Vehicle ramps that serve the 1,000 cars parked atop the bus terminal are currently being demolished. After ten years of activism, the new terminal will have a restored subway station instead of parking.
During the height of the automobile frenzy in the 1950s, this parking structure was constructed. To accommodate this facility, the terminal was expanded with bulky ramps (seen in red below). To get to the parking lot, every car had to drive through the local streets, and added to the traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel.
Our area, which was once overrun with parking lots, has seen a reduction in traffic of 3,800 trips per day since the Port Authority parking lot was decommissioned and a 900-space parking garage that was originally intended under Bella Abzug Park was scratched in 2010.
The amount of parking places that are allowed is limited in Hudson Yards, the only neighborhood with such a zoning in the city. This is because the Bloomberg administration intended to go above the 20% cap imposed by the State to improve the air, and the community filed and won a lawsuit against them. Air quality is undoubtedly improved by 3,600 fewer journeys.