That New York is a motoristic jungle is known, and this clearly hangs on a lot of things. For example, it often happens that you have to postpone cleaning a piece of road because of those who parked along the sidewalk despite the ban fixed on that day. Now, from Tuesday, who doesn’t make it risk finding a big fluorescent green sticker on the window, as well as the usual $65 fine. The adhesives had been banned fourteen years ago and had become one of the most detested symbols of the alternating-side parking, the system that releases in turn the two sides of the road to allow the passage of the sweepers.
The campaign began on West 90th Street, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where the city councilman Gale Brewer personally participated in the application of the first stickers. On the sheet, almost as big as a normal printer page, it is written that the car has violated the rules and prevented you to properly clean the road. Below are the instructions to remove it: hot water and a scraper. According to the department of Sanitation, the new glue should come away more easily than that used in the past.
The return of the stickers was made possible by a law proposed by Brewer, approved by the City Council on 30 June and entered into force on 30 July. The standard allows the departments of Sanitation and Transport to attack on the windows of the incomplete adhesive motorists large up to 8,5 for 11 inches, about 22 for 28 cm. Mayor Zohran Mamdani supported the initiative, saying that parking cars should not hinder the work of cleaning workers.
The first stickers of this type appeared in 1988. The Sanitation applied about four hundred on each day in which the rules of alternating-side parking were in force. Many motorists protested because the glue remained on the glass and, in some cases, could damage them. In 2012 the City Council unanimously passed a law prohibiting its use, also exceeding the veto of the then mayor Michael Bloomberg. The fines, of course, remained.
David Greenfield, the former advisor who promoted that ban, argues that nothing has changed: a fine is a penalty provided by the rules, while gluing something on the window is equivalent to him to harm a private good. Brewer and Sanitation believe instead that the visibility of the adhesive can convince even those who consider the $65 of the contravention an acceptable cost to not have to look for another parking space or pay a garage.
Alternnate-side parking has existed since the Fifties, when New York began to systematically use mechanical sweepers. The cars could remain firm at the same point for days, leaving inaccessible just the part of the road where paper, residue and other dirt accumulated. The system therefore forced motorists to free the edge of the pavement in days and times.
The problem that stickers should solve is still very extensive. According to Sanitation, every week almost 500 thousand owners do not move the car, preventing the sweepers from reaching over 4,800 kilometers of road. A single medium can collect up to 1,500 pounds of waste during a shift, but only when it manages to approach the sidewalk.
The city is experiencing a less punitive solution. From 3 August to 25 September, in some streets of Prospect Heights, in Brooklyn, drivers will have to move the car once a week instead of two. Sanitation will check if a less frequent rule produces greater collaboration without worsening cleaning. The old signs will remain in place, but during the test the fines will be issued only on Thursday or Friday, depending on the side of the road.
L’articolo In New York are back the stickers for those who do not move the car for road cleaning proviene da IlNewyorkese.
