Believe it or not, parking’s effects are as far-reaching as any important policy. A community’s parking options shape its culture, economics, and environment. It’s a dynamic and complicated topic: parking can reflect (or even spark) a neighborhood’s gentrifying tensions. It can empower or hamper under-served communities, like the disabled or elderly; it can create or take away billions of dollars in revenue. Parking effects pollution, safety, wealth, and, of course, accessibility. At MyParkingSign, we monitor and report the latest happenings in parking, be they bureaucratic, like increasing fines, technological, like a parking new app, or instructional, like how to manage parking legally and efficiently.
News
Win a sign! Send us your best distracted driving slogan
Attention road users: April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month, and MyParkingSign wants you to join in advocating safer roads for pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists. Why? The amount of drivers who take their eyes off the road is disturbing: in a recent study, 69% of American adults admitted to using their cell phone while driving during the month […]
New research shows road accidents kill over a million people worldwide
Road disasters happen, whether you live in a two stoplight town in rural New England or drive an auto rickshaw in populous Bangalore, India. However, new research by the Worldwide Health Organization reveals the alarming statistic that an astonishing 1.24 million people died on the world’s roads in 2010. Learning that road traffic deaths are […]
Accessible parking sign guerrillas strike Brooklyn
It’s easy to forget that there was a time before the advent of so-called handicapped parking signs in the ’90s – in other words, a time before the Americans with Disabilities Act. Before then, parking was pretty much just parking, and you took what you could get, even if you had a disability. Today, there […]
Gentrification debate sparked by bike parking in Brooklyn
Bicycle parking — it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back on Franklin Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. In front of Little Zelda, a coffee shop with a distinctly Parisian feel, is a new bike corral, championed by the proprietor of the shop. It’s comprised of three metal rings spaced along one former parking space. Other […]
Chris Hoogewerff of QuickPay talks parking, startups, and the app market
Savvy drivers know that paying for parking is becoming less about scouring the street for empty meters and more about scanning your smart phone. And why not? Your phone, after all, can house apps like QuickPay, that give you access to real-time data, allowing you to pay for parking through their service, a text, or […]
Rising bike theft prompts police stings and a free registry
Thousands of bikes and bike parts get stolen in the U.S. every year (image used under Creative Commons via Flowizm). Earlier this month, the Bay Area Rapid Transit Police (BART) commenced a sting operation in San Francisco that led to the arrest of a bike thief. The thief had in his possession over ten bikes […]
The 10 Most Dangerous Roads in America
Plotting a road trip? In many cases, it’s best to take the road less traveled; but there are often good reasons other drivers are taking alternative routes. Of all the roads in the U.S., 10 are consistently the deadliest.
Can a parking garage be intellectual property?
11 11 Lincoln Road, at night. Licensed under Creative Commons, some rights reserved; photo by miamism. Here at parkingsigns.net, we think a lot about how parking works, from the economics and urban planning aspects to the environmental impact, cost recovery and municipal fine structures. We were caught off-guard this week when a news item alerted […]
An innovation in road safety: the Smart Highway to debut in Holland
Communication about inclement weather would be part of the “Dynamic Paint” system proposed by the Dutch design team (via Studio Roosegaarde). Reflectivity on the roads might be getting a whole new coat of paint soon, thanks to some innovative ideas coming out of Europe. Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde, working alongside the civil engineers at Heijmans […]
Education programs may be the ticket to avoiding bike accidents and traffic fines
After the NYPD’s crackdown on bicycle traffic violations engineered by Operation Safe Cycle, cyclists complained that the wrong offenses were being targeted, and there was no effort to educate the city’s thousands of bikers (via Transportation Nation). There’s nothing like taking a leisurely bike ride and then being slapped with a $270 ticket! Although, these […]
New York Yankees parking surplus means multimillion-dollar loss
George Steinbrenner’s legacy, the new Yankee Stadium, includes better and more bathrooms, slightly less seating – and 9,000 too many parking spaces. If the Yankees have an Achilles’ heel, it’s not their dodgy relief pitching or Jeter’s questionable ankle – it’s their parking garages. As Transportation Nation reports, Yankee Stadium’s garages, which are operated by […]