out of the process:

"...Caruso's secret seems to be working with the neighbors in the earlydesign stages and not walking through the door with renderings inhand. This approach works not only in California but in citiesaround the country. Recently, a developer wanted to build a 40-storydowntown condo tower in St. Paul, Minn., where people are sensitiveabout high-rise buildings overwhelming the city. The company metwith neighborhood groups more than a dozen times and ran through 24 different designs before coming up with one that satisfied theneighbors and make sense financially...."

In the coming weeks I will be transitioning my blogging over to a new domain: StreetsBlog. This new blog, supported by The Open Planning Project, will be covering the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign on a daily basis. It will include other contributors as well. While the new site is in development, I will still be posting here at nap.com, so please stay tuned.

On Saturday, a group of Livable Streets advocates staged a "parking squat" in Park Slope, Brooklyn (see QuickTime video here). Organizers David Alquist, Jeff Prant and Geoff Zink showed up in front of the Connecticut Muffin shop on 7th Avenue and 1st Street at 9:00 am, dropped quarters in two parking meters, unfolded lawn chairs and proceeded to hang out, drink coffee, read the paper and chat with friends, neighbors and passersby in street space that would typically be occupied by two lifeless automobiles.

A parking squat challenges the idea that the vast majority of a crowded city's street space--its public space--is best used for the storage and movement of private automobiles. Space is one of New York City's most precious and valued commodities. The sidewalks of Park Slope's shopping avenues are narrow and on nice weekends they are jam-packed. Yet, while pedestrians hauling strollers and shopping carts jostle up against one another on tiny strips of sidewalk, single-passenger vehicles frolic across vast swaths of asphalt. And while some people in this neighborhood pay as much as $2,500 per month to rent an apartment the size of a parking spot, renting an actual parking spot costs a mere 25 cents per hour.

Centrally-located, catty-corner from the P.S. 321 flea market, and with generous outdoor seating, Connecticut Muffin already functions as a kind of neighborhood Town Square. On nice days like last Saturday the benches fill up fast and the line for coffee extends out onto the street. The demand for sitting space at this corner is high and as soon as the squatters put out their chairs, they were filled. People even came and sat on the curb.

New York City regulations say that metered, curbside parking spaces are only to be used for the storage of vehicles. This kid made sure the rules were being followed.

Artists, activists and regular people in cities all over the world are staging similar events to point the irrationality of public space policies that put automobiles and parking ahead of people and communities. Last fall members of Transportation Alternatives staged New York City's first-ever parking squat in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. That was inspired by an art collective in San Francisco that, literally, transformed a parking space into a park. The San Francisco project also spurred on a group in the Sicilian town of Trapani to transform a strip of curbside asphalt into that city's first and only public lawn. Recently, artist Michael Rakowitz used a car-shaped tent to create his very own affordable housing program in Vienna, Austria. In July 2003 this group in Oxford, England staged the grand daddy of all parking squats, putting an end to speeding in their neighborhood by installing a fully-furnished living room in the middle of their street. When one pissed-off motorist crashed into some of the furniture, it sparked "Britain's first documented example of 'room rage.'" The Open Planning Project's Clarence Eckerson filmed the Park Slope squat and got some great interviews. If you still think a parking squat sounds a little bit crazy listen to how articulate these people are in explaining what they are doing and why. Consider running a parking squat in your own neighborhood one of these days.

Jane Jacobs lived at 555 Hudson Street when she wrote "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." I happened to be in the neighborhood yesterday afternoon and I saw this bouquet of flowers and card on the front door. The card reads, "Jane Jacobs, 1916-2006. From this house, in 1961, a housewife changed the world."

A number of people had left flowers and notes...

Despite the fact that this section of Hudson Street is now, essentially, a three-lane highway, I'm sure Jane would have been pleased with the little bench, the tree, and all of the bikes parked in front of her building. Greenwich Village is still one of the world's great urban neighborhoods thanks to her work...