New York Sign Language Giuliani Crackdown Finds New Target: Double Parking By BOB YAMPOLSKY	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
市長が今度は2重駐車を禁止 ジュリアーニ市長は先日、路上の2重駐車の禁止条例を発表しました。道路の整備と、次の選挙戦をにらんだ票稼ぎが目的と見られています。しかし、ただでさえ駐車スペースの狭いニューヨークにおいて、この禁止条例はドライバーの間で反感を買っています。

"He's just mean, I think."

"I think his problem is he just can't admit that he's ever wrong."

"My God! The next thing you know, he's going to outlaw chewing gum!"

The object of these remarks, which I solicited from acquaintances, is our mayor, Rudy Giuliani, who is continuing his steady assault on the fundamental rights of New Yorkers.

He has attacked the right to jaywalk, the right to purchase and use recreational drugs in public places and the right to consume alcohol in public. Just a couple of weeks ago, he announced his most insidious plot yet: Taking away our right to double park.

Let us back up a bit. Parking overnight is allowed on residential streets. It is free. But that is about the only good thing you can say about parking your car on the street.

To begin with, there aren't enough parking spaces. And once you get your car parked (parallel parking), you have to worry about it being stolen. When luxury cars are stolen, they are put on ships for South America and Russia.

In many ways they have the happiest fate of stolen cars. Most cars that are stolen are models that were popular four or five years ago. These are taken to "chop shops," where they are cut up into parts and sold.

Police do not investigate individual cases of car theft. There are far too many cases, and the chances of actually catching the thief are remote, so the police do not bother. It is policy.

And of course they do not investigate cases of car break-ins, which are far more numerous than cases of actual car theft. These are not subtle thieves. Their preferred M.O. is to smash a side window in order to pull out anything of value: a radio, a briefcase, a couple of nickels.

It is a familiar sight in my neighborhood: bluish pellets of smashed shatterproof glass scattered across the curb, a gaping hole where the window used to be.

On top of all this, parkers have to deal with alternate-side-of-the-street parking. Every weekend, parking is illegal on one side of the street for a period of three hours. On the next day, parking is illegal on the other side for the same three hours. The parking restrictions alternate from one side of the street to the other.

The purpose of alternate-side-of-the-street parking is to allow for street cleaning. Noisy sanitation vehicles, essentially a combination of vacuum cleaner and truck, sweep the open side of the street.

In my neighborhood, alternate-side-of-the-street parking takes effect between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.

If you're parked on the wrong side of the street at 11:05 a.m., you will get a ticket. If you are parked there when a sanitation vehicle comes by, the driver will stop and, using a very strong adhesive, will paste a sign to your window, indicating to the world that because you were illegally parked, the street could not be cleaned properly.

Now, since there are far too few parking spaces to begin with, where do all the people who are parked on the wrong side of the street park their cars for three hours? The answer: They double park on the other side of the street.

In my neighborhood, cars start double parking around 10 or 10:30. Around 1 or 1:30, cars start returning to the side that has been cleaned.

What about the cars that are blocked all this time, you ask? This is rarely a problem, because, in the first place, residents of Manhattan do not use their cars for errands. Second, everyone simply understands that if you park on that side of the street, you won't be able to use your car for about three hours.

Alternate-side-of-the-street parking is infuriating, but it does serve the purpose of keeping the streets less dirty. The double parking that accompanies it is illegal, but it brings little if any harm, and that is why for decades it has been allowed. It may be a strange solution, but it is a solution nonetheless. But our mayor, overnight, changed this.

It has not gone unnoticed that this crackdown started in the Upper West Side, which is easily the most anti-Giuliani district in the city. It also does not go unnoticed that outside a police precinct house in this very district, the police officers, who, as always, double park their private cars along the street, are not getting tickets.

Mayor Giuliani has made no secret of his intention to run next year in the race for New York State senator. This crackdown on double parking, like his crackdown on jaywalking, should be seen in this context. Upstate New York and New York City have always had a difficult relationship, and Giuliani is trying to appeal to upstate voters, showing them that he can tame the big, bad city.

So it is all a big show and like all shows it will end. There was a big hoopla last year over the jaywalking ban, after all, but in the end, nothing at all changed. Double parking will come back, I am sure; it's part of the New York culture and cannot be eliminated so readily.

Shukan ST: Oct. 29, 1999

(C) All rights reserved