NYC drivers would lose roughly 300,000 parking spots and taxpayers would be in the hole for $3 billion under a bill being fast-tracked by far-left City Council members.
The NYC Council’s Progressive Caucus announced this week that it plans to push the full Council to approve legislation by year’s end requiring the city to remove all parking spaces located within 20 feet of crosswalks — and replace them with bike racks, bollards and other structures that block vehicles.
Proponents of the so-called “Universal Daylighting” bill, introduced in December by Councilwoman Julie Won (D-Queens), say it would increase road visibility at intersections, cut down on traffic-related deaths and put the city in compliance with an existing state law banning parking within 20 feet of intersections that the Big Apple has long been exempted from.
“This bill will make our streets exponentially safer for all: drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists,” said Won, a caucus member whose district includes parking-challenged Long Island City.
But the bill faces fierce opposition, including from the unlikeliest of sources: transportation honchos in Mayor Eric Adams’ administration who’ve also long been pushing an anti-car agenda.
During an April hearing on the legislation, city DOT officials cited an agency study that found increased visibility at intersections could encourage speeding and sharper turns.
“If this … were implemented citywide, we think we could expect an increase of up to 15,000 injuries in a year,” DOT Deputy Commissioner Eric Beaton told Council members.
He also said installing bollards or other infrastructure blocking parking spaces at each of the city’s roughly 40,000 intersections would cost $3 billion.
Won’s bill doesn’t include a timeline for when such a project must be finished, but it would require the DOT to install such infrastructure on at least 1,000 corners a year.
The agency has already made such changes near several hundred intersections over the past few years through redesigns aimed at reducing traffic, and parking is already restricted near many other intersections, including corners with bus lanes.
Twenty-seven of the City Council’s 51 members — including the 18 caucus members — have signed onto the bill as sponsors.
Although the legislation already has a majority needed to pass, an additional seven votes would be needed to override a mayoral veto.
“This bill is so bad that even the inept DOT is against it, which tells you just how radical it is,” said Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens).
“Daylighting should be applied based on data and safety studies at busy and dangerous intersections — not imposed as a blanket policy pushed by a progressive caucus that isn’t serious about governing.”
Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, a Republican who successfully lobbied the city earlier this year to retain precious parking spaces in Sheepshead Bay and other parts of southern Brooklyn, agreed, saying “when even the anti-car woke activists at DOT are raising red flags, you know this bill is a problem.”
“This universal daylighting mandate is a reckless, one-size-fits-all proposal that would eliminate hundreds of thousands of parking spots and hurt everyday New Yorkers — particularly seniors, families, and small business owners — without making our streets meaningfully safer,” she said.
“The progressives in the Council should stop trying to play urban planner and start listening to the people who actually live here.”
Shannon Phipps, a North Brooklyn activist and founder of the Berry Street Alliance, also blasted the bill, saying she believes it will encourage reckless riding by cyclists and is being driven behind the scenes by lobbyists pushing an anti-car agenda on New Yorkers.
“The city’s taken away so many parking spots already,” she said. “[City officials] don’t seem to care about seniors and people with disabilities who need to get around by car.”
