After more than two years, full replacement side parking is back in New York City, requiring some drivers who park on the street to play musical chairs twice a week instead of just once.
At least some car owners have voiced their dismay, with more than 1,700 people signed on to the petition as of Tuesday to maintain the once-weekly schedule.
Change back to twice a week, effective Tuesday, was announced in April by Mayor Eric Adams in his early efforts to push the city back to its pre-pandemic normal. He also said the city is investing $9 million in year-round cleanup, including the use of small mechanical sweepers on protected bike lanes.
At the time, Sanitation Bureau officials said that the easing of enforcement of street hygiene rules had been going on for too long, and that halving the number of days that cars need to travel led to some streets. virtually unscanned.
The former mayor, Bill de Blasio, cut back on cleaning in March 2020 when New Yorkers complained about having to move their cars frequently during the early shutdown of the pandemic.
But too many New Yorkers have been unable to move their cars, willing to risk the possibility of a $65 once-a-week fine and “blocking our mechanical broom’s ability to clean the streets,” Vincent Gragnani, a spokesman for the Sanitation Department, wrote in an email Tuesday.
According to Gragnani, the city issued 378,552 street hygiene violations in 2019, the final year of its full replacement parking enforcement, with total revenue of about $18.5 million.
A return to pre-pandemic rules means Street sanitation will be fully enforced for the entire period listed on signs throughout the city – once or twice a week, depending on the neighborhood.
The frequency of street cleaning may vary from neighborhood to neighborhood, or even from the street into the streets, making Tuesday’s change in some areas seem more acute than others. While twice-weekly street cleaning is standard throughout Manhattan and the Bronx, other counties still have some areas cleaned once a week.
Some drivers were unaware of the change on Tuesday, when 222 mechanical brooms were sent out across the city.
“Many people who didn’t get this memo were walking past a row of parked cars with new parking tickets on their windshields on a stretch of Riverside Drive in Morningside Heights,” said Michael Bergelson.
But Mr. Bergelson, a computer technician with NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, follows the city’s alternate day-to-day regulations religiously. So he was out before 9:30 a.m. Tuesday to move his 2008 Yaris from the Riverside Drive location.
“If you live in New York and own a car, your life revolves around the parking lot on either side,” he said.
Katie Rader, a Gramercy Park resident who has begun petitioning against the return to the twice-weekly schedule, said.
She notes on the petition’s website that the fine primarily affects middle-class New Yorkers who can’t afford a garage, and that having to move cars more often is exceptional. difficult for people with disabilities or parents with young children.
Ms Rader, 30, said in an interview: “The reinstated rules are a total way of taking money. The answer to the city’s sanitation problem is not fines for drivers, she added.
“If the city wants the money, fine the homeowners who refuse to clean their sidewalks,” she said.
Joe Goddu, an art dealer who also lives in Morningside Heights and who wants to make sure he has a parking spot after cleaning the streets, worked on the laptop on the hood of his Subaru on Tuesday. , while waiting for the parking lot to become legal again at 11am
“It’s a pain in the neck to have to do this twice as often, but on the other hand, everyone who doesn’t have a car has had to endure dirtier roads all this time,” he said. “So having cleaner streets is more important than the inconvenience of having to move cars more often.”
The need for clean streets is a point that the Ministry of Hygiene has pushed to go home TikTok video it released on Tuesday – parodying a charity commercial, sanitation workers beg New Yorkers to move their cars as Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” plays in the background.
Jessica Tisch, the city’s sanitation commissioner, said in the video as she sat sweeping the streets: “Every day, trash is on our streets and it screams to be cleaned up. “A single mechanical broom sucks up 1,500 pounds of trash on the streets of New York City. But they won’t work if you don’t move your car to park on the alternate side. “
Of course, after all the fuss about the twice-weekly cleaning of the streets again, the street sweeper never even showed up to clean the stretch of Riverside Drive on Tuesday morning, where Mr. Bergelson had been diligent. move your car – even when the conductor checks the ticket. do.
“The dirty little secret,” said Mr. Bergelson, laughing, “it’s more about revenue than street cleaning.”
