City Says, More Sharing Means Fewer Cars

This coming Monday your street may be down a parking space — or up a new car, depending on how you look at it. New York City is beginning a pilot program, reserving over 300 parking spaces for short-term rental car companies Zipcar and Enterprise.

"For so many New Yorkers, there's tremendous frustration when it comes to owning a car," Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday in Morningside Heights, one of the 14 neighborhoods participating in the two year pilot program. “Let’s make it easier for them to get a car only when they need it. And not have to pay all those other costs all year long for something they don’t need a lot of time.”

Right now, some car share companies keep their cars in garages, and some others allow users to leave cars parked on the street in designated parking spots. City officials hope that this new program, which broadens the number of street spaces available to users, will encourage more people to use the service and down the line reduce congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, and their reliance on Uber and Lyft.

A national expert in parking policy, Donald Shoup, gave the plan a thumbs up. He says reserving parking spaces for car-share companies makes the space more productive, since each car can be used by numerous people throughout the day.

"A space devoted to shared parking will serve many more people than conventional parking,” said Shoup, an urban planning professor at UCLA. 

City Councilmember Marc Levine disputed the notion that car owners would be critical of the pilot because it will take space away from parking their vehicles. “The opposite is actually true,” he said “Over time New Yorkers will see these car share care as alternative to car ownership and it will open up parking.”

Mayor de Blasio said he was one such convert. Once he moves back to his Park Slope, Brooklyn, neighborhood, he will no longer be a car owner: “It just doesn’t make sense to be a car owner in New York City.”