Happy Holidays!

 

Alternate Side Parking During Covid and the parkken app

On September 18, 2020, Mayor DiBlasio announced Covid-related, once-a-week street cleaning rules will remain in effect until further notice:

• Residential (side streets) without meters will be cleaned no more than once per week, per side.
•  Residential streets that have multiple Alternate Side Parking “ASP” days on each side will be cleaned – with vehicles required to be moved – only on the latest day in the week on each side, as indicated on each street’s currently posted signage.
• The posted street sign rules continue to be interpreted in the parkken app. For the relaxed restrictions, please doublecheck signs when you park.
  
• Daily sweeping regulations in metered areas will not change, and the DSNY will continue cleaning streets with posted No Standing, No Stopping and No Parking regulations as needed.
• These reforms to Alternate Side Parking (ASP) will be in place until further notice.

When do I have to move my car?

For any residential street with Alternate Side Parking regulations, the regulations will be in effect only on the latest day posted on the sign on each side of the street.   Alternate side parking regulations are indicated by a “Sanitation Broom Symbol” on the street sign.

For example, as seen in Fig (1) above, if one side of the street has ASP regulations on Monday from 11:00am – 12:30pm, that side of the street will continue to be swept on Monday (the latest day posted) from 11:00am – 12:30pm. 

As seen in Fig (2) above, if another side of the street has ASP regulations on Thursday from 11:00am – 12:30pm, that side of the street will continue to be swept on Thursday (the latest day posted) at those times.

If, as seen in Fig (3) above, one side of the street has ASP regulations on Monday and Thursday from 11:00am – 12:30pm, that side of the street will be swept on Thursday only (the latest day posted) and you only have to move your car on Thursday.

In another example, if the ASP sign says one side of the street is cleaned on Tuesdays and Fridays from 11:00am – 12:30pm, you only have to move your car from that side of the street on Friday.

Does this apply to metered areas?

No. Daily sweeping in metered areas, including 30-minute parking restrictions Monday through Saturday in metered areas, will not change. Parking meters remain in effect.

Does this affect other parking regulations?

This change only affects street sweeping regulations, indicated by the Sanitation Broom Symbol. This change does not affect No Stopping or No Standing restrictions, or No Parking areas that do not have the Sanitation Broom Symbol. These changes do not includes areas with posted restrictions other than ASP rules.

Since the Alternate Side Parking Regulation signs have not been altered to reflect these announced changes, we expect the ASP rules will return to the posted signage rules once the effects of the pandemic have worn off.

 

For further explanation or updates to these reforms, please go to NYCDOT.

Please also look and listen to your local news for announcements from the Dept of Transportation for any updates of these Covid reforms.

The Great Parking Sign Redesign [click for demo of new Parking Signs]

Most of us who park in this city have had a chance to see the parking signs redesign that started last year. Slowly the familiar signs are being replaced by something a little newer, a little cleaner, its look a little more modern.

The Old and the New

True the old signs are wearing, and something more closely resembling New York Fun World, the ultimate tourist destination is worth the enormous price of orders generated, raw materials expended, signs manufactured, work crews dispersed, not to mention the inevitable repairs and fixes, etc, right? But I personally am not loving this new design enough to justify the huge expense and if New York really dreams of being a tourist mecca where pedestrians are safe, traffic is systematically choked off our streets and people of all nationalities will actually understand our traffic rules, then why not use a parking signage that is immediately understood across all languages. Something international and intuitive. Like for a simple Alternate Side parking Sign:

Read it as a sweep of the hour hand.

Ok, I admit this is my design, my solution for simplifying parking rules in a city where understanding where to park is worse than a word problem. And it works very well for our parallelspaces.com parking map app, but by itself is probably not enough. So how about this:

Offered at a low low price

It is immediately understandable, universal in its appeal and also speaks in plain English in case you didn’t get it the first time.

You made it this far. Why not check out a short demo of new Parking Signs?

Parking Scofflaws We Hate (a never ending series)

Why can't we just all learn to share?

How NOT to Double Park, Please!

Is it true that some New Yorkers still don't know how to double park?
It's simple: If any of the vehicles legally parked at the curb cannot get out because of your vehicle, you deserve that ticket.

You, who doesn't care, won't share or is ignorantly unaware, this simple graphic is for you:

Don't box someone in!

Duh!

More Traffic Cams (the merrier)

For those of us who love a sure thing, wunderground.com has consolidated the NY DOT Traffic Cams with those of other citizens or businesses to give a better picture of how traffic is running around the city. It also predicts current weather with incredible accuracy:
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=10081

Another interface of the same grouping is through weather.com:
http://www.weather.com/weather/today/New+York+NY+10025:4:US

 

More is better!

Parking Hieroglyphics Prove Alien Civilization! (golden oldies)

We who park on NYC streets know how to problem solve. To survive we have evolved a keen eyesight and a Water Dowser’s intuition. We can read multiple parking signs at a glance, often correctly. We can measure the distance from a hydrant with RoboCop type accuracy. We have even developed a Parking Map! Which is why this latest discovery, while sure to put me in the history books, was really just all in a day’s parking.
I was parking my car on Columbus Avenue, routinely switching on my infra-red parking locator (You don't have one of those?), when suddenly I saw something that defied human explanation. A whole lot of parking spaces! Immediately I looked around for the net, the snare, the trap that had been so obviously set, but there was nothing there but... but I don't know how to describe it. That's when I realized I had uncovered the most mind boggling, never-before-seen, alien hieroglyphics ever discovered. (sample above)
So complex that they can only be from another solar system, a so superior race. At first, the celestial symbols were incomprehensible, but then I saw them for what they are. Erich Von Daniken was right! The Gods can park their Chariots in the Heavens (or maybe they just rent), but these Aliens have descended and challenged us with encrypted messages for the greatest minds of our civilization to unravel, or be fined and towed. I mean these babies make crop circles look like nursery school doodles.
Applying all my parking skill and finding this DOT page on the internet have helped me to understand and to slowly readjust to our new human/alien society, but if you, like all of the other people on Columbus who didn’t realize they could park in the “Floating Parking Lanes” (parking spaces galore!), are haunted by these secret messages, or feel adrift and without moorings so far from the curb, here is a brief, and hopefully accurate, illustration.



Keep a sharp eye. More coded parking spaces to come.