The Big City; Move Along, A V.I.P. Needs Your Space
The New York Times
By John Tierney

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If the Mayor and the police are determined to continue Operation Move Along, the campaign against double-parking, they might at least give it an honest name. This should be known as Operation Get Out of My Space. It's like Captain Kidd leading a campaign against piracy.

While the officers of the 24th Precinct were blitzing the Upper West Side with double-parking tickets last week, their personal cars were double- and triple-parked outside the station house on 100th Street. Meanwhile, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and City Council members were parking for free in their own reserved spots and in the many curbside zones set aside for various kinds of permit holders.

Political leaders have broad permits good in all the zones, because in an emergency it is absolutely vital for them to reach the scene while television cameras are still rolling. The zones are also reserved for the personal cars of other essential public servants, like gym teachers who would have to risk commuting by mass transit if there weren't curbside spaces outside schools.

The city gives out permits to teachers, police officers, firefighters, municipal bureaucrats, journalists (not me, alas) and assorted others -- 140,000 in all, which helps explain why the rest of us end up double-parked. Through those V.I.P. zones and other giveaways, New York's officials have made a congested mess of the streets.

''The way we waste our public space is inexcusable,'' said John Kaehny, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a group that promotes alternatives to automobiles. ''Whether you're an environmentalist like me who wants to reduce the number of cars here, or whether you think the car is the ideal form of urban transportation, you have to be appalled at our irrational policies on parking.''

For decades, New York officials have simultaneously discouraged the construction of parking garages and frittered away the spots on the street. Besides giving away spots to municipal workers, the city has marked off loading zones where commercial vehicles can park for free.

The zones can be legally used only for a brief time while freight is being unloaded, but they've become private parking lots for commuting merchants. A study by the Department of Transportation found a quarter of the commercial spaces occupied by vehicles used by merchants for commuting. With those vans hogging the curb all day, working trucks are forced to double-park and clog the streets.

WE need to find a more logical way to allocate the finite space on the street,'' said Elliot G. Sander, director of the Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University. Four years ago, when he was the city's transportation commissioner, he and business leaders developed a solution: a plan for charging commercial vehicles in midtown for the time they spend at the curb. But the city has yet to implement it.

''Instead of rationally pricing scarce space, the city is basically subjecting drivers to a negative lottery,'' said Charles Komanoff, a trustee of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a consortium of planning groups. ''A few are haphazardly given tickets for double-parking even though they have no alternative, just as a few get ticketed for getting stuck in clogged intersections. Drivers are being randomly punished just for showing up.''

He and Mr. Kaehny would like to see drivers pay market prices for the real estate they occupy, which would lead to higher rates at parking meters and an end to free parking on many residential streets. The curbside spaces might be allocated by auctioning permits. There could also be bidding by nondrivers, like a street vendor who wanted to rent a curbside spot, or a neighborhood group wishing to restore a block to its pre-automobile elegance.

Until 1950, it was illegal to park overnight in Manhattan, which is why the old cityscapes show gracefully uncluttered streets. Many of the sidewalks were much wider than today's and adorned with greenery.

The city's pedestrian majority, as Police Commissioner Arthur Wallander approvingly observed in 1947, was firmly opposed to ''the public streets being used as garages.'' But the city's politicians had their own cars to park and favors to hand out. So some of the world's most expensive real estate has ended up being used to store hulks of metal, at unbeatable prices.

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