Recent letter sent to both Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul:
Dear Mayor Adams/Governor Hochul,
New buildings are being built in New York City every day, and none of them have public parking spaces required. The city and the state have got to do something about this. The streets can no longer be properly cleaned because there are cars parked on the streets all the time; buses cannot stay in their lanes because of these same cars that are parked. The city obviously requires and receives a certain amount of revenue from legal parking. If a consistent effort was made to create several floors of public parking in every building that’s built in the city, with the same charge as on-street parking, a dent could be made in areas of heavy traffic. Obviously, people living in certain parts of New York City and certain people who come to work every day need and have the right to have parking available to them at some reasonable cost. Public transportation does not solve all the transportation problems for everyone.
These tall buildings have already destroyed the light and the view. They have obliterated the view of the Empire State Building and the beautiful Chrysler Building. Some renovation of the lower floors of these buildings should be made. At least if the cars are off the streets it would at least make up for a little bit of the destruction created.
The point is, these new tall buildings are being created, destroying the view of the city, destroying the light, and parking isn’t even included in the buildings. Taxes increase for the citizens of New York and the quality of life goes down. If these buildings are to be put up, the least they should have to do is include parking to make up for a small part of the damage that they are causing.
The other thing that makes New York increasingly difficult are the ridiculous, oversized public transport buses. There is no reason in this world to run these huge buses more than half empty from morning until night. They block traffic, they don’t stay in their lanes because of the cars parked in the streets, they serve no worthwhile purpose. It would be far better to have small buses and simply send more of them out at rush hour. Perhaps the drivers could be paid more like taxi drivers so that there would be no additional salary cost to the city of having extra buses. If they ran more frequently and were more reliable, that would also cut down on the need for private cars. In order to get parking off of the streets to clear traffic, parking must be provided elsewhere at the same cost.
The problem in New York is that they allow new problems to be created on top of old ones instead of solving old ones first.
I hope that you can focus some attention on this problem so that you can improve the quality of life in this great city of ours.
Sincerely,
Rita Fredricks Salzman