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New Study: NYC Civil Servants Drive Twice as Much

September 1, 2005

New Yorkers don’t drive; only 2 in 10 New Yorkers even own car. In fact, car ownership rates in New York City are the lowest in the United States, and lower than many European cities like Copenhagen and Paris where pedestrians, bicyclists and transit riders are the priority and treated like royalty.

But here in New York, the supermajority of non-drivers don’t have it nearly so good, having to contend with narrow sidewalks, short walk signals, car-oriented streets hostile to walking and bicycling, and dismally slow buses. What gives?

A new study from Schaller Consulting, “Top 10 Drive-to-Work Census Tracts in Manhattan” sheds light on this “transportation gap”, revealing that New York’s influential class of civil servants drives to work at twice the rate of the general population.

Says Paul Steely White, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives:

“What good is one MetroCard Mayor when we have tens of thousands of motoring municipals? The people who set our city’s priorities should get from A to B like the rest of us.”

White adds that it is the availability of guaranteed free parking that provides the special incentive for government employees to drive.

Specifically, the study shows that:

  • 33% of government workers commute by auto
  • 16% of all workers commute by auto
  • 13% of finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) workers drive to work
  • 11% of workers in professional and management services industries drive to work
  • If government workers commuted by car at the same rate as FIRE and professional workers, there would be 14,000 fewer cars coming into the Manhattan Central Business District each day. Collecting metered parking rates on the parking spaces currently used by these cars would generate over $33 million annually in revenues to the City.