15th
A New Form of Real Estate for NYC
If you have ever had a car in New York City, then you know it can be a miserable experience. Even for the people living in the city, very few buildings due to their age have parking so many people have their cars in lots that are a few blocks away. This is especially true on the upper west side where I used to live.
When I was in the South of France a few weeks ago and saw these interesting automated reserved spot barrier systems. They gave me an idea that you could sell street spots to people in a auction type of process. How much would a rich New Yorker pay to have his car parked in front of the entrance to their building?
Now you might be thinking that this would be a highly inefficient use of spots, well you are correct. It solves the 2nd problem that NY has which is too many cars in the city. Bloomberg tried to do a congestion pricing tax like London had done but that failed to pass. Less free spots would definitely translate to less cars in the city.
I tried to do some back of the napkin numbers on this, I figure there has to be at least 10,000 free spaces (non-meter) with about 2,000 being high value. A high value spot should go for around $10,000 (some could go for crazy numbers in a auction) and the rest should average at least $3,000 per year. That would mean the city could raise around $50,000,000 annually and cut down on congestion at the same time. Seems like a good idea to me…
