Watt the hell?
The city wants to remove 100 parking spots to make way for charging stations for electric cars — even though they make up just 0.4 percent of vehicles in the Big Apple.
Fifty curbside hubs are to be installed by next spring in “pilot” zones across the five boroughs, according to the city Department of Transportation.
But residents in targeted neighborhoods are already buzzing about the parking they’ll lose to make way for the niche “volts-wagons.”
“That’s so stupid,” said Upper East Sider Maya Jaafar, 26, who suggested officials should instead focus on public transit.
“The city is congested as it is.”
Charging stations are planned for neighborhoods in every borough, including “No Park” Slope and Williamsburg in Brooklyn, Long Island City in Queens, Staten Island’s North Shore and Morris Heights and Kingsbridge in The Bronx.
In Manhattan, the city is targeting the Upper West Side, Upper East Side and Washington Heights.
Each station has space for two cars to juice up for $2.50 an hour for up to eight hours, according to the city.
According to the DOT, only 8,952 electric vehicles are registered in New York City — a figure that includes 2,200 in the city’s own municipal fleet, which already has access to charging stations on city property.
That’s just a fraction of the more than 2 million registered vehicles citywide, according to data from the state Department of Motor Vehicles.
Queens and Manhattan lead the city in electric-vehicle registrations with around 3,000 each, according to the data.
Brooklyn has about 1,800 and Staten Island has 851. The Bronx is last with just 476.
“I guess this is a good way to conserve energy and promote electric cars, but people in my neighborhood barely have electric cars,” said 21-year-old Washington Heights resident Yunise Ramirez.
“Finding parking is already difficult in the city, and now it would be more of a struggle to find it. It takes 20 minutes to an hour on a good day to find parking.”
The city, however, is touting the plan as an environmentally friendly response to climate change.
“Increasing the number of electric vehicles in the five boroughs is an important part of the city’s effort to fight climate change by reducing emissions 80% by 2050, the DOT says on its website promoting the project.
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