New alternate side parking rules say drivers move cars just once a week
Mayor Bill de Blasio is making the biggest change to the city’s dreadful parking situation in two decades — allowing drivers to move their cars for alternate side parking just once instead of twice or more a week as is currently required in many areas.
“One of the things that has frustrated me for years as a New Yorker and as a public servant is the streets where people had to move their car, not once a week, but twice a week, two different days, a super hassle, and one to me that bluntly didn’t seem necessary and it wasn’t fair to people,” de Blasio said at his daily press briefing Tuesday.
“This needs to change,” he said.
The new policy will be done on a temporary basis through the summer and will start on June 29. Alternate side parking is suspended until then due to the coronavirus pandemic. Additional future suspensions will be decided on a week-by-week basis, the mayor said.
Going forward, drivers will only have to move their cars on the later day of the week listed on street signs. De Blasio says he hopes to make the new regulations permanent.
“We’re going to watch this in the course of the summer, as we get on towards Labor Day and see if this is something we can make a long-term new rule,” the mayor said.
“I like it, I hope this will prove to be as common-sense as I think it is. That’d be something we can institute long-term, and again, we’ll only turn on alternate side parking when we need it during this crisis, but I want to make it easier on people when it is in effect,” he said.