In Park Slope, independence from parking “tyranny” will end a week after the July 4 weekend, officials an-nounced this week.
The two-month suspension of alternate side of the street parking regulations will end on July 14, the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) said Monday.
“We knew it wasn’t going to take them the entire summer to change the signs in Park Slope,” said Craig Hammerman, the district manager of Community Board 6 and a resident of Park Slope.
“The notion that parking would be suspended the entire summer was a silly one,” said Hammerman.
Since May 19, 2,800 new alternate side of the street regulations were posted in Park Slope. The regulations were suspended while workers installed the signs.
Park Slope’s loss will be its neighbors’ brief gain.
Beginning July 7, street cleaning regulations will be suspended in parts of Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Gowanus and Boerum Hill. The suspension will take up to eight weeks, according to the DOT.
Similar suspensions are expected later this year in Red Hook and Columbia Heights.
The community board, which encompasses all the neighborhoods that will experience temporary suspensions, has for years insisted that cleaning the roadway more often did not necessarily make it cleaner, and used city-generated data to prove its point.
Less street cleaning means less time drivers spend searching for a parking space, an often daunting challenge.
The DOT has said that residential street cleaning parking restrictions will be reduced from three-hour intervals to just 90 minutes, and from twice a week to once a week. The new street cleaning rules were established by the Department of Sanitation.
On commercial streets, some streets will be cleaned more often and regulations will be better coordinated to help ensure curbside parking for shoppers, the city said in a statement.
The DOT is evaluating the effects of the temporary alternate side of the street suspension by posting a survey here: http://69.73.145.231/~opiniont/NYCDOT/. The agency will also be collecting data once the new alternate side of the street parking regulations take effect. Its analysis is expected to be completed in the fall.
