For a visitor, a car is a liability in NYC, not a convenience. Parking around high traffic areas that you want to be is either nonexistent or incredibly expensive. So, you end up leaving it parked in the $30/day hotel lot and taking cabs/subway anyway. If you do venture out, you quickly realize why NYC has considered making cars coming into Manhattan prohibitively expensive for the uninitiated. There's too much traffic on the island.
You crawl along everywhere on the surface streets if you don't know alternate routes. The direct a-b way to your destination can take twice as long as backtracking 10 blocks and going around a back way. Typically, visitors think cabbies are trying to rip them off by doing this, when they are actually doing them a favor.
I wouldn't want to try to cross a couple of lanes of 5th Avenue traffic in Midtown with the rearward veiw out of a Z, or navigate narrow streets of the Village, SoHo or TriBeCa. Above the 60s and around the park, you'd probably be alright, but there's not as much to see up there that isn't better traveled by foot anyway (museums, park and shopping) so you'd probably want to just park and, well, that's also the prime residential area so good luck finding anything.
You might get lucky finding plentiful spaces to park above 110th street, in which case I'd highly recommend taking the Benz.
Seriously, since you ask, take the train and enjoy the city without a car. New York is one of the few places in America where no car is actually preferable, in my opinion.
|