Red Hook to lose parking spaces, by Nathan Weiser

It is likely that Red Hook will be getting a car share option for the first time once we get to the end of the spring or beginning of the summer.

According to Eric McClure, the co-chair of CB6’s Transportation Committee, the car share will take a total of 10 parking spaces in Red Hook and 90 total throughout Community Board 6.

“I think the plan for Red Hook was five locations with 10 total parking spaces, so 10 cars total in dedicated places,” McClure said. “There will potentially be multiple different car share companies in Red Hook.”

The car share companies that will potentially be in Red Hook include Car2Go, ZipCar, Maven, Reach Now, Enterprise and Getaround.

The proposed car share sites are Van Brunt and Verona Street, Van Brunt and King Street, Van Brunt and Dikeman Street, Van Brunt and Reed Street and West 9th Street and Columbia Street.

New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) claim to have solicited community input and did outreach when choosing Red Hook and the specifics spaces, although this newspaper was unaware of this ahead of time.

“They first came to the community board transportation committee last spring to present the preliminary map and potential locations, and then they had an online portal up for about six months where people could vote for or against locations,” McClure said. “The community board also posted a link to that.”

DOT came back to the committee in January with an updated map with the decided upon locations and those will probably be put into play at the end of the spring.

According to the presentation that DOT gave in January, they made a public announcement regarding car share at City Council in December of 2016, they went through the planning and rule change process in the summer of 2017, permit applications were open in fall of 2017 and the permit allocation and sign installation will happen in spring of 2018.

In Red Hook, DOT found that 72 percent – 93 percent of cars owned are stored (a census derived number of vehicles owned by residents that are not used for commuting to work), and 40 percent to 70 percent of workers take public transportation.

DOT decided on the locations based on the feedback that was given by people who showed up to the meeting. Many members of the public who showed up to the meeting were not in favor but this ended up not being voted on because it was going to happen either way.

“We probably had 10 or 12 members of the public show up for the community board committee meeting,” McClure said. “Most of those were to complain about not wanting the car share on their blocks.”

However, the transportation committee on the whole was favorable with some minor concerns.

The committee didn’t vote on the implementation of this car share because this program has been legislated into law by Mayor de Blasio, so it didn’t make sense for them to vote one way or another.

DOT found that based on evidence from before and after car share in Park Slope that it scan reduce parking demand.

The various car share companies that currently have cars in the city will be able to apply for the permit for the available spaces in Red Hook. McClure thinks that
there will be a combination of the different operators.

DOT believes that the city needs to use its streets as efficiently as possible to move people and goods. This leads to increasing the amount of residents who walk, bike and take public transportation.

They think that shared use mobility options like car share complement their goals of using streets as efficiently as possible.

Nathan Weiser