Faulty reasoning signals

• Confirmation Bias - 4.9% (38 hits)
• Anchoring Bias - 7% (55 hits)
• Availability Heuristic - 6.4% (50 hits)
• Representativeness Heuristic - 2.7% (21 hits)
• Hindsight Bias - 0%
• Overconfidence Bias - 0%
• Framing Effect - 1.7% (13 hits)
• Loss Aversion - 8.1% (63 hits)
• Status Quo Bias - 5.6% (44 hits)
• Sunk Cost Effect - 0%
• Optimism Bias - 8.3% (65 hits)
• Pessimism Bias - 1.5% (12 hits)

Article text

NYC plans to replace nearly 30K parking spaces with trash bins, report shows

New York City’s Department of Sanitation plans to replace nearly 30,000 parking spaces with “Empire Bin” trash containers over the next six years in order to eradicate piles of trash bags from sidewalks, according to documents published Wednesday.

The estimate was published for the first time in a draft environmental study, which is necessary to make good on previous Mayor Eric Adams’ vision for a “trash revolution.”

Instead of putting garbage out onto the sidewalks in bags, city planners see a future where all garbage goes into containers — which they expect will help reduce the city's rat population.

Smaller buildings are already required to wheel trash out to the curb in bins with secured lids due to rules imposed under Adams.

But under the larger plan, buildings with 31 or more units will be automatically assigned the on-street bins that are lifted and emptied by a new fleet of side-loading garbage trucks the department plans to buy.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has said he’ll move forward with the plan, which is slated to take until 2032 to fully realize.

The documents show the plan would require 66,000 Empire Bins, which are already in place in parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

The bins could erase 29,842 on-street parking spots by 2032, according to the environmental documents.

The sanitation department notes that’s just 1.52% of the city’s 1.96 million legal street parking spots.

In Manhattan, more than 6% of the borough's 157,000 parking spots could be replaced with the streetside containers, according to the documents.

Some Manhattan blocks would see dramatic transformations under the rollout.

A stretch of East 76th Street near Second Avenue would sacrifice around 20% of street parking to fit the new bins, according to the study.

The documents show the Upper West and East sides could lose about 10% of their parking spots, or about 1,500 in each neighborhood.

The study estimated car owners in those areas who lose their spots would need to shell out an extra $270 a month for off-street parking, but the department argued those residents tend to have above-average incomes and can typically afford the extra charges.

“In the wealthiest city in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, no New Yorker should have their sidewalks covered in garbage,” Mamdani said at a news conference in April promoting the plan.

“By finishing the job on containerization, we will ensure New York City’s streets remain the envy of the world.”

Drivers like Julius Ubarri, 30, from Sheepshead Bay, was skeptical that the bins would make a dent in the rat population — and said the plan would make life miserable for car owners.

“Taking away parking is just going to be a crisis,” said Ubarri.

“If they could find a way to put it on the sidewalk, that'd be great.”

The container plan wouldn’t have a major effect on street parking in less dense areas of the city, like Ubarri’s neighborhood.

The documents estimate Sheepshead Bay and Marine Park would lose 569 of their 40,880 on-street parking spaces.

The entire borough of Staten Island would lose just 285 parking spaces to bins, the study found.

The new documents also dismissed any plans for a shared system where neighbors from different buildings could all throw their waste into the same Empire Bins.

The study found that during the city’s early rollout of the program, too many people threw random waste next to those bins, causing a headache for sanitation workers.

Instead, the sanitation department will keep moving forward with a system where building staff are issued keys to open the bins.

The sanitation department also announced Wednesday that it would begin registering buildings to voluntarily request streetside Empire Bins in parts of Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and Downtown Brooklyn ahead of an expanded rollout for those neighborhoods and other parts of Brooklyn where public schools already use Empire Bins.

The department is planning to install Empire Bins in several more neighborhoods this year.

The report also identified some downsides to the program, noting it would increase pollution from garbage truck traffic.

Sanitation department spokesperson Joshua Goodman called the move from parking to trash bins an “extremely worthwhile trade-off.”

“This program has proven extremely popular in West Harlem, and in a great number of districts, the repurposing of street space necessary to finally stop forcing us to live around piles of smelly, disgusting trash bags will be in the 4%-5% range,” Goodman wrote in a statement

The new Draft Environmental Impact Statement triggers a review process before the city can approve the rollout.

A hearing on the plan is scheduled for July 28.