The City of New York reminds residents that the city’s alternate side parking regulations will be fully reinstated beginning Tuesday, July 5, meaning most motorists will have to move their cars to allow for parking. street cleaning and sweeping.
REMINDER: Tomorrow, Tuesday, July 5 full #NYCASP regulations for street cleaning will be restored to pre-pandemic frequency as posted on the signage throughout the City: https://t.co/TYGB2jtMSi
— NYC Alt Side Parking (@NYCASP) July 4, 2022
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Mayor Eric Adams has opted to reverse changes ordered by former Mayor Bill de Blasio in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. That policy, implemented on March 17, 2020, required drivers on most residential streets to move their cars just one day a week instead of two.
De Blasio’s order was meant to help people stay indoors to fight the virus, but it has remained in place for more than two years. While the suspension of the parking regulation gave car owners a long break, complaints of dirt, litter and rats increased.
“It went on for far too long and largely sidelined the best street-cleaning tool in our arsenal: the power broom,” City Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch said during a news conference on her first day on the job. agency head.
“When the alternate parking went to one day a week instead of two in practice, it was like not having cleaning in many city blocks,” he said.
Adams touted a return to pre-pandemic alternative secondary rules as part of an effort to “clean up the streets.”
Some city streets had alternate-side parking three or more days a week before the pandemic. Authorities said they would be restored and promised $65 fines for drivers who break the rules.
The return of parking rules is part of an $11 million funding increase for the Department of Sanitation, which includes the purchase of nimble new street sweepers designed to clean up the city’s network of bike lanes.
Tisch said the smaller sweeping machines will clean the bike lanes once a week.
The city’s Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala said cleaner streets and curbs would help prevent the city’s sewage system and 153,000 street sinks from becoming clogged.
Trash-clogged sinkholes became a problem last September when the remnants of Hurricane Ida hit the five boroughs. It was so bad that even city officials asked local residents to clean up some to help drain the flood waters.
“The more cleanup we do, the more people abide by the alternative lateral regulations, the safer our city will be from flooding,” Aggarwala said.
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