Nobody drives in NYC, there's too much traffic

But realistically, plenty of folks have cars in NYC. With a metro area of over 20M people, enough people commute into the city, or aren't close enough to LIRR/MNR/NJT, or prefer driving to visit, or just are needed for commercial/industrial/institutional uses to clog the city's roads.

Double parking is infamous in NYC, as are aggressive drivers and terrible roads and parking situations.

> Nobody drives in NYC, there's too much traffic

That joke doesn't work because the people who drive in NYC are by and large not NYC residents.

> But realistically, plenty of folks have cars in NYC.

Depends on your definition of "plenty". NYC is the only city in the country where the majority of residents do not own a car.

There’s roughly 1 parking spot per 7 people. So, cars really are rare.

I think you could say that car ownership is unusual. But when every street is packed with cars, it's silly to say that cars are rare.

8 million people, 3 million parking spaces. compared to most places, that is "nobody"

Because there’s nowhere to park.

The portion who have cars is relatively low, but they heavily skew towards the wealthier part of the population, so they have a disproportionately large amount of political power.

I dont think you’ve ever been to an outer borough, have you?

> I dont think you’ve ever been to an outer borough, have you?

While car ownership rates are higher in the outer boroughs, OP is objectively correct that car ownership in NYC skews towards the wealthy.

> I thought nobody in NYC had a car.

Car ownership is relatively rare in NYC, with NYC being the only city in which the majority of residents do not have a car.

However, car ownership in NYC is strongly positively correlated with income[0], which means that local politicians and their key supporters are more likely to own cars, drive cars, and listen to the complaints of car-driving non-residents (e.g. the police, the majority of whom live outside the city, mostly in Long Island).

That means that politicians are reluctant to back any measure that makes driving or car ownership more inconvenient, not because their constituents don't support it, but because it inconveniences them personally. Anytime it comes up, they make a big effort to back the car-owning minority, making it seem like they're standing up for the "working class", when in reality they're very clearly just taking the stance that their wealthiest donors/supporters are pushing for.

[0] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2007/11/02/fact-check-congestion...