In an editorial, former Hoboken resident Kevin gives his take on why having dynamic pricing of parking in the Mile Square City is a gentrification tax.
At the last Hoboken City Council meeting, an ordinance that would have required public hearings and a council vote before residential parking permit rates could be raised through “dynamic pricing” failed 4–4 without debate.
With less than two months until Election Day, it’s hard not to see silence as political strategy.
Three mayoral candidates, Ruben Ramos, Tiffanie Fisher, and Mike Russo, voted yes.
Emily Jabbour voted no, joined by three other former Team Bhalla members. Dini Ajmani, another mayoral candidate, attended the meeting but did not comment, so her position remains unknown.
Dynamic pricing means letting city staff use algorithms to raise the annual cost of a residential parking permit based on “demand.”
In practice, this doesn’t mean the price changes every week, but it does mean permits could be raised significantly over time with no limits, and with no council vote.
The city could theoretically raise residential parking permit prices 400%+ without a city council vote.
Advocates say permits are “underpriced” compared to what wealthier residents would pay.
But Hoboken is already one of the most expensive cities in the state. Living here should come with certain privileges, like being able to park on your own street, not a policy that makes parking a luxury for the rich.
Worse, the data behind the idea is unreliable. Through an OPRA request, I learned that Kimley-Horn’s survey intentionally left out the word “parking” entirely.
Residents thought they were answering general questions about transportation, not a plan to hike permit fees. That’s not oversight, that’s bias. If you can’t even be honest about what you’re measuring, how can the results be trusted?
Bike Hoboken once proposed a 330% hike in permit fees. At least that was a number. With dynamic pricing, it’s worse, it’s like your ex: unpredictable, expensive, and always showing up at the wrong time.
And the bigger question remains: how does making parking more expensive make Hoboken safer or fairer?
It doesn’t clear double-parked cars from bike lanes. It doesn’t make Willow Avenue safer, and it doesn’t slow reckless e-bikes. All it does is raise costs on residents without solving problems.
Being pro-bike shouldn’t mean being anti-car. Dynamic pricing is a regressive tax disguised as progress, and Hoboken deserves better.
Hoboken, please stop Emily Antoinette and her “let them eat cake” big tax mentality.
Emily Jabbour is killing us. She will be an absolute disaster for Hoboken people.
When Hoboken Resident Parking Permits were first introduced many years ago, the goal was to prevent commuters to NYC and other people from outside Hoboken to take over street parking for free. It has now become a cash cow for politicians, and the ones getting extorted are the residents, who continue to fight for a number of spaces that seems to shrink every year.
*is… Cmon lol it’s in the title
Dynamic pricing has nothing to do with annual residential permits. It’s aimed at short-term parking to encourage turnover, especially those 2-hour spaces in front of local businesses. The oped feels dishonest. It is totally misguided at best.
Exactly this. The author is either uninformed or purposely dishonest to the point of spreading misinformation to drum up opposition to a perfectly reasonable policy.
Clayton, it’s not dishonest for residents to raise concerns, especially since you co-signed the letter as a BikeHoboken Trustee that first floated raising residential permit rates. What’s disappointing is that Bike Hoboken, an organization that claims to represent people like me who bike in this city, spends more time trying to make driving more expensive than actually promoting cycling. And when residents point that out, the response is jargon about ‘dynamic pricing’ instead of admitting the strategy: penalize drivers into submission. That lack of transparency is the same pattern I saw when Andrew Wilson threatened me with a libel threat for stating my opinion that I was kicked out of Bike Hoboken, an attempt to silence rather than engage. If you understood politics in this city, you’d also know this fight isn’t winnable for at least two years with the makeup of the current council. If you want credibility as a leader, use your trustee role to push Bike Hoboken toward honest leadership instead of dismissing legitimate resident concerns.
While issues of pedestrian safety and climate change are certainly at play here, the public should not overlook the fact that the Bhalla Administration has placed the city on a fiscal cliff and is seeking every opportunity to make a buck wherver possible. Just once, however, it would be nice for someone from Team Bhalla to acknowledge that fact instead of creating one more Ponzi Scheme that will invevitably be mismanaged into a black hole. Let’s vote them all out and get a clear look at the city’s financial condtion before passing judgement on this as a pure safety/environmental measure.