ANOTHER THING NEW YORKERS GET WRONG.

Making do in the Big Apple without a motor vehicle was possible, until people started viewing the buses and subways as good places to catch the coronavirus.  Then people started buying cars, but, where, oh, where, do you put them?

Unlike almost every other major city in the country, New York does not have a residential parking program that requires permits to park in certain neighborhoods. The idea has never gained much traction, with drivers objecting to the possible cost of permits.

A rough form of "dibs" does seem to be the practice in the neighborhoods, but until the city fathers understand that the roads are productive assets, and should be priced accordingly, they're stuck.

By some estimates the city has roughly three million on-street parking spaces, most of which are free. But car owners complain that even before the pandemic, free parking had shrunk as street space was used for new bike lanes, bus lanes and docks for the city’s growing bike share program.

Even so, advocacy groups for mass transit and bicyclists said free parking had given rise to a misguided subsidy of car culture that has hurt New York.

“Since March we’ve seen that streets are serving as a pathway to recovery, helping to move essential workers, creating space for social distancing, allowing restaurants to remain open,” said Danny Harris, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives.

“If you want to complain about losing a few parking spots on your block, I’m sorry for your inconvenience but our entire city benefits when you give streets back to people,” he said.

It's not for him to give.

In Queens, the rising tension over parking took a violent turn in November when a brawl broke out between four men over a parking spot. The fight ended after one driver brandished a baseball bat to protect his space and another plowed over the curb and into a bakery in an apparent attempt to run him over.

Four people inside the bakery were hospitalized and the driver was charged with assault and reckless endangerment, the police said.

Still, most of the tension over parking does not boil over.

Must be like those mostly peaceful protests the Times tells us about. But look how reporter Christina Goldbaum describes people doing the right thing. "Some drivers have opted to pay hundreds of dollars for garage spaces rather than waste time dealing with street parking. Searches for monthly parking spaces on SpotHero, a popular parking app, spiked by 103 percent in October compared with the same month the previous year."  I suppose the developers of those applications or the proprietors of the garages are enemies of the people.  Brooklyn resident Diana Richardson might think differently.

But after Labor Day, when she found her cul-de-sac filled with cars of homeowners back from their summer homes, that idyllic notion [of the freedom of the open road] was shattered.

One night, she circled around for two hours before finding a spot. On an alternate side parking day, a truck driver yelled at her as she sat double-parked in her car waiting for the street sweeper to finish because there was not enough space to pass.

On another day, she spent an hour searching for a free space before parking in a metered spot and sprinting back to her apartment to make a work conference call.

“That was the day I lost my mind,” she said. After the virtual meeting, she began looking for monthly parking, eventually finding a garage where she pays $275 a month.

I'll leave the discussion of special movement permits for operating any truck bigger than a standard pickup in an urban area for another day.  That $275 a month, if it's near where she lives, is probably a bargain.