Alternate-side-of-the-street parking will be suspended entirely on residential streets in Park Slope starting on May 19 — putting a months-long end to the weekly hassle of moving your car.
The downside is that there will be no residential street cleaning at all this summer.
For car owners, the alternate-side parking suspension is like a kid’s summertime vision of the school burning down. The change is necessary so that the Department of Transportation has enough time to install street signs explaining new street-cleaning regulations that will reduce “No parking” times on residential street-cleaning days from three hours to 90-minutes.
And in commercial zones, streets will be cleaned as many as six times a week, up from four or five, and at staggered half-hour cleaning schedules, said Community Board 6 District Manager Craig Hammerman, who said he has been calling for just such changes for 20 years.
“We’re the last district in New York to go from the three-hour regulation to the 90-minute regulation,” he said. “We hope that life will be made easier, that streets will remain as clean as they are, and that ultimately there will be less need for vehicular movements.”
Sanitation spokeswoman Kathy Dawkins echoed Hammerman, calling the new rules “a form of parking relief.”
“It also gives improved cleaning, overall cleaning, to the commercial areas in Park Slope,” Dawkins said.
While the signs are installed — which could take a few months, Dawkins said — street cleaning will be suspended in residential zones. It will continue in commercial zones.
Later this year, the rules will go into effect in Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, and Red Hook neighborhoods.
The new regulations will be suspended from May 19 “until further notice,” the Department of Transportation said in a statement.
The changes affect all residential streets in Park Slope from May 19 until further notice in the area bounded by Pacific Street, Flatbush Avenue, Prospect Park West, 15th Street and Fourth Avenue. For information, call 311.
