A wider swath of Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill — plus the Columbia Street Waterfront District — will now get the same freedom from the stresses (and joys!) of alternate-side-of-the-street parking starting on Monday.
The “alternate side” holiday follows similar hiatuses in Park Slope and Boerum Hill and Gowanus earlier this summer — hiatuses that led to dirtier streets, but an almost complete end to parking tickets for weeks.
The parking rules were suspended while the Department of Transportation installed thousands of new “No Parking” signs to explain that street-cleaning periods have been reduced to just 90 minutes on most side streets, down from three hours.
Rather than ticket drivers who happened to be parked on blocks that had gotten the new signs, the city decided not to begin enforcing the new rules until every sign on every block was installed.
As a result, some blocks in the suspension zones have become de facto vacation parking lots, and streets have gotten dirtier because street sweepers don’t come.
The latest suspension will affect an area that stretches from Atlantic Avenue south to Hamilton Avenue, and from Court Street west to Van Brunt Street and Columbia Street (see map).
On Aug. 25, Department of Sanitation street sweepers will return to the area from Court Street to Fourth Avenue, where parking rules had been suspended for six weeks (see other map).
Community Board 6 District Manager Craig Hammerman said he thinks the process is going along more smoothly than it did earlier this summer.
“Certainly there’s a learning curve, and I think it’s gets easier as we come along,” he said.
In early July, many Park Slope car owners — who were in the first stretch of suspended parking — were surprised to return from vacation and find new rules in effect and their cars either ticketed or towed.
“The confusion falls around the milestones, so I expect there will be confusion when regulations in area two go back into effect and when regulations in area three become suspended,” he said.
The city estimated that this third phase will take between three and five weeks, at which point it will change the remaining signs in Red Hook.
