Will Congestion Pricing Finally Get NYC to Count Parking Spaces?

Why Count Parking Spaces?

With congestion pricing officially seeing daylight, New Yorkers are responding as expected. The new toll designed to increase funding for MTA projects and significantly reduce the impacts of congestion, such as noise and air pollution, is far from winning over all those involved in what seems a seismic shift. Drivers and residents argue and agree on the reasoning behind congestion pricing, which is summarized by the fact that the average travel time in the central business district (CBD) competes with how most New Yorkers get around: walking.

Along with congestion pricing, New York City must attack its other notable–and possibly longer ignored—problem: parking. Remarkably, New York City had made a quandary of its parking situation. No concrete parking data uniformly quantifies the city's total number of parking spaces in various neighborhoods. Nevertheless, once fewer cars want to enter through the CBD, these two matters remain:

• Where will those who wish to avoid paying the CBD toll to park their vehicles?
• How will this affect the communities surrounding the central business district?

This chart helps to shape a response. Using 13-year data collected by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ), we see that the volume of vehicles entering Manhattan's western half has remained relatively constant. In 2023, PANYNJ reported that just under 36 million vehicles entered the Central Business District (CBD) through the Lincoln and Holland tunnels; 31.7 million were private cars. Between 2011 and 2021, there is an approximately 15% drop in volume. This drop, however, coincided with Manhattan's 13% increase in car ownership during that same time frame. It is well-reported that New Yorkers opted to buy more cars in 2020; interestingly, this trend had already begun brewing well before the pandemic. As reported in a 2024 Hunter College study, during 50 years, the total population of New York increased by 11% while the number of cars owned by New York City dwellers increased by 45%. More households in New York City became 2-car households: New Yorkers with a longer tenure in the city, larger families, and homes in the outer boroughs comprise the highest portion of this increase.

A Look At Parking In Two Manhattan Neighborhoods.

Manhattan's northern neighborhood of Washington Heights experiences an annual flow of 50 million vehicles crossing into Manhattan via the George Washington Bridge—of these, 46 million are private cars. Not all of these cars stop in Washington Heights. Still, as a resident and runner in this area, I observe the parking gymnastics characteristic of a stretch of Manhattan 7/10 of a mile wide that links drivers north, south, east, or west to the country's densest corridors. Sometimes, while running, I try to count the out-of-state versus in-state plates, which provides excellent insight into how Washington Heights accommodates its public space to meet this parking demand (study to come).

In 2023, as a Community Planning Fellow, I was assigned to a groundbreaking study examining the parking supply and demand in a Manhattan community district that encompasses Soho, the West Village, Noho, and parts of Little Italy and Chelsea. I gathered data to identify all "the viable" parking spaces and then categorized that information according to parking regulations (metered vs. non-metered, alternate street, etc.) and street designs (other curb uses, grandfathered loading zones, etc.) to achieve the most accurate count of parking spaces possible. The data showed a 2:1 ratio between cars and available on-street parking spaces. The data further revealed that residents (without accessory parking/forced to use street parking) were in constant competition not only with visitors and tourists drawn to this vibrant area but also with the increasing alternate uses for curbs, including outdoor dining, bike share racks, containerizations, and initiatives for more green space.

If learning this data helped one community district decide how to determine its land use, can more districts benefit from undergoing similar studies? Can this data shape future conversations to examine better the environmental impacts of (free) street parking? Can parking data offer concrete usage of public space allotted for private use? Um. Yes. Because in a city like New York, all roads—figuratively and literally—lead to parking: It touches all of our lives, whether we drive or not. Legendary parking gurus such as Donald Shoup and Henry Grabar have written tomes of analysis on how parking affects communities. These gentlemen note everything from "circling" congestions, pedestrian accidents, and soaring rent prices to elevated noise levels, violence, space stagnation, and inequality. It is up to community members, now with congestion pricing underway, to get curious about the changes this toll will have on neighborhoods throughout our city. A neighborhood like Washington Heights only measures 7/10 of a mile in width; it is cut in half by a 12-lane highway called the Trans Manhattan Expressway. A highway that potentially took away approximately 480 parking spaces in 1962 —the question then is, will Washington Heights need them back in 2025?