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For New Yorkers with cars, few phrases inspire quite as much dread as “alternate-side parking.” But for a small slice of Brooklyn, the twice-weekly scramble for a legal spot is about to get a little less annoying.
The Department of Sanitation and City Council Member Crystal Hudson’s office have launched a pilot program in Prospect Heights that reduces alternate-side parking requirements from twice a week to once a week on 12 neighborhood streets. The test began this week, on August 3, and runs through September 25.
The idea is simple: Can New York keep its streets clean without making residents perform the twice-weekly ritual of moving their cars, circling the block and then fighting their neighbors for the exact same parking spots all over again?
During the pilot, alternate-side parking will only be enforced on Thursdays and Fridays, depending on which side of the street you’re parked on. DSNY will monitor street cleanliness throughout the nearly two-month experiment to determine whether once-a-week sweeping can do the job just as effectively.
There is one potentially confusing catch: The signs aren’t changing. Existing metal parking signs will continue to display the usual twice-weekly street-cleaning schedule, but drivers on participating blocks won’t receive an alternate-side ticket outside their designated Thursday or Friday cleaning day. (Hudson’s office says anyone who mistakenly receives a ticket on a non-enforcement day during the pilot should contact the office with their name, plate number and ticket number.)
The pilot covers portions of Pacific, Dean, Bergen and St. Marks Avenue, along with Prospect Place, Park Place, Sterling Place, St. John’s Place, Lincoln Place and Butler Place. Sections of Underhill and Washington Avenues are included, too.
Prospect Heights was selected based on DSNY street-cleanliness data and operational considerations, according to Hudson’s office. And there’s a reason officials want drivers to actually cooperate on the designated cleaning days: If cars stay put and sanitation crews can’t reach the curb, it will be harder to tell whether the reduced schedule really works.
Hudson’s office says strong participation could help make the case for expanding similar efforts elsewhere in the district. So, Prospect Heights drivers, consider this your civic duty: move the car once a week now and perhaps someday New Yorkers across the city can spend a little less of their lives staring out the window waiting for the street sweeper.