With the exception of the one block stretch between Pine and Liberty, Nassau street doesn't have parking on both sides of the street. In fact when you get to Pine there's a security barrier and there no parking or cars allowed - all the way past the stock exchange.
For those who don't know how ridiculously narrow the streets are down there this a typical stretch of Nassau Street:
So how do deliveries work to businesses on Nassau Street when you eliminate parking? They don't matter? What happens to the price of goods when their delivery becomes much more expensive? The block that does have parking on both sides of the street on Nassau is used extensively for deliveries. In fact if you do a Google Street view of it you will see a Fed Ex truck parked there. Arguably an important thing in an area that is largely financial companies and law offices.
Congestion pricing. Eliminate parking for sidewalk space and include delivery zones or dedicated delivery times with the street closed to traffic otherwise.
On street view I see maybe one delivery truck per block. Otherwise a very large portion of the street is dedicated to empty car storage. You've seen delivery zone parking before, right? The entire problem is how much space private vehicles take up versus the amount of public space that is available to people. The imbalance is huge and unfair and it's a matter of when, not if, that balance is going to be adjusted to a reasonable state.
Do you know who pays for congestion pricing then? Manhattanites will. That increased cost of delivery will be passed on to everyone in the form of increased prices.
The correct answer is probably to allow car deliveries/parking at certain times of the day (late evening and early morning?) and have the streets be pedestrian/biker only outside of those hours.
So I provided an actual picture of the street in question and gave an accurate block by block description of the parking situation and was down voted?
I know that area like the back of my hand. I was no doubt down-voted by someone sitting thousands of miles away from Manhattan someone who probably doesn't know the area at all.
There seems to be a real binary attitude on Hacker News that if you say anything that doesn't completely agree with the "we need more bikes!" crowd that you are automatically a horrible anti-environmental person. It's very knee jerk reactionary.
I absolutely hate the amount of cars on the street. The reality however is that there are many other complications, practicalities and nuances to consider and I have tried to bring some of these up. Just saying "more bikes no cars!" is really naive.
I recommend sitting in on a city planning meeting in NYC or talking to someone from the D.O.T some time about these issues. I have done both on more than a few occasions. There are so many unique challenges of an island of this density that there is no one solution.
I will also mention that there was a multi year project to widen sidewalks around Astor Place and Cooper Union in lower Manhattan recently. This is nearly complete. And the result is that this has done nothing to reduce the congestion on the street.
I think you might be downvoted for talking past everyone saying that delivery trucks and fire trucks don't need parking spaces. There is a lot of street parking in the financial district, and almost none of it is ever used for deliveries or cabs or anything except people storing their vehicles for long periods of time.
But I also took time to explain about a recent project that "did" increase the sidewalks significantly in Astor Place about a mile and a half away from the district in question. And this did nothing to reduce congestion or making navigating the streets any better for pedestrians. That of course was downvoted too. But pointing out examples and facts doesn't seem to matter.
For those who don't know how ridiculously narrow the streets are down there this a typical stretch of Nassau Street:
https://www.nybits.com/images/photo/nassau_street_01.jpg
So how do deliveries work to businesses on Nassau Street when you eliminate parking? They don't matter? What happens to the price of goods when their delivery becomes much more expensive? The block that does have parking on both sides of the street on Nassau is used extensively for deliveries. In fact if you do a Google Street view of it you will see a Fed Ex truck parked there. Arguably an important thing in an area that is largely financial companies and law offices.