The City Council is launching a full-scale attack on maddening alternate-side parking rules, saying drivers have been saddled with scores of unnecessary tickets for far too long.

Three bills debated at a hearing yesterday would drastically reduce the number of times that millions of New Yorkers have to move their cars each week — and make it legal to park as soon as street sweepers pass.

With alternate-side parking-ticket revenue up fourfold since 2003, City Council Transportation Committee Chairman James Vacca asked, “How do we give people a break who have been deluged with tickets for 10 years?”

Two of the bills seemingly conflict.

One, sponsored by Brooklyn Democrat Brad Lander, would reduce cleaning from twice a week per side to once per week for any street that has a cleanliness rating — issued by the Mayor’s Office of Operations — of more than 90 percent.

Another, sponsored by Sarah Gonzalez (D-Brooklyn), would change the rules on any street where drivers have to move their car four times, reducing the number to two.

Mayor Bloomberg opposes the measures, an aide said, because of the complicated logistics and his belief that it would make streets less clean.

“We do not want tourists to return home with tales of dirty and littered streets,” testified John Nucatola, director of the Bureau of Cleaning and Collection at the Department of Sanitation.

But council members pointed out that the city’s own numbers show that streets have never been cleaner — and that came after the alternate-side parking restrictions were reduced from three hours to 90 minutes on each side, in 2002.

The other proposed idea being kicked around would allow drivers to wait in their cars until the sweeper arrives and then pull out — or at least let them park the moment the street is cleaned.

Nucatola argued it would “almost be impossible” to carry out that measure, and that it would “lead to summonses being written that shouldn’t be.”

That’s because there’s no way for the sanitation workers to communicate with the NYPD ticketing agents, letting them know if the mechanical broom has already swept up a certain street.

To fix that, the city should implement a vehicle-tracking system — similar to what many cities have for buses — for street sweepers, letting people know if they’ve already passed, said Councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez.

That way, disputes could be solved by “checking the automatic time and location recorded on each parking ticket with the time the street sweeper had passed,” said Rodriguez, who proposed one of the measures.

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(Source: NY Post)