New York – Councilman David G. Greenfield today introduced City Council legislation requiring the city to provide drivers with at least 24-hours of notice before converting legal parking spaces to a temporary tow-away zone, which often happens to accommodate special events like movie shoots, block parties and street fairs. The city currently is not required to post any notice before establishing a temporary tow-away zone, leaving drivers routinely surprised when they return to their parking space and find their vehicle gone.
Greenfield gained first-hand experience of this problem when he parked legally outside of City Hall only to find his car towed away because the NYPD placed a ‘no parking’ sign after he had left his car there. If approved, this law would simply require the NYPD to post notice of the temporary parking restrictions at least 24 hours in advance to ensure drivers are aware of the change.
“There is no reason why the city cannot extend this courtesy to drivers and give them ample notice of temporary parking restrictions. There are few experiences in New York City as frustrating as returning to a parking space to find your car missing, especially when you were legally parked in the first place. This law is part of my continuing efforts to update the city’s parking and traffic rules to better serve the public,” said Councilman Greenfield.
Since taking office nearly three years ago, Councilman Greenfield has worked closely with the NYPD, Department of Transportation and other agencies to improve safety and travel times throughout his district. He has also passed several common-sense pieces of legislation to make life a little fairer, less frustrating and less costly for drivers in New York City, especially as the city increases its dependence on revenue from parking tickets to balance the budget.
These bills include abolishing the city’s use of stickers to punish drivers who allegedly violate alternate-side parking regulations, a five-minute grace period while paying at a Muni-Meter, and legislation allowing drivers to use a Muni-Meter receipt at multiple locations.
(YWN Desk – NYC)
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3 Responses
This proposal makes sense, but in residential neighborhoods with twice a week ASP 72 hours notice should be required.
This makes sense only where the City clearly had sufficient lead time. However, many “emergency no parking” situations arise at the 11th hour such as when a movie filming crew must change locations due to unforseen schedule changes, when a VIP (e.g. the President or visiting foreign official) makes a last minute decision to eat out at a restaurant, or when there is a sudden change in weather forecast. In these cases, it makes sense for the car owner to be towed if they ignore the emergency signs since the City posted the warnings as soon as they became aware of the situation.
May I suggest another ‘COMMON SENSE’ suggestion. In many areas during alt. side of the street regulations parking capacity is reduced by 50% with streets and avenues being cleaned at the same time. Additionally, adjacent areas with different regulation times have their times overlapping(ex: one side of 14th av has cleaning from 8:30 to 10:00 AM.. while the other side has it from 9:30 to 11:00 AM).This causes unnecessary shortage of parking between 9:30 and !0:00.