Monday, February 21, 2022

A Neighborhood Loading Zone for this block of 9th Street

Photos by Steven

On Saturday, the Department of Transportation (DOT) added a Neighborhood Loading Zone on the north side of Ninth Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue...
From 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, these spaces are reserved for activities such as:

• Package deliveries by commercial vehicles 
• Taxi and car service pick-up and drop-off 
• Active loading and unloading of personal vehicles
The program "aims to reduce double parking on narrow residential streets by providing space at the curb," per the DOT website

As Streetsblog recently reported, the DOT "is now required by law to install at least 500 loading zones annually to mitigate the boom in deliveries." 

Last summer, the city added loading zones on several sidestreets as part of the new Avenue C bike lanes

You can suggest a Neighborhood Loading Zone online here.

24 comments:

  1. This needs to be done on every residential street

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  2. The fact that this is a cross-town bus route & already crowded with both side parking, a bike lane, and restaurant sheds didn't seem to have any meaning to the DOT.

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    1. It means that all on-street parking should go the way of the dinosaursand we should be able to widen the sidewalks. There are too many pinch points on that block for anyone using a walker or wheelchair.

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  4. While a designated loading zone makes conceptual sense for commercial trucks like Amazon ecommerce UPS etc, it does not help elderly or disabled who need access where they live - not have to hobble down the block if they even could.

    BTW quite a lot of last mile delivery and small ecommerce is done by low-paid gig workers using their own vehicles (not commercial plates).
    Yesterday stunned to see a guy double-park - and then proceed to unload boxes of upscale dog food, which he then had to walk to delivery to individual buildings. A huge hassle and low paid job.


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  5. Call these what they are: Parking for privileged people with city issued parking placards. On our block (east 11th between b and c) the recently created loading zone is absolutely 100% of the time parked in by people with placards. I have never seen anyone use the spaces (on the southeast portion of the street near avenue c) to load anything. What a farce!

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    1. All those #/!¡@√\ placards have got to go

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  6. Anonynous @ 8:36 I've watched people double-park their CAR to go into Mud to pick up their (preordered?) coffee. Meanwhile the crosstown bus sits & waits. And the honkathon behind them begins anew.

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  7. The DOT is acting as the enemy of the citizens of this city. What's really going on is the DOT is handing over our streets to AMAZON, the company whose CEO takes joy rides in space to show off to his friend. The same Amazon which has made it impossible to shop retail in the East Village now wants our streets as loading zones so our elected officials have surrendered OUR land to them.

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    1. EXACTLY- this is just for Amazon and they are pretending others will use it too

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  8. Re 8:36 A neighbor is doing a research project on the impact of e-commerce.
    Interestingly, some initial work looking at the EV, LES and FiDi suggests that younger residents who bicycle are big e-commerce users and significant Uber users.
    Older residents who walk, use bus or subway use less e-commerce and are more likely to shop locally.

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    1. Amazon has a dozen warehouses in NYC and delivers over 2 million packages every day

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  9. Hmmmmm, maybe a metal craftsman can create and place more of these on every block?

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  10. ONE such area per block? So if the UPS truck and the USPS truck both need to park, too bad? And if a commercial truck is parked there and I need to get into or out of a taxi somewhere near-ish my building, too bad?

    The problem with NYC (under Bloomberg, then de Blah-sio, and now under Adams) is that the city keeps coming up with "ideas" that have no relation to known reality, but which it implements in an ad hoc way. Most of what NYC has done represents wishful thinking, IMO.

    AFAIK, no one in city government ever takes both the "big view" AND the "small view" into account. That's because, of course, if they did, they'd have to admit that most of what they've done in the past 10 years has just effed up curbside access for ordinary taxpaying people (particularly for the elderly, the injured, and the disabled).

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  11. Those zones are so dumb and should be retracted. It just makes parking harder for visitors and residents, which causes double parking or people circling around. NOBODY is pulling over to this "loading zone" unless their building is right next to it. These make no sense.

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  12. Finally. 3 months after theses have been announced at the November meeting of the Community Board 3 Transportation committee. Too little of course. We need multiple Loading Zones Per Block. This is not just for Amazon, FedEx, UPS and USPS. This is for your plumber, electrician, Mover, Heating Oil tanker and the Access a Ride user. This is for dropping off or picking up by LES Car Service drivers. Too many usages for so little space because the rest of the curb is still designated as Free Car Storage.

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  13. @9:50AM: Why does it not surprise me that the "we-love-the-planet, we worry about the climate" people who righteously BIKE then turn out to also be big users of UBER? (Oohhh, but they themselves don't own a car; they just USE SUV's owned by other people - which BTW does not reduce car ownership!) And they also want everything delivered to their door via e-commerce.

    Listen, when I was young & fully able, I ran ALL my own errands, and hauled home a hell of a lot of very heavy stuff (and I'm a petite female) with a shopping cart or on a hand-truck. Now, as a senior citizen, that ship has sailed and (esp. with Covid vulnerability), I *need* e-commerce to get the heavy packages to my door.

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  14. There is also a new (I think?) Citibike station on North side of East 10th street just east of Second Ave

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  15. As a non-driver, I'd be really happy to see car traffic severely restricted borough-wide.

    I get a few deliveries a week at East Village Postal because getting a package stolen several years ago made me decide it was better to pay a few dollars for secure package-receiving.

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  16. The utopian view of our streets, sounds appealing and foolhardy at the same time. I don't drive, never had a car or a drivers license yet I do depend on trucks and cars in many ways. I would be in favor of the city building bike sheds on each block for residents to secure their own bikes rather than hand over miles upon miles to whoever owns Citi bikes. A truly progressive city would not default to the corporate solution each time but should instead be eager to find more democratic and creative solutions. Neighborhoods such as ours has mostly tenament era buildings with zero storage space available to residents, so bike sheds would be a bid improvement over citi-bikes.

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  17. Wow… Absolutely no respect for the people or the utility and function of vehicles… The bottom line is that cars are important for moving people and things are on the city and they need places to go instead of endlessly searching for a parking spot. Aside from the few activists that like to come in here, that’s pretty much clear to anyone and everyone has a friend with a car who they like to bring them upstate or to family or to carry equipment for them or whatever. They just added a second one of these down my street and it’s so obnoxious, it’s just wasted space that never gets used and there is a hydrant already across the street. Obnoxious and a hurtful to regular people that need to park.

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  18. these are great as long as (as others have mentioned) they don't get abused by placard holders. there's a new one on avenue B and 9th - installed over the weekend. will be great as now drivers use the hydrant parking for loading/unloading/deliveries, or double park. giant moving trucks have to double park. it's so narrow there, really a nightmare when cars have to park. the fedex truck unloads daily on b and 8th IN THE STREET so hopefully they will be able to use the loading zone now. i disagree you only use it if it's in front of your building. it will make the streets safer for everyone.

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  19. Wow, they put these EVERYWHERE... this wouldn't be so obnoxious if the citibike stations weren't so long, but then they do random shit like make no parking after 9 on Ave B. Nonsensical and impractical and hurts regular people. Cars need somewhere to park obviously, so they need to tradeoff somewhere, maybe startbwith those obnoxious citibike stations which are just paid to be there for the advertising. The stations are out of control. Also I agree with above, people aren't loading or getting out of a cab down the block. They'll go to the closest hydrant which has always worked, it has the same rule, you can't leave the vehicle. I already got a ticket unloading equipment from one of these because it's not in front of my house, so how were they going to know? Absurd.

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