BY JESSICA PARKS
City transportation honchos
will be transforming the
streets of Bay Ridge with a
fl eet of new loading zones in
the coming weeks — taking
away parking spaces to allow
temporary drop-off zones in
an effort to deter double parking.
“The growth of e-commerce
deliveries on residential
streets and for-hire vehicle
trips throughout the city
have changed the way New
Yorker’s use our curbs,” the
city Department of Transportation’s
website says. “As demands
on the City’s limited
amount of curb space continues
to grow, trucks, delivery
vehicles, and personal vehicles
need safe ways to access
the curbs while not blocking
traffi c, including on bus
routes or in bike lanes.”
The new dedicated spaces
for temporary idling will
count toward a law enacted
by the City Council in November
2021 mandating that the
DOT install 500 neighborhood
loading zones on residential
streets across the city. There
are currently 146 such spaces
already in place throughout
the Five Boroughs.
Neighborhood loading
zones are mostly in effect between
COURIER LIFE, F 6 EBRUARY 11-17, 2022
7 am and 7 pm on weekdays,
and otherwise serve as a
regular parking spot.
When in effect, the spaces
are intended to be used by vehicles
expeditiously dropping
something off, such as groceries
or passengers.
“Passenger vehicles can’t
park there, you have to expeditiously,
and that is the key
word expeditiously load or
unload,” said Dean Rasinya.
“Which basically means you
can’t leave your car, you can’t
park there, walk into the doctor’s
offi ce to drop somebody
off and come out again, you
are subject to violation, so you
can as long as you are with
your vehicle loading or unloading.”
Unlike typical “No Parking”
signs, the DOT’s markers
for neighborhood loading
zones are blue, with a cartoon
image of a person carrying a
box, with text announcing the
space’s intended purpose.
When neighborhood loading
zones were introduced in
nearby Park Slope in Jan 2021,
neighbors claimed they were
blindsided with the new installation
and the disappearance
of parking spaces, which
they say occurred overnight.
This time, the city transportation
agency presented
the neighborhood loading
zone plan to Bay Ridge’s Community
Board 10 in June 2021,
and subsequently opened up
an online suggestion portal
to fi eld location from the community
— which they received
a total of 86 suggestions from
the community.
Using a combination of the
community’s input and their
own analyses, the DOT returned
to the board’s Transportation
Committee in January
with 31 locations focused
around narrow streets, roads
with bike lanes, and heavily
populated residential blocks
Residential loading zones in Park Slope early last year were met with
some outrage from neighbors. Photo by Ben Verde
throughout Bay Ridge — saying
the new zones would prevent
double parking, and
therefore congestion.
While the project does
not require the community
board’s approval to move forward,
the Transportation
Committee received the full
board’s consent to issue a letter
to the city transportation
agency with a list of requests
on the rollout of the new loading
zones.
The letter will ask the DOT
to consider rolling out the project
incrementally over several
months, shortening the zones’
active hours to 8 am to 6 pm,
reducing the number of sites
to one neighborhood loading
zone per block, conducting a
public outreach campaign on
the new program, better signage,
implement loading zone
coloration at the curb, and releasing
a data feedback report
to the board six months after
installation.
31 curbside loading zones
coming to Bay Ridge