How Will the Great Slope Parking Experiment Play Out?
A headline in today’s Times: “New Parking Rules Receive a Wary Welcome.” A headline in today’s Daily News: “Joy Spreads in Park Slope as Hated Alternate-Side Parking to be Halted.” But what do you think? Alt-Side Hiatus: Terrif or Trashy? ( polls) Photo by charles.hope.
A headline in today’s Times: “New Parking Rules Receive a Wary Welcome.” A headline in today’s Daily News: “Joy Spreads in Park Slope as Hated Alternate-Side Parking to be Halted.” But what do you think?
Photo by charles.hope.
What’s the big deal? We had this for a couple of months about 10–15 years ago in PLG/LM when our alternate side rules were changed from 8:00–11:00 to 9:30–11:00.[BTW we STILL have it 4 times/week]. It was a minor convenience for car ownerswhich was soon forgotten.
The Times must have a lot of reporters living in PS 🙂
Thank you 11:02 and 11:12 for your (civilized) answers. In most of Park Slope, it’s already once on one side and once on the other. In fact I can’t think of a street where you have to move it twice a week on each side. So I don’t know why the city needs to suspend the rules all summer when most of the streets will stay as they always were. I think this is why I was perplexed.
Amen, 11:01! Imagine how much nicer our neighborhoods would be without long strips of idle cars lining each street. Streets would be wider, leaving more room for bikes. Deliveries and cabs dropping off/picking up would be able to fully pull over, improving traffic flow and reducing the honking that plagues narrow, blocked streets. More 2-hour parking zones would free up spaces for those coming from other neighborhoods to patronize local businesses.
If you can’t afford to garage your car, you can’t afford to own a car!
10:32, it’s simple. The cars will be banned from one side of the street for 90 minutes on a monday, and the other side of the street for 90 minutes on tuesday. The difference is they do each side only once a week, as opposed to twice a week. The city generally allows double parking during street-cleaning hours.
I live in Manhattan and am totally going to bring my car over here for the summer. Its worth a subway ride to not be a slave to the street cleaning for a few months.
Eventually, each side will have street cleaning each week, rather than twice a week. Same idea as now, only half as often. (i.e. on Tuesday you won’t bw able to park on the even side of the street, on Thursday not on the odd side). Both sides still will be swept.
10:51, because Americans believe it is their god-given right to own as many vehicles as possible and drive them over any type of surface they desire. New York should follow Paris’s lead and do away with all on street parking. If you feel you are ‘entitled’ to own a car at all costs then you should be entitled to pay $20 a day to have to keep it in a garage in Gowanus.
Alternate parking or not, there’s plenty of garbage and debris in front of my house in Park Slope in spite of the street garbage can. Some poeple are just too unthinking to be bothered tossing their garbage into the street can, even when it’s in plain view.
Once last year some contractor dumped a bunch of AC filters in my side yard and this woman putting stuff in the back of her car threw a big cardboard carton on top of that. I saw her and threw it right back into her trunk.
I continue to be baffled as to why so many choose to own cars in neighborhoods well-served by public transportation. One of the things I was most excited about when moving back to Brooklyn after a brief stint in the midwest was getting rid of my car once and for all. When I want a car for errands or to get out of the city, Zipcar or a rental does the trick.
I can understand car ownership for those who use them daily. Why do others endure the hassle and expense?