Brewer, CB7 Outraged by DOT’s Stealth Killing of Alternate Side Parking on Some UWS Streets

In a scathing letter that City Council Member Gale Brewer sent to the DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez, she said she wanted “to express my outrage over the Department of Transportation instituting three-hour ParkNYC metered parking off Columbus Avenue from 73rd Street to 86th Street on Sunday night, August 10, 2025.”

Brewer fired off the letter on Aug. 21, after residents deluged her with complaints. The West Side Spirit first reported on the changes on Aug. 15 (“New UWS Parking System Installed in Dead of Night”).

“This implementation of ParkNYC metered parking by DOT has been a disaster,” she said, adding it is the type of move that helps drive families from the city.

Beverly Donohue, the chair of Community Board 7, also sent a strongly worded letter to the DOT blasting the lack of notice, which she said “blindsided” the board and triggered a “tsunami of complaints” to her office.

“While Community Board 7 appreciates that our neighborhood was selected to pilot DOT’s Smart Curbs Pilot, our community feels blindsided by the lack of notice given for installing the new app-based parking system. While DOT presented the details of the plan to our Transportation Committee and via a letter sent last June, there was little information included on when car owners would see changes on the street.

“MCB7 received only one day’s notice before implementation of these changes, and this notification came deep in August with key Board members, staff, and many members of our community on vacation. It is not surprising that we are fielding a tsunami of complaints, concerns and questions from community members caught off guard and struggling to understand the new system.”

The DOT has said they are making changes along short segments of the side-streets immediately adjacent to Columbus Avenue between 73rd and 86th streets to provide more accessible parking spaces to service businesses along the Columbus Avenue corridor.

Brewer said she was deluged with over 30 calls and emails almost as soon as people realized the new rules were in place and the old free system of alternate side parking was gone on streets off Columbus. People were unbelievably upset,” she said.

Under the old system that was wiped out by the DOT stealth move on Aug. 10, alternate side regulations only required car parkers to move for 90 minutes two days a week in order to clear the road when sweepers were supposed to clean the streets. On all other days, they could park all day for free.

The days of free parking with the new system are over on those blocks. “The new regulations now limit parking to the three hours, Monday to Saturday, between 8am and 10pm (except for the north side of 80th Street, which is one-hour metered parking for commercial vehicles on weekdays and three-hour metered parking for all on nights and weekends).

In all, 16 blocks now have the new app system. It stretches over 10 streets, usually for one block off of Columbus Avenue although on some streets the new system runs for several blocks.

Two other blocks on West 73rd and 74th streets, which had machines that spat out paper parking receipts for car dashboards, now have only the phone-based app system.

“Previously, car owners could park all day and night except for the mandated 90-minute window two days per week when street sweeping is supposed to take place,” Brewer said.

It is not, of course, implying there were not abuses of the old system with free on-street parking. On streets where alternate side parking is in effect, many New Yorkers thwart the system by sitting in their cars and refusing to move for street sweepers, unless there was a ticketing officer or a Sanitation Police officer writing out summonses. If the parked car does not move, the sweeper would be forced to go around it, meaning parts of the street can’t be cleaned.

Brewer had actually been working with the NYPD and Department of Sanitation to force cars to move for the sweepers. She recently introduced legislation to allow ticket agents to once again slap orange stickers on the car windows for vehicles that don’t move, branding the owner as someone who prevented the street from being swept clean.

But she was not pushing for alternate side to be abolished entirely, only that car owners abide by the rules.

And of the change, she said, “We were given no notice that it was going into effect.”

The DOT insisted it has discussed coming changes with the community.

Brewer acknowledged, “We included a map of new metered parking locations in our June newsletter, but DOT provided no date for implementation, no specifics on the number of spaces, no explanation as to why this is, per DOT, a good idea, and no opportunity for a pilot program or input from the neighborhood.”

Congestion pricing, where drivers are charged $9 for driving into the district below 60th between 5am and 9pm seven days a week, has exacerbated parking tensions, Brewer said. And parking garages in the area are already boosting prices tremendously. One resident said her garage boosted her rate from $500 to $700 a month and then just recently jacked it up to $800.

“Residents who have a car are already subject to the congestion pricing fee a few blocks away, high garage prices . . . and now this new parking regulation.

“I believe that this latest policy contributes to chasing families out of New York City,” Brewer added.

“I urge DOT at the least to change the end-of-day metered time to 6pm, and not 10pm.” And some people are being overcharged by the app,” she said.