The romance with cars may turn out to be short lived. It doesn't suggest that demand is higher than it was prior to the pandemic." "For 2021 sales to be better than 2020 is a good sign, but 2020 was awful. She points out that the rise in vehicle sales in the third and fourth quarters of 2020 could have been driven by the massive drops in purchasing at the beginning of the pandemic. "It is also not clear at this point that New Yorkers have decided they want more cars for personal transportation to avoid public transportation," says Stephanie Brinley, a principal analyst for IHS Markit. To support struggling local businesses, the city blocked off 70 miles of streets for social distancing, biking, and outdoor dining. Public officials, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, discourage car ownership. Ricky Maldonado, a manager at lower Manhattan's Area Garage, says he has seen only a few new customers since the pandemic started. What's unclear is whether this trend will stick and how many cars represent panic purchases by New Yorkers who fled to suburbia last summer, never to return. As the city opens up, traffic is messier than ever: New York just took the esteemed title of most congested city in the United States, knocking out Los Angeles, according to the Texas A&M Transportation Institute's 2021 Urban Mobility Report. The flip side is that finding a spot on the street has become almost impossible in some places.īy January, it wasn't uncommon to see cars parked overnight in front of fire hydrants in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. During the pandemic, New York cut back street cleanings from twice to once a week, a boon for drivers, who didn't have to move their cars as often. They'll explain how alternate-side parking rules shape their work schedules. He's working toward a Mercedes-Benz G-class, but we could point him toward plenty of sporty cars that fit the extra tall.Īsk any car-owning New Yorker about their purchase and the conversation quickly pivots to parking. Borbon, who is six foot eight, believed he couldn't reasonably consider a performance car because of headroom concerns. "I wanted the center console to be sleek and look luxurious, and then I wanted a sunroof," he says.
"A lot of New Yorkers got cars because of not wanting to be in public transportation," he says, "and also to have that freedom to get up and go." Now he's leasing a 2021 Hyundai Santa Fe. Noel Borbon, a real-estate agent and native New Yorker who once looked down on car ownership, started driving exclusively during the pandemic to protect himself. She's urging the organization's founder, who regularly rents cars for delivery runs, to buy one. "You definitely need a car to do that," she says. The Jetta became essential not only for day trips upstate but also for Andresen's volunteer work with a friend's nonprofit, One Love Community Fridge, which stocks public fridges around Brooklyn with donations of fresh items from restaurants and food services that they'd otherwise throw out. I love to play music, and if there are no cars on the road, I like a little speed." Perhaps unsurprisingly, Andresen received her first speeding ticket during the pandemic. "It was a wild place to learn to drive because everyone kind of does whatever they want," she says. She grew up in Mexico City, where Volkswagens ruled the road. During the pandemic, Andresen got a Malshipoo named Teddy and, somewhat spontaneously, a 2019 Volkswagen Jetta with 30,000 miles. "Everyone got dogs and bought cars," says Nata Andresen, who lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Benjamin Almeter, a 27-year-old publicist who lives in lower Manhattan, sprung for the Jeep Wrangler he'd always wanted, his very first car purchase. Chris Kim, a 36-year-old father of a toddler in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, jumped on a local Toyota dealership's good lease offer on a bare-bones RAV4. Then, last summer, the number of registered vehicles surged in what a New York Times headline described as " The Great Gotham Vroom Boom of 2020." In June and July 2020, car registrations in the five boroughs were up 18 percent from the same period the previous year. Having a car made that relocation easier.
In the terrifying first wave of the pandemic, the number of cars on New York City roads dipped sharply, with the echo of ambulance sirens filling the streets as many cooped-up New Yorkers fled for suburbs or their hometowns. "A lot of New Yorkers got cars because of not wanting to be in public transportation and also to have that freedom to get up and go."
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