Parking Workshop Has Few Answers
BY THOMAS COGAN

The Department of Transportation's PlaNYC Parking Strategies Study Workshops on Neighborhood Parking are being held in several city neighborhoods in the next few weeks. One of the first of these two-part workshops was held in mid-month at the Con Edison Learning Center on Vernon Boulevard. The first part of the workshops, Workshop 1, is designed to 1) understand community concerns about parking, 2) identify parking needs and 3) discuss parking management strategies.

The Long Island City meeting had workshops set up at each of three or four tables, where a coordinator guided the proceedings. At one table, coordinator Chris Ryan began by asking for a one- or two-word description of parking in Long Island City at present. Among the words in reply were "impossible" and "chaotic", but the one that got general agreement was "unfair". Members of the table group included Ken Buettner, president of York Scaffold Equipment; Jon Petursson, head of Manhattan Display; Michele Hush, Roxanne Escriout and Paul Camillieri, three Long Island City residents; Santiago "Sam" Vargas, community liaison for Assemblymember Catherine Nolan, and Joseph Conley, chairman of Community Board 2.

Most participants deplored the increase of parking on the streets in Long Island City and Hunters Point, making note of the pollution also: Hush described the section where she lives, between the Queensboro Bridge and the Queens- Midtown Tunnel as "particulate city". She said she has bypassed her own parking problem by renting space at the Court Square garage, behind the courthouse, but that expedient is quite expensive, and despite the cost, there is a three-year waiting list for those wishing to get in. (She added that 40 parking spaces in the garage were recently seized- by the DOT.) Escriout, a mother of schoolchildren, said that parents delivering or coming for their kids at P.S. 78 in the City Lights building are at risk of ticketing, with no consideration given to their situation. Buettner said his employees have been forced to come in earlier than before, lest they arrive at work to find that park-and-ride commuters have taken all spaces near the York plant at 41st Avenue and 21st Street. Some of these workers have told him that if the situation gets much worse they'll have to look for work elsewhere. Petursson said that parking has had such an impact on his business at 12-15 Jackson Ave. and on neighboring businesses that they are all over each other. Conley observed that the huge increase in residential construction necessitates residential parking, but some new high-rise buildings are providing garage facilities for no more than 40 percent of the apartment units being built.

The current situation and the prospect of a population increase in the tens of thousands when the many high-rises on the shores of the East River and the projected Hunters Point South buildings are completed draw a dark picture for the future.

The parking management strategies that the DOT provided for discussion included parking meters and residential parking permits. The parking meter choice was increased meter rates, timed rates that increase after a certain period or different rates for different blocks. Meters that allow parking for relatively short periods are favored by businessmen, and two-hour meters in such commercial areas as Vernon Boulevard or 21st Street were seen as a check on commuter parking on those streets. The residential parking permits menu was a choice of a) restrictive, being 12- to 24-hour restrictions on street parking without permits; b) flexible, allowing one- or two-hour parking without permits, and c) restrictive with a twist, that is, restricting parking without permits to one hour per day. Of the three, b) was most favored, but that was simply because it elicited the least amount of scorn. Permits might seem an interesting idea at first, but some participants saw the plan breaking down as the demand for permits grew and parking spaces became fewer. Besides, these parking permits would be for spaces on public streets, and their legality would be challenged immediately. Petursson said that permits would "never happen".