Yankee Stadium parking spots cost $80,000 each

Today's NY Times has an article about the city's subsidies to the new Yankee Stadium. Not only are the Yankees a hard team to love as a non-native New York baseball fan, they are a hard team to love based on their shenanigans trying to cheat the city on rent the past 30 years.

But at the end of the article, the writer points out that the city is building the new parking structures for the stadium at a cost of $80,000 per space. This is not an unreasonable amount per space in construction costs. Parking is expensive to build. At that cost, however, it definitely should not be free, and in this particular case, the city should charge drivers in order to get their investment back. More importantly, however, alternative payments to alternatives should be considered.

Consider that the city is building 3,600 new spaces (at $80,000 each) and renovating 5,500 existing spaces paid for by a $225 million tax exempt bonding issue. And keep in mind these 9,100 spaces are for a 50,000 seat stadium in a city with the most extensive transit system in the world. On that point, the city and MTA are building a new commuter rail station adjacent to the stadium at a cost of $91 million. But, for the $225 million spent on parking the city could pay for round trip transit access for every fan for seven consecutive years of sold out games.