Cheap Weekend Parking In Manhattan?

February 4, 2012 10:53 PM

Cheap parking for a weekend in NYC? Staying near Times Square.

We're going to New York City for the weekend and staying in a hotel near Times Square, and the hotel wants A HUNDRED AND FORTY BUCKS to let us park the car for the weekend. Any other options? We'll be spending time in Brooklyn too, so that would also work.

posted by Bobby Bittman to travel & transportation around New York, NY (7 answers total)

http://primospot.com/

$140 is definitely the hotel price, but don't expect anything cheap.
posted by swngnmonk at 11:08 PM on February 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

That link is gold, swngnmonk, thanks. There's a place that charges $29/day right around the corner.
posted by Bobby Bittman at 11:15 PM on February 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

If you're serious about Brooklyn, then it shouldn't be too hard to find free and safe street parking over a weekend anywhere around the Park Slope/BoCoCa/Fort Greene areas. There's usually good weekend parking in front of schools... you can't park in front of them during school hours, so people who keep their cars parked for multiple days (like me) tend to avoid them. My girlfriend never has problems finding free weekend parking when she visits me.
posted by painquale at 12:35 AM on February 5, 2012

If you park on the street, be SURE to remove any sign of expensive gadgets from your car. My friends parked their car in my neighborhood in Queens, and they put the GPS in the glovebox, but the holder was still visible on the windshield, and they had their windows smashed. Honestly, unless you really can't afford it, I think parking in a garage is worth your piece of mind.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:36 AM on February 5, 2012

CHECK THE STREET SIGNS! I cannot stress this enough. Walk around your damn car for like five minutes and make sure you're not missing a sign. Also, check for curb cuts. How far do you have to be from a fire hydrant in NY? Anyone?

If you are in a place where nobody's parked on one side of the street, there's probably some sort of alternating side parking rule.

The best time to find a spot is a fifteen minutes before the night parking rules go into effect and people have to move.

You will see people sitting in their cars reading the paper waiting for this time to come up (or probably now, on their phones---it's been a while since I've parked in NY).

I'm not sure about NY, but holidays may have an effect on the alternate side rule because in some places, parking is related to street sweeping and trash pickup.

This may seem like I'm being overcautious, but in 2003, I got towed after parking in Brooklyn. They screwed up the power steering, and it took forever to find the car. I went to the cops, and they thought it had been stolen. When I finally found it, I had to pay something like $200 to get my car out of the lot.

$29 x day doesn't sound that bad to me for peace of mind. Getting your car broken into is awful as well. Especially if they break a glass panel, which is difficult to replace.

I know I'm rambling. I've just been living in a difficult parking world for a long time. Watch out. Having lived in some tricky parts of the Boston area, $29 x day sounds like a parking vacation to me.
posted by shushufindi at 7:02 AM on February 5, 2012

I visit the upper west side a couple of times a year, always over weekends, and I've never had a problem finding on-street parking. Stress is on weekends - people who own a car & live in Manhattan seem to go away a lot. Of course I follow New York Parking Rules, as I learned them in the '70s - remove all objects, valuable or not, from the passenger compartment, and if you need to leave anything in the trunk, put it there before you arrive at your final destination. That said, a lot of people seem just fine leaving their Mercedes on 113th st with an Easy Pass responder in the window.
posted by mr vino at 8:05 AM on February 5, 2012

How far do you have to be from a fire hydrant in NY? Anyone?

Fifteen feet.
posted by painquale at 12:31 PM on February 5, 2012