The Great Parking Sign Redesign

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.

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.

Parking Scofflaws We Hate (a never ending series)

Why can't we just all learn to share?

Spring Break from Alternate Side Parking? Parking App Shows No Need to Move Cars for Alternate Side of the Street Parking for up to 12 Day

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Spring break is happening right here in New York City and for city car owners that park on the street it rivals anything happening in Daytona Beach. As can be seen in the parkken street parking app’s Alternate Side Parking Suspended Days calendar, starting April 8 an array of dates of Jewish and Christian holidays together form a virtual blockade of street sweeping suspensions that can give New Yorkers some much needed relief from the daily ritual of moving their cars from one side of the street to another.

                       

The suspended street sweeping days are:

·      Passover (1^st/2^nd Days) – April 11-12

·      Holy Thursday – April 13

·      Good Friday – April 14

·      Passover (7^th/8^th Days) – April 17-18.

These suspended or no-sweeping days combine with weekends and the typically no-sweeping Wednesdays and Saturdays to allow drivers in residential neighborhoods to leave their car in place for up to 12 days (see calendar below).  A savvy car owner need only park their car on the 8th in a spot that is legal for Mondays and Thursdays and it will be legally parked for almost two weeks. That’s almost two weeks you can fly away to Spring Break in Miami or stroll through Central park and leave your car right where it is. This works for drivers of all denominations.

The parkken app translates street parking in Manhattan, but for weary drivers who deserve more, it likewise includes garage locations and an Alternate Side Suspensions calendar that every New York car owner’s phone should have. The calendar displays in green those days Alternate Side Parking rules are suspended for religious or legal holidays which can be very handy especially in the Spring when major holidays and religious holidays tend to cluster together. 

Spring is the thaw many of us long for and nothing thaws a New York car owner like not having to move their car for Alternate Side Parking. This Spring the line-up of street sweeping suspended days makes having to move your car for the second and third week of April almost nonexistent and if you are in a residential neighborhood and park on the Mon/Thur side (the side of the street that is ordinarily not swept on Monday or Thursday) you can leave your car for 12 days! 

In Spring men and women’s fancies turn away from traffic and gas prices. The New York obsessive compulsion to move parked cars from one side of the street to the other is soothed. The promise of Spring can melt even the hearts of ticket agents. Simply park on the Mon/Thur side of the street by April 8 and you don’t have to step on that gas, burn that exhaust, or leave that parking space on the Mon side of the street for up to 12 days… unless you just feel like it!

Tom Hibbard (parallelspaces.com) who developed the parkken app says, "The app is to enable everyone to understand and use Manhattan’s bizarre street parking rules right from their phone, but you always need an Alternate Side Suspensions calendar handy, so it comes with. There are over 40 Alt Side suspended days every year.”

There will be a  similar cluster of Street Parking Suspensions in the Fall so be on the lookout, but before you leave your car just remember to check your parkken app to make sure no other parking rules come into effect while you’re away.

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!

Happy Holidays

New Snow Record! Car Not Moved on Manhattan Street for 44 days and Survived!

Who doesn’t admire a record, a winning streak, a hero? This Winter, in perhaps one of mankind's greatest achievements, two fellow New Yorkers have left his and her car on the south side of the street in the Upper West Side for over 6 weeks and never received a ticket! Thanks to the repeated snow days, frigid days, and one singular, extraordinary, eureka moment of sheer will (or luck), this happy couple, who only use their car for weekend excursions, have been living the dream. Mother Nature and the benevolence of the DOT (uh yeah!) have dealt this carefree couple an Alternate Side Parking leave of absence.
This daring feat got its real momentum with the big Nor'easter on 2/6. Nobody was moving their cars in those days and Sanitation crews were plowing day and night. Alternate Side suspensions ran for days and as much as a week at a time. Then as things started to clear and there was a day or two when Alt Side was in effect, Christine (as the car is now known in Hollywood circles), happened to be on the correct side for that day’s sweeping which, of course, never happened because February’s record cold temperatures froze the snow solid. Then came more storms and more frigid days making the accumulations rock hard and the suspensions inevitable.
Then one amazing day in mid-February, the DOT looked up into the blue sky and, in their infinite wisdom, decided Alt Side rules should be in effect. No matter, those snowplowed snow dunes were frozen fast to the street and too solid to plow. Our heros' doorman confirms that a plow didn’t even show up to try. A sweeper didn’t show to try to slalom up and down them either.  It had been decided it was time to get those cars (tickets?) moving again and people started dutifully digging, hacking and dynamiting their cars out. Our two heros’ car was so covered in snow and so encased in ice,

they decided they wouldn’t be able to get it out and left it. "Let the DOT have their pound of flesh!" or other similar curses were uttered.
Later that morning, the parking troopers relentlessly marched down the street, waved their magic revenue wands over windshields and printed their tickets as if it was a lovely spring day. Miracle of miracles though, our two heros did not get a ticket.
How were the ticketed and unticketed cars chosen? Who knows? Is it fair? Who can say? Is our new mayor afraid of heart attacks? Probably. Does the DOT even have a heart? Just maybe, But thanks to that one fateful day in mid February the all time record string of over 6 weeks without having to move your car on a Manhattan street continued and only just ended today.