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City Testing New Technology to Make Parking Easier

CBS New York

Street parking could soon get a lot easier for drivers in the city. The Department of Transportation is launching a new program to take the stress out of finding a spot.

Crews spent Wednesday morning sliding in yellow, hockey-puck sized sensors in a first-of-its kind effort to put the pleasure back into New York City parking.

“It’s hard to park around this area, it’s not easy,” Belmont resident Ramiro Reyes told CBS 2′s Jessica Schneider.

Out-of-towners often flock to the area around Arthur Avenue, but parking can be a pain. Now, the DOT wants to change that.

“We’re hoping that people won’t have to circle looking for a space so it will ease congestion,” said Catherine Matera with the NYC DOT.

Matera is the senior project manager for the initiative that will track open parking spaces in the Bronx. It’s already been tested in San Francisco and Los Angeles, but officials want to know if it will work in New York City, where parking spaces aren’t marked and cars might not trigger the devices.

It’s also unknown if the sensors can survive the rain, snow and wear and tear of these streets. All of this will be tested over the next two months and if it works drivers looking for a spot near 187th Street and Arthur Avenue will be able to log online by the summer to see what spots are open.

“If it works, that’s fine with me, because I drive every day,” Reyes said.

Business is always booming at M&G restaurant, and employees said one of the biggest complaints from their customers is just how hard it is to find parking.

“I think it’s a good idea for all the people who come to visit little Italy here,” employee Guillermo Marquez said. “A lot of times they complain, almost every day they complain about the parking. They get a lot of tickets on the street, yeah.”

If it passes muster, the program is set to kick off by spring in the other boroughs if this initial test-run in the Bronx works as planned.

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9 Comments

  • Double Edged Sword

    Knowing the City the next phase of this technology will be to use these devices to monitor parking for the purpose of giving parking summonses too.

  • goyishe kop

    “but officials want to know if it will work in New York City, where parking spaces aren’t marked”

    Solution: mark the parking spots!
    Added benefit: cars won’t take up 2 spots like it’s always done in CH

  • And some mistakes were made that day....

    What happens with busses which will inevitably take up more than one uniformly-sized spot? What about smaller cars that will not activate sensors if parked in between the two sensors that neither end of the car reaches?

  • IN MY OPINION

    to #5, marking the spots will be counter productive as they use more space per car than the average spot used in c”h. those few times (relatively speaking) when you see a car taking up two parking spots, though it’s annoying, i’d think it the better choice.

    More importantly, we must consider the possibility of them being able to track how long you’ve been in the spot… making it easier for cops to stop cars to give tickets to… just sayin

  • Chelmer Chosid

    In Chelm they tried this. To track where the smart people go. Guess what. There were no smart people.

    Are there parking spots to be found?