Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch said during a City Council budget hearing Tuesday that more than 50% of drivers have stopped moving their cars for Alternate Side Parking, partially blaming her old boss, former Mayor Bill de Blasio.
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, de Blasio amended the rules so that drivers would only have to move their cars once a week instead of the normal two days.
Tisch said that drivers, it seems, opted instead for the occasional parking ticket.
"The policy created a world where too many people saw a once-in-a-while ASP ticket as just the cost of doing business," she said. "The partial suspension of Alternate Side Parking was a pandemic measure to let people stay inside more, but it went on for far too long, and it largely sidelined the most effective clean-streets tool we have in our arsenal, the mechanical broom."
She said that effective July 5, the city will be sweeping streets again.
"I agree with New Yorkers who feel that our city is meaningfully dirtier than it was before the pandemic, and that is not acceptable," she said. "The Adams Administration will be addressing it aggressively."
She also said that starting this summer, New Yorkers will see a new fleet of mini sweepers that can also be used as plows in the winter that will be performing year-round cleaning and maintenance of the city's growing network of protected bike lanes.
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