קאמיוניטי בארד 1 וואוט צו קלענער מאכן די שעות פון קלינען און וויליאמסבורג
http://www.yournabe.com/articles/2009/06/19/williamsburg_courier/news/williamsburg_courier_newsfnwmcpe06192009.txt
Break for drivers
By Aaron Short
Friday, June 19, 2009 9:28 AM EDT
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| Streets like Devoe Street in Williamsburg could see its parking restrictions relaxed. |
Williamsburg's car owners may soon be breathing easier.
Community Board 1 members unanimously voted recently to relax alternate−side parking rules from four days a week to two days.
At
its monthly meeting last week, board members approved a proposal
co−sponsored by Transportation Committee Chair Teresa Toro and CB1
member Simon Weiser that encouraged the Department of Sanitation to cut
its cleaning services of particularly clean streets in the neighborhood.
''If
we can convince the Sanitation Department to make these overdue
changes, it will help preserve the sanity of a lot of Williamsburg
residents who are sick and tired of having to move their car from one
side of the street to another four times a week,'' said CB1 Sanitation
Chair and City Council candidate Evan Thies. ''It will also save the
community thousands and thousands of dollars in unnecessary parking
tickets.''
This week, the board sent a letter to City Sanitation
Commissioner John Doherty with this request. Sanitation officials could
not be reached for comment by press time, but Doherty had previously
told Councilmember David Yassky that his department would consider
relaxing alternate−side rules if areas of Community District 1 had high
rates of cleanliness for three consecutive years.
''In a time of
fiscal crisis, it is absolutely inexcusable that the Sanitation
Department would spend money on a service we don't need while
simultaneously burdening residents with this tremendous waste of time,''
said Thies.
Community board members are already looking at the
next steps to advance this issue by searching for parking restriction
signs on streets with industrial buildings that have been converted to
residential or commercial use before the signs were altered, and
alerting the Department of Transportation. So far, CB1 members have
created 200 car parking spaces after updating the old parking signs.
''While
the buildings' uses have changed, parking restrictions on their streets
have not,'' said Toro in an e−mail sent to the CB 1 public listserv last
week. ''If you see parking restrictions that were installed to
accommodate manufacturing uses from back in the day, which are now
obsolete because the businesses are gone, please let me and the CB1
office know asap.''
Board members explained that they drafted the
parking rules proposal in response to shifts in the neighborhood's
demographics. As the population of North Brooklyn has been increasing,
parking in Williamsburg has become scarce and the problem has cropped
up in related issues.
Some community members have registered
their opposition to the Kent Avenue bike lanes because the plan had
called for the elimination of parking spaces along the truck route
(they have since been restored), and there has been bubbling
frustration over television crews that have closed off residential
streets while they are filming.
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