Alternate street parking over as soon as garbage truck passes?

January 8, 2009 10:54 PM

NYC Alternate Side Parking: Friday 9:30am - 11am. If garbage truck passes at 9:30am on the dot and is done, can I repark my car right away even tho sign allots hour and a half?

Can I pretty much repark my car after the sanitation truck passes, even if it is before the official end time on the alternate street parking sign? Is the chance of a traffic cop (or any other patrol) coming down a residential Brooklyn block handing out tickets realistic? Or is it mainly the sanitation trucks that give tickets to unmoved cars?

posted by redhotchips to travel & transportation (13 comments total)

I believe you'll still be ticketable. In my neighborhood (UES), during street cleaning drivers doublepark across the street. As soon as the sweeper has passed they swoop in and park on the newly clean side of the street, but they'll sit in the cars until the 90 minutes is up.
posted by Bromius at 11:42 PM on January 8

The Finest give the tickets, not the Strongest — and they neither know nor care whether the street's been cleaned yet.
posted by nicwolff at 12:03 AM on January 9 [1 favorite]

(That's NYPD and Sanitation, for you non-natives :)
posted by nicwolff at 12:06 AM on January 9

This is a revenue generator for the city. They can and will still ticket you. The judge will not care that you say a garbage truck already passed by.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 3:54 AM on January 9

And if you've gotten three tickets for the same offense and have ignored them, they'll have your car towed on the fourth. (Funny story about a former co-worker who lived in Queens and thought the same thing as the OP.)
posted by Brian Puccio at 4:34 AM on January 9

As someone who is about to go sit in my car for the next hour and a half, absolutely don't leave. I saw someone get a ticket at 10:29AM last week--after two or three cops had already made rounds and the street cleaners had come through.

I was spared only because I saw the police car from a block away and sprinted, Usain Bolt style, back to my car in time. Don't leave your car til 10:30.
posted by j1950 at 5:47 AM on January 9

The sign says Friday 9:30am - 11am. You may think this has something to do with sanitation but any city official will disagree. It has to do with what the sign says Friday 9:30am - 11am.
posted by ezekieldas at 5:49 AM on January 9

Just in case you don't realize this... you're waiting for a street cleaner to pass, not a garbage truck.
posted by Jahaza at 7:10 AM on January 9

Where I live, they come thru once during the 'street cleaning' period and do a street check and write tickets as they roll past.
As soon as they've gone by you can park there again since they don't come back.
posted by whoda at 7:12 AM on January 9

I wondered the same thing once and a cop who also happened to at one point in his life be a customer care rep, said, "RTFM" as in "Read The F'ing Manual" as translatable to , "read the F'ing sign."

IT states the law, not the exhaust of the sanitation truck. I live, I learn...sometimes.
posted by Kensational at 11:28 AM on January 9

Interesting. My town does it NYC style- you park during that time, you get a ticket, no matter what. In San Francisco, we were always having to repark my company's work trucks in the morning to avoid tickets, and we never ever got a ticket after swooping in and parking right after the street cleaner went by. It could be different now I suppose.
posted by oneirodynia at 12:16 PM on January 9

The NYT in Nov. did a story and produced an interactive chart about parking tickets. It is most assuredly about raising revenue by subjecting people to the literal conditions of posted no-parking signs. The chart showed certain blocks in Brooklyn and Manhattan that saw thousands of parking tickets written in a single year.

On my old block in Brooklyn, the ticket agents would start ticketing the minute the no-parking regulations went into effect and would sometimes double back later. The presence of a street sweeper was irrelevant to them. It was all about the sign.

Also, if you've never called 311: before the human operator comes on, a recording will tell if you the next day's parking restrictions are in effect. Handy when an overnight snowstorm makes the next day's street cleaning doubtful or when you can't remember what day Ascension Day falls.
posted by hhc5 at 12:26 PM on January 9

You can and will still get ticketed for parking against alternate side after the street sweepers have passed by.

NYPD Parking enforcement is responsible for giving you the ticket for doing do. It's likely that they will, especially if you push your luck by doing it more than once.
posted by Citrus at 12:53 PM on January 9