The Journal News says parking tickets are up since Muni Meters were installed but the actual number of paid violations is flat. The Nyack Parking Authority wrote 14% more citations this year than last in 2007, however, many of the initial violations during this transition period were subsequently dismissed due to complaints about insufficient instructions explaining how the new meters work.

Source: Journal News, April 24

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The Village Board has authorized bonding for a major reconstruction project for the public off-street parking along Artopee Way, behind Riverspace. About half of this $700k capital project will be dedicated to fix drainage issues, which is currently flooding Nyack Plaza Community Housing. Also, about 60 new spaces will be provided with a better layout. The bus stop, currently on Cedar street, will be moved to Artopee Way near Franklin behind the bank.

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This post was originally placed on the Nyack Social Scene Yahoo listserv. Thanks to the posters and the the keepers of that user group for allowing us to repost this notice here.

Is there a plan to eliminate the white lines that emarcate parking spaces on broadway and main streets? Ditto for the vestigial parking meters. Seems to me that people are still parking solely within the demarcated spots. Eliminating the lines, thereby allowing cars to park bumper to bumper, as in NYC, would probably increase parking inventory (not to mention revenue) by about 30% in the applicable areas.

According to my conversation with Mayor Shields a few weeks ago about this question, he said that the “lines would be covered over when repaving is done in the Spring”. A bit vague but at least the deciders are aware of the issue…

I just got back from a trip to Italy. It is a curse of an urban planner to be thinking about work while traveling to foreign cities. I’m always noticing urban design elements, and this time I was particularly focused on the parking situation.

I noticed that in Italy, there are muni meters everywhere, from the smallest medieval villages to the large cities. It is just a part of life there so there isn’t any confusion or resistance. Change is difficult, so there will be an adjustment period for many residents to get used to the muni meters. There are becoming more commonplace so in time even visitors won’t think twice about them. Nyack is on the vanguard. Continue reading →

The other side of “If you build it, they will come” is: “I threw a party and nobody showed up”.

RiverSpace should be lauded for its attempts at self-subsidization. And the Village of Nyack should certainly take a long, hard look at any proposal that might contribute to a solution to its own festering economic blight. However, to hold urban re-developments, such as those in New York City, Columbia Heights DC, Providence RI, and even Poughkeepsie NY as the paradigm for Nyack to emulate is both naive and wrong-headed. Each of those mentioned had a much larger population base and physical/ social/ economic/ cultural/ geographic/ institutional/ transportation/ employment infrastructure to both drive and support the scale of developments therein. Each had a very different history of development, deterioration and re-development than did Nyack.

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Last week, I waited in vain for the 10:04 Tappan Zee Express bus to arrive at the corner of Main Street and Cedar by the clock in downtown Nyack. It never came. And I waited for 30 mins, in the cold, confused and frustrated. Until another TOR driver told me the stop had moved one block away two weeks ago. Kudos to Rockland County, the Village of Nyack and anyone else who wants to take credit for providing low cost ($1.50 each way) bus service to the Tarrytown Metro North station. It’s a great deal. Continue reading →

Here’s a page which details where you can park in Nyack: http://www.seenyack.com/

Click the link below to open the Nyack BJF Parking Study or the Comprehensive Plan. They are large, so you may want to right click and download:

• Right Click to download Parking Study
• Right Click to download Comprehensive Master Plan
• Parking Deck: A View to the Future — By Barney Peters

The Parking study suggested changing the Alternate side parking regulations to allow overnight parking on both sides of the street.  Instead of having the no parking time on one side be from 2am to 6am, it should be 8am to 11am. This way people could park overnight but that parking will be available when the mid day peak starts. 

I think this is a great idea.  On my block it gets full pretty much every night with the local people parking on the street, but most of them are gone in the morning to work.  The Village could sweep the street, or plow, in the morning.  They don’t usually plow snow overnight anyway since sidestreets seem to get done last and it can be the following afternoon anyway. 

This would be an easy way to give a LOT more parking spaces to residents when they need it.

Should Nyack build a parking garage? It is unclear if there is a shortage of parking.  There is no lack of opinions on the issue, and there was a parking study that surveyed occupancies.  The report concluded that there currently was no shortage of parking, although there are some that dispute those conclusions. 

 There are a lot of issues in building a parking garage, but one thing for sure is that it is a long, expensive process.  On average, a nicely designed garage will cost about $20,000 per space.  So for a smaller garage, about 400 spaces, that is $8 million.  A more substantial garage would well over $10 million.  That is a lot of money for a small village with 6,700 residents. 

The main problem that I see is that the Village does not have any professional staff with the expertise to manage a project of that scale.  Before the Village can dream of large projects to revitalize the local economy, it needs the capacity to manage the project.  To put it in perspective, a private developer would make something in the order of $1.5 million dollars for a project of that scale.  That is a lot of money, and it is a tremendous amount of work and risk, and a developer can only make that kind of money if he or she has a proven track record that they can pull off projects of that scale. 

The Village needs somebody with experience in economic development.  Then we can think about doing it……