The Continuing Conundrum That Is Bronxville Parking

By Bronxville Mayor Mary Marvin

I was cleaning out a cupboard last week at Village Hall and came across a newspaper from 1939 with a lead article entitled, “What Do We Do About Parking?” I immediately stopped to read the article looking for the elusive answer only to learn the title was rhetorical, not solution oriented.

Issues come and go in Bronxville, but not parking. Since schools have reopened, residents have returned from holiday, store traffic has increased and service organizations have geared up, the issue is again front and center.

The parking needs of the many constituent groups in the Village require the most delicate of balancing with the domino effects often unforeseen. I am quite sure that the Trustees and I don’t always make the best/most popular decisions in this arena but we do truly look and hard at the needs of all the stakeholders we are elected to represent.

In light of the valid, but often very divergent and conflicting needs of each constituent group, I thought it might be helpful to understand our thought processes as we try to balance the needs of each group mindful that every one of them is integral to the rich fabric that defines Bronxville.

The following are just a few vignettes that illustrate some of the conundrums we face:

• The complaint of the merchant tired of his fellow merchant or their employees feeding the meter all day in front of a neighboring store and impeding the free flow of parking for potential customers vs. the doctor, restauranteur, hair salon owner on the same block pleading that their clientele needs the meter feeding option to complete their services.
• The restauranteur, movie theatre owner, gym owner who desires free evening parking meters for their businesses while not recognizing that the same free meters entice folks to park in our business district and then head to Manhattan for the evening via train, thus avoiding $40 plus city garage fee.
• The West Side beauty salon owner or restauranteur who needs lengthy meter time for their customers to enjoy their services while not making the time interval so attractive that it becomes an alternative to the more expensive hospital parking garage.
• The increasingly tight parking situation is also an outgrowth of the success of our institutions. In the recent past, our nursery schools have added sections, our Senior Citizens group has grown in size and offerings, our refurbished library has attracted new patrons and our public school’s enrollment and footprint has expanded significantly, all without the needed additional parking spaces in the equation.

(As point of interest, after surveying my fellow Westchester elected officials, Bronxville government officials were the only ones who are perceived to have a role either historically or defacto in finding parking for school employees)

• The above leads to the following daily scenario:

• Bronxville school teachers frustrated as they circle the blocks looking for parking, competing with postal workers who have an inadequate staff lot or their very own students who drove to school. Paid parking placards have offered a partial solution but other Village groups that are integral to our Village makeup-be it religious institutions, private schools, seniors or hardworking merchants would like placards as well.

It goes without saying that many people move to our Village precisely for our outstanding public school. As government officials, we need them to stay post school use and continue to support the tax base and contribute to Village life. Bottom line, if every resident in the Village housed a school family, we could not survive financially or even structurally given our small land footprint. That being said, it is vital that our government provide services and amenities including parking to keep folks in the Village.

Everyone should and does advocate for their constituency’s parking needs. On any given day a resident library patron will call frustrated that they couldn’t park to use the facility; a school parent with the same frustration will call as they seek to park to volunteer or catch a student performance; a senior citizen will go home because parking options were too far from the activity; a resident cannot unload groceries or have a friend, relative or babysitter park near their home because someone parked there at 7 and left at 5.

These all very valid but often competing interests of our constituencies must be treated as fairly and as even handedly as possible, hence some of the patchwork parking regulations, whose logic isn’t immediately apparent.

Not only do we need to increase our inventory which will happen to a degree with the building of the Kensington Road project. In the interim, all of our stakeholder groups must work with us to most effectively use the supply at hand – be it incentives for parking at a distance, walking to work or school, or using Metro North. I am confident there are solutions out there if we work together as a Village.