Curb Enthusiasm: Rideshare Parking, Electric Chargers, And Citi Bikes Coming To A Corner Near You

The city is expanding its program dedicated to ensuring dedicated parking for carshare companies to hundreds more residential street corners this year, with 20 new locations coming to Brooklyn in the next two weeks. The locations will be reserved for exclusive use by cars from Getaround and Zipcar. The third authorized carsharing company, Truqit, currently has no locations in Brooklyn.

The city is also expanding bicycle lanes and Citi bike locations, adding bus lanes, rethinking Brooklyn's bus network, loading zones, garbage storage and disposal, and so much more.

Dedicated Parking for Carshares

Such parking sites are located in pairs at the corners of residential, unmetered blocks, within 40 feet of the nearest intersection, where alternate side parking or street cleaning takes place no more than twice a week. The companies pay the city an annual fee of $475 per on-street curbside parking site.

"We now have the proof that convenient access to carshare frees New Yorkers from the burden of car ownership – while helping to fight climate change," said DOT Commissioner Rodriguez, announcing the expansion today.

And while there are definite environmental as well as individual pocketbook benefits to sharing rather than owning cars in a city as dense as NYC (Streetsblog looked at the report on the pilot program back in December), what the city does not advertise as prominently is that these "Spaces must be sited in a permanent parking lane (cannot convert to a moving lane)."

This has significant implications for the future use of streets.

And while the city has been busy rethinking the use of the curb spaces, there has been little by way of public discussion on this topic – local news outlets are not what they used to be, and few go to the community board meetings –  so let's see what else is planned.

Bicycles

In addition to this car-sharing parking expansion, the city is also expanding and looking for curb space for bike sharing (Citi bike), along with expanding bike lanes in Flatbush and Midwood, East Flatbush, and a very long list of other projects.

CitiBike is coming to parts of Flatbush and East Flatbush, bordered by Coney Island Ave to the west, Caton and Clarkson Avenues to the north, Utica Ave to the east, and Cortelyou Road to the south, this year as the final installment of Phase 3 expansion of the network in Brooklyn.

The city's Department of Transportation is currently soliciting feedback on the best locations for new bike stands (as well as where they should not be placed - as of today, over 600 responses have been logged in their system). Train stations and libraries are popular spots, as are commercial strips like Church Ave, Bedford Ave, and Cortelyou Road, along with notes to make the bike lanes permanently protected.

Buses

The city is also looking at reorganizing its bus network and increasing the number of dedicated bus lanes – that means looking at available curbs as well.

Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

The city is also currently piloting electric curbside charging, which is likely to be expanded to 10,000 spots, locking in even more parking spots permanently.

When the city celebrated the installation of the 100th Level 2 public electric vehicle charging port in August of 2022, ConEdison, who is funding the 4-year pilot, put out a press release saying it "sees an increasingly vibrant EV market in New York, citing the interest in its PowerReady program which offers incentives covering up to 100 percent of the infrastructure costs of installing new chargers. The company aims to support the installation of approximately 19,000 chargers by 2025."

It's good business. The city says that at EV charging stations, "Users pay for charging on a per hour basis, with a cost of charging that is competitive with the cost of gasoline for an internal combustion engine vehicle." They also pay for any on-street parking meters where charging stations are located.

Concerns for Future

Once installed, the streets on which these charging facilities are located can no longer be converted to what the city calls "moving lanes" – bus lanes, bicycle lanes, or anything but parking. Dedicated parking for carsharing is of a more temporary nature – after all, it is just paint on the ground and a new sign –  but that, too, signals what is and what is not coming to a block near you.

Below are the locations of the new and existing carshare and electric vehicle charging stations across Brooklyn.

Brooklyn's on-street charging locations (Street followed by cross streets and the number of level 2 chargers):