I’m fascinated by the modalities of owning a car in NYC. I’ve read that most people don’t have assigned parking spaces and use garages, which often have 24-hr waits for accessing one’s vehicle since a valet needs time to get it out of a tightly packed space. This is backed up by multiple sources \[1\]\[2\].
I’m figuring, a hypothetical garage that let people self-park whenever they want would command a price premium for the convenience, and save on the staffing costs of valets. How is it that such a garage doesn’t come into existence and put the valet-only garages out of business?
\[1\] [https://jalopnik.com/owning-a-car-in-new-york-is-absolutely-worth-it-1782352176](https://jalopnik.com/owning-a-car-in-new-york-is-absolutely-worth-it-1782352176)\[2\] SpotHero’s guide to NYC parking – link omitted since it has a chance of triggering a spam filter
Edit: It looks like the point about taking 24 hrs to retrieve a car is out-of-date – it’s more like 30 mins.
In: Economics
Most people in NYC don’t park their cars in garages. Most people street park – meaning they drive around looking for a vacant unassigned space on the street to park their car. Most streets have specific days and times where a city agency will use a street cleaner vehicle to clean up dirt and debris, which subsequently requires drivers to move their car to a different side of the street or a different street due to the cleaning taking place. If you don’t move your car, you can receive a municipal fine or have your car impounded if you receive enough fines and you don’t pay them.
While many people do utilize parking garages, it generally consists of visitors/tourists or the wealthy that don’t want to deal with alternate side parking. Valet Parking garages staff try to take as many cars as possible (Almost always significantly higher than their legal capacity) to maximize profit. Because of this, it can sometimes take a bit of time to move the cars systematically to allow a car to be brought to the surface or exit for the customer to retake possession of said car. This is why notice is required to pick up your car. Otherwise, you might have to wait a while.
While there are self-serve parking garages, those are usually reserved for shopping centers where you aren’t expected to leave them overnight. Also when a garage is valet, the garage operator is not required to have standard marked parking spaces (read: lines) for each car, which allows to cram in more cars per square foot because the valet staff has control of all the vehicles in the facility rather multiple competing drivers potentially crashing into one another and/or creating an underground traffic jam and/or fire hazard.
NYC regulations no longer permit the construction of new structures in most parts of the city with the sole purpose of serving as a parking garage. The exception to this rule are garages which are accessory to new residential housing construction. Basically because land is so expensive and land/housing is so scarce, the intent was to prevent land from being re-purposed for parking at the expense of potential residential housing.
Latest Answers