Blasio: The truck can’t stop here
Getting deliveries could soon become a nightmare for businesses in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, under a new initiative unveiled by Mayor de Blasio on Sunday.
The congestion-reduction pilot program will regulate when and where commercial trucks can stop and unload goods — and slap big fines on violators.
The truck ban will be applied to 11 Midtown cross streets, where curbside deliveries will be banned during rush hours.
“This part of the city is where the problem is the greatest,” de Blasio said. “In the last seven years, the average vehicles’ speeds in Midtown have declined 23 percent. That’s frightening.”
To step up the pace, the city will ban deliveries in Midtown — and also parts of Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn and Roosevelt Avenue in Queens — between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m., and 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.
The plan did not take long to come under fire from merchants, who said it will punish them and their workers.
“The plan makes no sense at all,” said Nelson Eusebio, a board member for the National Supermarket Association. “The 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. part is definitely going to hurt us. That’s when retailers get most of their deliveries.”
Bringing goods in later in the day — especially after the evening rush hour — would force businesses to have employees stay late, which Eusebio said is unfair to them, to drivers and to residents having to hear trucks being unloaded late at night.
Delivery trucks would also be limited to making drop-offs on one side of the street on 11 midtown thoroughfares, including 54th Street between Eighth and Third avenues and 47th Street between Ninth and Third avenues.
The NYPD will add 110 officers to enforce the new provisions.
De Blasio said their additional salaries will be covered through new fines collected. He did not provide an estimate of how much revenue the city expects to generate.
Drivers in the city without goods to deliver are also more likely to find themselves on the business end of a traffic cop’s ticket book.
To stop motorists from blocking the box, the NYPD is hiring an additional 50 uniformed officers to focus on preventing people from blocking “key intersections around the city” and penalizing them when they do with fines and two-point penalties on state drivers licenses.