Electrifying New York City’s Small Parking Lots

The NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice (MOCEJ) is a mayoral agency focused on protecting New Yorkers from the threats of climate change by creating and advancing policies to enhance the City's safety. MOCEJ’s current work includes the reduction of transport related greenhouse gas emissions and expansion of equitable access to sustainable infrastructure, such as electric vehicle (EV) chargers. The Capstone team was tasked with identifying parking lots not subject to Local Law 55, a law requiring the installation of EV chargers on parking lots with 10 or more spaces. These small parking lots were categorized into a number of typologies, with the purpose of recommending certain typologies to implement EV chargers. The team determined operational and equitable gaps in this implementation, and developed a toolkit to guide businesses and institutions with charging deployment. To achieve this, the team executed an existing conditions analysis, and combined data analysis and feasibility studies to identify optimal parking typologies. The final deliverables include a report for MOCEJ and the aforementioned policy toolkit. Ultimately, gas stations were recommended as the most suitable typology for policymakers to incentivize charger installation.