Alternate Side Parking Suspended in NYC October 3rd to October 19th

New York Parking Map parallelspaces.com Demonstrates How Alternate Side Parking Will Be Suspended for Over Two Solid Weeks in October

NEW YORK -- Sept. 24, 2014: The daily ritual of moving your car from side to side for street sweeping is a bane to all New Yorkers. Re-parking your car every day is time consuming, fraught with uncertainty and expensive, especially if you misread one of the many confusing parking signs. Alternate Side Parking has been blamed for everything from unnecessarily increasing traffic congestion to contributing to air pollution.

Now, a break is in sight. Starting on October 3 through October 19, at least half of all New Yorkers will have alternate side parking suspended for 16 straight days. New Yorkers parked on one side of the street will not have to move their cars to the other side for over 2 weeks.

The city suspends street sweeping for approximately 40 major holidays every year. Because of a chance combination of Alternate Side Parking holiday suspensions, Alternate Side rules will temporarily disappear. "Next month we land on Free Parking." declares Thomas Hibbard, president of Parallel Spaces Maps, LLC. "We will be able to leave the car on the Tue side of the street for over half the month! That is the longest stretch of suspended Alternate Side Parking rules since parallelspaces.com has been publishing its parking map (3 years)." (See calendar image.)

As street sweeping days alternate, so does the side of the street where parking is legal. For example, on the Upper West Side the south side of the street has all day legal parking on Tuesdays. In October an unusual line up of religious and national holidays (including the major Muslim holiday of Idul-Adha), combined with the usual Sat/Sun non street sweeping days, will make parking on the Tue side of the street legal for over two weeks. In most residential neighborhoods, you can leave your cars where you ordinarily would on a Tuesday for 16 straight days! You can move them. Or you can use your newfound free time to observe your most important holidays or just celebrate an oasis from parking madness.

Thanks to a 2011 law, Washington Heights was the first Community Board in Manhattan to successfully petition to have one fewer day of street sweeping. The effect fewer days of moving their cars will have on the upkeep of their streets or the effects on parking availability is not clear, but this upcoming record-setting stretch of Alternate Side free days will be every New Yorker's chance to see what life would be like in the city without the daily cranking of engines, plumes of exhaust, and cars flitting back and forth across usually quiet streets.