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Morningside Heights residents kvetched about the full-time return of alternate side parking this week as New York City returned to twice-a-week street sweeping following a two-year pandemic hiatus.
“It sucks man,” said Ricardo Sinclair, 43, an electrician who commutes to Manhattan from Poughkeepsie. “During the pandemic, it was good because people didn’t want to leave their houses to move their cars. What’s the point of bringing it back?”
Sinclair told The Post he had to use his lunch break to move his car in the Upper West Side neighborhood, where the rules are in effect from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
“I have to move my car at 11 o’clock. I need to leave what I’m doing,” he complained. “My break time is to move my car. I take lunch when it’s time to move my car.”
Others welcomed the return of street sweepers — even if it meant more drivers possibly facing tickets slipped under windshield wipers throughout the Big Apple.
“It’s a must, it’s a must,” Elias Lampropoulos, 40, said of the return to twice-a-week enforcement.
Lampropoulos, who was parking his grey Dodge Ram on 113th Street, told The Post he blamed the lack of street sweeping for the city’s rodent problem.
“If you leave garbage everywhere, rats are having a feast on top of my engine,” he said.
Lampropoulos said another vehicle he owned, a Nissan Maxima, suffered $1,300 in damage after rats chewed through the wiring harness. He showed The Post photos of chicken bones, French fries and other detritus he claimed rats had left under his hood.
“For them, it’s a feast because it’s an easy way for them to eat, drink water, and destroy property by creating a nest (in the car), pretty much,” he said.
But Raymond Cuevas, 52, said that more tickets didn’t mean the streets would get cleaned.
“The sweeper only comes around once a month. Nobody came by today,” the 113th Street resident said.
“A lot of cars moved, and if you don’t, you still get a ticket,” said Cuevas. “Sometimes people come and just sit in their cars ready to move, but no one ever comes.”
Alternate side parking requirements were scaled back in March of 2020 in response to the city’s early-pandemic lockdowns. The decision came one month after the city upped the fine for parking in a street-sweeping zone to $65 throughout the five boroughs.
In addition to the higher price of a parking ticket, parking spots are also much harder to find than they were pre-pandemic.
In 2020, vehicle registrations rose 76% in Manhattan and 45% in Brooklyn, the New York Times reported.
And another pandemic policy — outdoor curbside dining — has taken some 8,550 parking spots out of circulation citywide.
