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New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani has collected $9m (£6.6m) in unpaid fines from Amazon, which has been violating clean air regulations by leaving engines running on its parked vehicles (www.nyc.gov)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[+] -24 points 5 months ago (16 children)

Meanwhile the mayor of my city removed all the free parking downtown. Now the entire oldtown area is struggling to keep afloat because no one here can afford to hang out in an expensive boutique shop or hipster bar and pay for parking while they do it.

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  • [–] 53 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    Removing parking to improve accessibility for bicycles, transit, and pedestrians - great.

    Just putting up parking fees everywhere - not great.

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  • [–] 22 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Just putting up parking fees everywhere - not great.

    Honestly, this can be good too. I've seen many places where parking is "free" and the end result is that there isn't any parking available other than expensive private lots. The city is robbing itself then: It's diverting the revenue from parking into private hands, which also encourages private parking lots which are an urban blight, and making it less convenient and affordable for business customers while a handful of people squat on the free parking all-day every-day.

    Everybody would be happier if the street had affordably-priced meters. Everybody except for the people who are using that street-side parking all-day every-day, but those people are basically poaching very limited and valuable land from the municipality.

    🎯 1
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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

    Good perspective. If there’s parking space, it’s costing money to maintain. Perhaps not a lot on a monthly basis, but the cost should be recovered.

    Local business owners probably don’t want to pay the likely thousands of dollars in taxes that would be needed to support the parking in front of their business.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    I like the approach that a city close to me took. Street parking and small lots are kinda expensive and very monitored (red/green/blue lights indicate status of the spots from a distance so police can quickly fine cars)

    However there are a few parking garages that are not so expensive and also include 2 or 3 hours free, but you have to walk a little to get to downtown ( about half a mile)

    Lots of people that hate walking pay a lot for parking and fines and the rest of us walk a little and get free or very cheap parking

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago

    I’d agree that making a structural change to remove vehicle parking and install bicycle/public transportation infrastructure sounds great.

    But I read the comment above yours as saying that the mayor simply made existing free parking into paid parking. Not sure that’s doing much other than reducing the business activity in the area.

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  • [–] 11 points 5 months ago

    As a New Yorker, you’re using public transportation. What are you even talking about? Plus the parking was taken up by commercial or abused by long term/andandoned and public always used the paid garages. Ask me as a transplant of how I difficulty figured all this out…

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    That sounds like a great improvement.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I’m not so sure. If it’s done to encourage public transportation and biking, and the money generated by parking funds increased non-car infrastructure like bike lanes etc, then sure.

    But just slapping parking meters on formerly free parking and the money simply going into the city’s general fund (which is what I’m sure is happening here) I wouldn’t call it an improvement.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Parking on the street inside a busy city is a luxury. Why should it be cheaper than parking on a parking lot let alone free?

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    Because Wichita is not a busy city and they also tolled the free parking lots they built a decade back. If you want to go to the cultural heart or file a document at the courthouse you better be prepared to walk two miles or pay for parking.

    I get that free parking is a novelty everywhere else, though I compare that to wondering why anyone would want automated tax returns when you can just pay for turbo tax, but Wichita is new to that and of all the options to pad the revenue stream the mayor picked the one that takes it out of the citizens and small businesses.

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