The City Council has voted to give New Yorkers a tiny break from alternate side parking rules.
It passed a bill that would give each community board the chance to opt out of alternate side parking one day a week — but only if that neighborhood had at least a 90 percent rating on street cleanliness in the mayor's management report two years in a row.
"We in the Council have heard time and time again that people don't even want to bother with owning a car in New York City because of the excessive rules -- excessive and confusing rules -- that come with parking," said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who said it's time to make it easier to have a car in the city.
City Council member Brad Lander echoed her sentiments.
"Author Calvin Trillin once joked that 'You can park your car on the streets of New York, or you can have a full-time job -- but you can't possibly do both,'" Lander said. "Unfortunately, for too many New Yorkers, this is all too close to reality. This new legislation would help solve this problem while still keeping our streets clean."
The Council also voted to require pedicabs to follow city parking rules. There will now be no-standing zones, no-stopping zones and no-parking zones. Before, pedicabs were just seen as bicycles so they did not have to abide by vehicle rules.
The mayor's office says Bloomberg intends to sign these bills.
Correction: An earlier version of this story stated the bill would give each community board the chance to opt out of alternate side parking one day a year. That is incorrect. The bill would allow each community board to opt out of alternate side parking one day a week for each side of the street. WNYC regrets the error.
Ailsa Chang is an award-winning journalist who covers criminal justice, terrorism and the courts for WNYC. She found her way into public radio after practicing law for five years, and can definitely say that walking the streets of New York City with a microphone is a lot more fun than being holed up in the office writing letters to opposing counsel.
Comments [4]
1 DAY A YEAR!?! "It passed a bill that would give each community board the chance to opt out of alternate side parking one day a year — but ..."
HOW MUCH TIME AND COST WAS INVOLVED IN THE MAKING OF THIS MONUMENTAL DECISION? Give me a break! One day a year!?!!?!? Big deal!
her sexual orientation is not something you should be commenting on. Your comment on it is clearly a sign that you have a "twisted mind".
"We in the Council have heard time and time again that people don't bother with owning a car in New York City because of the excessive rules that come with parking," said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. You see, I dont care about her sexual orientation - although it denotes a twisted mind - but I do care if an important official is a mental case: by having 1 day in the year without the parking rules people will start buying cars in NYC? Come on ! Its a tax!!! A covered and mean way of taxing people !! How do they cope with parking in London or Paris, Berlin or Rome? They don't have our stupid parking rules and for sure, streets are way cleaner!! Getting it? Competent officials? Caring mayors? Honest bureaucrats? Devoted unions?First step: take down the idiotic pumps, make them flush to the ground, like in any civilized big city. We'll gain 20% of parking spaces. Next step will follow...
Opting out of the rules for 1 day? Which day? How determined? And this will be _less_ confusing? I would say if it was only two days a week and not 4, THAT would be good. E.g., when I lived in Harlem, Tues/Fri was OK, enuf spaces, but Mon/Thur was horrendous (that's where the fire hydrants were). Now, in Red Hook, it's just Monday/Friday. And, better still, Carroll Gardens is Tues/Thurs. So NO LOCAL CONFLICTS. It's a dream. I own a car because I cannot buy anything else (I make too much for middle income housing rules, and too little to buy anything I like, so stuck on that too).
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