Monday, October 22, 2018

Local elected officials continue to press city for alternatives to parking garbage trucks on 10th Street; muggings now a concern


[EVG photo from Oct. 15]

Local elected officials are continuing to urge the city to quickly come up with solutions for parking its fleet of garbage trucks on 10th Street at First Avenue.

As I first reported on Sept. 18, the DSNY is now using part of 10th Street for up to seven trucks. The DSNY no longer has use of their garage at 606 W. 30th St., and are relocating their trucks elsewhere, including Pier 36.

This move — apparently done without much, if any, consultation with Community Board 3 — has sparked numerous complaints from residents and merchants alike who have called out the problems with the smell, noise and negative impact on business.

Nearly a month has passed since Mayor de Blasio promised to “relieve the immediate pressure” on 10th Street. “Do we want garbage trucks parking on residential streets? Of course not,” said de Blasio, as CBS 2 reported. “What we’re trying to do every day is figure out the kind of facilities that will help avoid that in the future.”



Here's part of a letter to Kathryn Garcia, the city’s Department of Sanitation commissioner, that Sen. Brad Hoylman's office shared with me on Friday:

Presently, the vehicles parked on East 10th Street between First and Second Avenues have created significant quality of life, public safety, and traffic related issues for residents and businesses. As a result, my office has received numerous complaints.

I understand that the owner of the Manhattan 6 garage located at 606 West 30 Street has declined to renew the lease for the DSNY vehicles. However, the city should not force residents and small businesses in the East Village into shouldering DSNY’s burden. My constituents are justifiably concerned about the lack of notice, as well as the decline in their quality of life due to the unwelcome odor, the lack of available parking, and the overbearing appearance of the vehicles.

Furthermore, this situation presents multiple public safety issues as the bike lane now overlaps with the vehicle traffic lane, thereby endangering cyclists. The vehicles also block curb ramps. This, of course, disproportionately impacts seniors and residents with disabilities, which, as I am sure you are aware, could create a potential liability for the City.

My constituents and I find this situation unacceptable. I implore you to find a more suitable location for these vehicles and I am happy to work with your office to achieve this.



Meanwhile, District 2 City Councilmember Carlina Rivera asked the mayor to take action as well in a letter from last week. That letter reads in part:

I am writing to urge full cooperation from your office and all relevant city agencies in relocating sanitation vehicles parked on East 10th Street between First and Second Avenues in Manhattan. The situation on the block has become untenable. Seniors and people with disabilities are unable to safely access transportation directly on the street, small businesses have verifiably seen their sales decrease, and public safety concerns are rising as the large vehicles block visibility to and from the street.

In addition to these concerns, the accident in Crown Heights on October 11 that saw a pedestrian fatally struck by a Department of Sanitation truck has heightened residents’ sensitivity about this issue. They note that this highly-trafficked part of the East Village, which sees pedestrian activity late into the evening due to a robust nightlife culture, is primed for a similar tragedy.

We need to work together to relieve the burden on these constituents and move the sanitation vehicles off of this narrow side street. At recent meetings, Community Board 3 and my office suggested alternative sites. Therefore, I look forward to continuing our conversations to find a quick solution that has less impact on commerce and safety.

The Post reported yesterday about a new concern with the parked trucks: muggings. Early in the morning on Oct. 11, a sanitation worker was threatened at knifepoint in front of Pinks at 242 E. 10th St. According to the Post, a 22-year-old Bronx man was charged with menacing and criminal possession of a weapon.

Per the article:

With the hulking trucks lined up like elephants at the curb, blocking the view of cops in patrol cars, pedestrians are at risk, residents complained to the Post.

“There is no visibility from the street. You could rob someone, mug someone or push someone into their building,” warned Michelle Lang, 48, who lives in the 16-story New Theatre condo on E. 10th Street. “There are parents with strollers.”

The threat against the garbage man is an example of “what we have feared all along,” she added.

DSNY spokesperson Dina Montes recently told The Villager that "The department is working to evaluate alternative parking options as provided by elected officials and the community board. Other city agencies, such as [the Department of Transportation], may need to be involved in evaluating any alternate spaces as well."

Interestingly enough, during the "Trash Bash" protest at Pinks on the evening of Oct. 11, there weren't any garbage trucks parked outside the bar, preventing a photo opp for a CBS 2 news crew ... only a private hauler zipped by during the festivities ...


[Photo on Oct. 11 by Stacie Joy]

Previously on EV Grieve:
Questions and concerns as the sanitation department begins using 10th Street to park garbage trucks

More trash talk about those garbage trucks parked on 10th Street

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, The City certainly knew their lease was up, would be up, they wouldnt
have waited until the last day when it expired to try and renew - so
why are they now just starting to figure this out ?
Who I am wondering, was in charge of the lease renewal ?
They still have a job ?

noble neolani said...

The garage at 606 West 30 Street is in the shadow of the luxury towers of Hudson Yards. The garage landlord is probably looking to sell the land to a developers as all the rest have before, DeBlasiio will rezone what remains of the city's industrial zones to more luxury towers and then scratch his head when more vital services such as sanitation have not space to operate from. City panning today is steal from the public and give the the richest.

Anonymous said...

As a long time resident of this neighborhood, I am outraged. This situation is so fucked up. There is no excuse for something such as this. Thanks DeBlasio.

sophocles said...

With the $100 million or so that the Mayor lost on the Rivington House deal/steal the city could have purchased a nice parking garage.

I remember when $100 million was a lot of money.

Anonymous said...

A "robust nightlife culture" - so that's what Carlina calls the totally uncultured and ongoing shitshow the EV and LES are almost nightly polluted with? Swell.

Choresh Wald said...

When the garbage trucks are gone please designate those spaces to loading zones and not to free parking spaces for whoever owns a vehicle in the US, or else seniors and disabled will still have no Access a ride curb spaces as before.

Giovanni said...

@Sophocles. Actually $100 million wouldn’t even buy the land needed to build a new sanitation garage, much less pay for a new building. And for once this isn’t all DeBlasio’s fault, this mess started under Bloomberg with one of his big land swap deals.

This issue goes back to 2011, when the Dept of Sanitation under Mayor Bloomberg sold the land of their longtime garage at 73rd St on the FDR drive for $160 million in a land swap deal with Hunter College in exchange for the Hunter College location on 25th Street and 1st Avenue. The idea was that DSNY would use the land plus the $160 million to build their new garage on 25th St, but the plan was quickly opposed by community opposition from Waterside Plaza, Peter Cooper/Stuy Town, City Councilman Dan Garodnick and State Senator Tom Duane among others, and the project has stalled ever since.

The City now owns the whole block on 25th Street from FDR to 1st Ave, which is sitting there in limbo while Hunter College prepares to move uptown. The original plan was to put a new Sanitation garage there midblock, using up about half of the land, and the city would use the rest of the block for affordable housing, a new park or some other use. But who would want to live right next to a Sanitation garage? DeBlasio stepped in in 2017 to say he didn’t want a Sanitation garage there, and said a whole new study would need to be done about what to do with the block. At this point it will probably be sold off for luxury housing, which almost never gets any community opposition,

The bottom line is the Upper East side got rid of the old sanitation garage they hated in exchange for a shiny new Hunter College nursing school, slated to open next year, and paid for by Sloan Kettering which will also occupy part of the new 1.1 million sq ft. tower. The West Side also gets rid of garbage trucks so that they can continue their quest to become Cincinnati on the Hudson. And we get garbage trucks parked on our streets for the next 5-10 years until a new garage can be built, So there was a plan, but now there is no plan, so we get the garbage trucks on our streets until someone comes up with a better idea.

cmarrtyy said...

Rezoning. BClub. Crusties. Garbage trucks. These are issues that severely affect life in the EV. We're not talking Dog parades or bike lanes and construction sites. These issues define our community and what our politician are all about. The solutions to these issues require brains, guts, determination, creativity and a willingness to sail against the wind. And on all these issues we get lip service. We have politicians who work for the party not the people.

You can only ask... WHY DID WE ELECT THEM?!

If they can't step up... then the next great issue in the EV should be a massive recall of our local pols.

Anonymous said...

Does anyone recall the elderly gentleman, bent over at an angle from being an old time mover, the type who used straps on their heads? He worked with Ralph (miss you Ralph)at the antique/junk shop on 2nd Avenue between 2nd and 3rd. He was killed crossing 4th Street at 2nd Avenue, BY A GARBAGE TRUCK, because they did not see him.

"robust nightlife culture" is obscene. Amazing that CB3 stills approves liquor licenses when it has acknowledged, at a meeting last year, that there are far too many liquor licenses already in the EV. They said that the "oversaturated" notice on their site is no longer valid and that they do not have the authority to change it, only the state can. http://www.nyc.gov/html/mancb3/html/sla/reso_area.shtml

Anonymous said...

my modest proposal is to limit the number of garbage trucks the city owns, to the point where they need to put them into service 24/7, eliminating any need to ever park them, anywhere.

Anonymous said...

Willie Nelson - Vote 'Em Out!!!!!

Anonymous said...

@1.02 Yes I remember him, his name was Kurt. I did not know he got hit by a garbage truck.when was this? Very sad, they were great guys him amd Ralph. Whatever happened to the store? And Ralph? I remember their store Revelations on 12th and 2nd ave where Little Poland is now. I also remember their dog Denny and the black cat Lucky.

4D4M D3CK3R said...

Seems the simple solution would be to hikack the trucks and drive them into the East River. No?

JQ LLC said...

@Giovanni

I was wondering what that building at 73rd street was. The thing is that if there was a sanitation garage there no one would notice it because it's all the way down a steep hill by the FDR and it's substantially far away from residences and the luxury towers on York and even Sothebys. It actually is an ideal location, but apparently the snooty people that live around there want to believe that the mounds of trash they gets thrown out from their towers just magically disintegrates or gets pulled by tractor beams by UFOs

I'm not from the EV but Councilwoman Rivera is obviously a moron and a betrayer of her constituents. Robust night life? With the way those derelicts that consist of that nightlife act (robustly I might add) it's probably the reason why the city decided to put those trucks there, because those transient idiots are too loaded to notice.

Giovanni said...

@JQ LLC. It was an ideal location, but then someone close to Bloomberg got wind of Sanitation’s plans to replace their old garage there and came up with this land swap deal that led to the loss of a much needed garage, and that deal indirectly led to the garbage trucks now parked outside of Pinks.

There used to be an old abandoned Municipal Asphalt Plant up on 90th Street and the FDR drive, and the DSNY parked their garbage trucks around there on the street and it smelled like hell in the summer. Gracie Masion was right across the street, and the area became more gentrified, so the trucks eventually disappeared.

A decade or so ago the city planned to build a transfer station on the East River with a new ramp on 90th St that would allow trucks to dump garbage on barges to take the trash away on the river, and of course the community rose up against it. In the 80’s and 90s the city had built Asphalt Green with artificial turf kids to play soccer up there, along with a pool and excercise center inside the asphalt plant,, and there are also a bunch of NYCHA projects that claimed the trucks would give kids asthma, so the local power brokers were able to push the Sanitation Dept. away again. So noone on the Upper East Side wants anything to to with their own garbage, which literally makes the East Village their newest dumping ground.

All of this happened well before Rivera was around, but now she has to deal with this mess, just like the rest of us.

Anonymous said...

They should move them back to the upper east side. There's plenty of gated off space and available parking around E 88th St & East End Ave (Gracie Mansion).

Anonymous said...

Park those trucks right outside Gracie Mansion and maybe De Blah-sio will pay attention then.

Or park them on the Moxy/Webster Hall block, so that the detritus of our so-called "robust night life culture" (human and otherwise) can be quickly be removed from our area.