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Alternate side parking reforms
Some important changes are coming to New York City's alternate side parking rules. Residential streets will be cleaned no more than once per week. If things go well, the new rules could be made permanent.
NEW YORK - For those who drive to and from and around New York City, a summer change to how often one must move their car during specific hours on specific days for street-cleaning aspires to alleviate some of the stress of parking one's car on the street.
"We're about to make the biggest change in alternate side parking in the last two decades," Mayor Bill de Blasio said this week. "It is frustrating. It is difficult. It doesn't have to be this way."
And so after months of little, if any alternate side parking rules with little, if any noticeable buildup of street filth, the mayor announced that those streets demanding drivers move their parked vehicles twice a week would now only require moving them once on the later weekday indicated on posted parking signs.
"The streets where people had to move their car, not once a week, but twice a week, two different days, a super hassle," de Blasio said. "And one to me that bluntly didn't seem necessary and it wasn't fair to people."
The new rules only apply when alternate side parking remains in effect. It is currently suspended through Sunday. The rules will return for one week starting Monday, June 29.
"We have to rethink the whole model," the mayor said.
The mayor promised to monitor the trial program throughout the summer and will decide by Labor Day whether to make the more relaxed requirements permanent.
"I like it. I hope this will prove to be as common sense as I think it is and be something we can institute long-term," de Blasio said.
An alternate side parking sign in Astoria, Queens, N.Y. This sign means parking is not allowed on Thursdays between 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. (FOX 5 NY)
The new rules apply to so-called residential side streets and not to commercial areas.
"Daily sweeping regulations in metered areas will not change, and DSNY will continue cleaning streets with posted No Standing, No Stopping and No Parking regulations as needed," the mayor's office said.
Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia said in a statement that alternate side parking is one of the "best tools" to keep the streets clean but that her department was "excited" to test the new approach.