Posted on October 24, 2019 at 8:12 am by West Sider



An image from a short film about the madness of parking on the Upper West Side.

Community Board 7 will hold a forum on Tuesday, October 29 to consider what to do with the “acres of public real estate” currently used for curbside parking. The meeting will take place from 6:30 to 8:30 at St Paul and St Andrew’s Church – 263 West 86th Street (between Broadway and West End Avenue).

Hundreds of parking spots in the neighborhood have been replaced with other uses in the past few years — for bike lanes, Uber/Lyft/Juno drop-off spots, and other uses — and the Community Board 7 Transportation Committee has already proposed eliminating all free curbside parking in the neighborhood.

“The forum will cover different possible uses of curbside space including: various parking options, street seats, bike corrals, pedestrian friendly opportunities, dedicated bus lanes, and other potential uses. Please come with an open mind and with questions for the panelists,” according to the flyer from Community Board 7.

Speakers will include Charles Komanoff, who “‘re-founded’ NYC’s bike-advocacy group Transportation Alternatives in the 1980s, co-founded the pedestrian-rights group Right Of Way in the 1990s,” and has designed the financial model for the congestion pricing law that will take effect after next year. Howard Yaruss, the co-chair of the transportation committee, is also a board member at Transportation Alternatives.

The other panelists include:

Ed Pincar, the Manhattan Borough Commissioner at the NYC Department of Transportation.

And Rachel Weinberger, Senior Fellow for Transportation at the Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit focused on the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut metropolitan region.