Rosen: Parking Garages Flout The Law

The following op-ed is by Allan Rosen, a Manhattan Beach resident and former Director of MTA/NYC Transit Bus Planning (1981). For a complete list of his contributions to Sheepshead Bites, which includes many articles about the bus cuts, MTA and DOT, click here.

Kings Plaza is having free parking days next week on Monday through Wednesday December 6 through December 8. Better take advantage or else you will pay $3.00 to park there all day. Of course you probably know that already. But what if it is your first time shopping there? You would think that you would be informed of that fact before you enter the parking garage.

Not so.

You won’t find out the rate until you are already inside. If you decide that $3.00 is too much? Well, that’s too bad. Now there are three cars behind you waiting for you to enter, so you can’t exactly back up and change your mind. In other words you are stuck.

Is this fair? Of course not.

That’s why back in the 70s or 80s the city passed a law requiring all public garages to display their parking rates in large print before you commit yourself, so you can shop around so to speak. Sounds to me that if the law is still on the books, it is just not enforced anymore and no one seems to care.

Check out the parking garage on Kings Highway that replaced the Municipal Parking Lot. There, parking will cost you a whopping $4.00 including taxes for the first hour. Two hours will cost you $7.00 and three hours for $9.00. There, too, you won’t find out the rates until you reach the bottom of a long driveway, that is if you are even able to read them from the driver’s seat. The lighting isn’t exactly great, and backing out does not look to be easy.

So what should be done about the potentially illegal – and personally frustrating – lack of signage?