Parking
New York's DC USA, but with a ferry instead of Metro
The New York Times claims Brooklynites aren't hating the Red Hook IKEA quite as much as they anticipated. The water taxi to Manhattan and shuttle buses to downtown Brooklyn, which run every day and are available to non-shoppers, make the neighborhood more accessible. Hopefully they will stay; IKEA has only promised to keep them running on weekends.
Photo by mjpeacecorps on Flickr.
There's also a new waterfront esplanade, though it's marred by the giant parking lot IKEA created atop a historic graving dock. That parking lot has only been used twice, despite strong sales at IKEA; according to the store manager, the lot is only for "insurance." Hopefully they will decide to sell this useless lot so it can have more stores, housing, or a park one day; this is why cities like NYC and DC need strategically-targeted maximums. (Oops, I talked about the OP parking proposal. Sorry!)
In other Brooklyn parking news, Councilmember Simcha Felder wants to replace all meters with multi-space meters. These would enable paying with credit cards. Felder also wants NYC DOT to set up pay-by-phone citywide. It's an especially great idea because once NYC has multi-space meters and pay-by-phone everywhere, it's technologically easy to implement performance parking in high-demand areas of the city.
NYC Councilmembers are less pleased about losing their reserved spaces outside their district offices. Mayor Bloomberg took away these special privilages for four Councilmembers after controversy. They still have placards allowing them to park illegally, however, so they don't entirely have to stoop to following the same rules as ordinary citizens.
 | David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington and Greater Greater Education. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.   |
Comments
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And now it's gone.
Oh well. Enjoy your Flrvn armchairs, New Yorkers.
by EdTheRed on Aug 14, 2008 6:19 pm • link • report
by NikolasM on Aug 14, 2008 6:33 pm • link • report
the most dramatic impact on the neighborhood is the traffic- a road that passes through the main neighborhood park before ikea opened was very lightly used. now it is bumper to bumper on weekends and very hard to bike in the neighborhood.
by mfs on Aug 14, 2008 10:58 pm • link • report
by Vik on Aug 15, 2008 8:01 am • link • report
by Squalish on Aug 15, 2008 12:51 pm • link • report
Unfortunately, Ikea has killed no less than 7 furniture stores up Route 1 (Carolina Furniture, Galaxy, Regents, the one across from Galaxy on 198, another one on Main Street, the store in the mall, and a futon store in Laurel Lakes). They're the Wal-Mart of furniture stores, they are wasteful in their land use, and mega-stores have NO BUSINESS being located on a WATERFRONT (the CP store has acres of surface parking right next to the Paint Branch stream! Grossly irresponsible). I'd expect much better from the Swedes!
by Dave Murphy on Aug 16, 2008 4:26 am • link • report
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