‘Quite confused’: SEQ left out of illegal truck parking pilot despite being plagued by the issue

Southeast Queens was left off a city pilot program to address illegal truck parking in New York City. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach

By Ryan Schwach

When the Department of Transportation last week announced a new pilot program to address illegal truck parking, a group of elected officials in Southeast Queens were not only shocked to hear that their neighborhoods weren’t included in the program, but that there was even a pilot in the works at all.

According to a group of elected officials in Southeast Queens, the DOT failed to communicate the start of the pilot despite the rampant illegal truck parking that has plagued the area of Queens for years. The issue is most concentrated around John F. Kennedy Airport, one of the busiest cargo hubs in the world.

On Thursday, local leaders and lawmakers spoke on Rockaway Turnpike surrounded by parked tractor trailers and called on DOT to both add the area to the pilot and to increase their enforcement in the neighborhood.

“Illegal truck parking has disrupted life in Southeast Queens, given our close proximity to JFK Airport,” said Councilmember Selvena-Brooks Powers, who is also the chair of the committee for transportation and infrastructure. “Our streets have become makeshift truck depots with drivers parking overnight in residential areas, idling engines, polluting our air and oversized vehicles, creating safety hazards for pedestrians and drivers alike.”

“The people who live in our community deserve better than to have our neighborhoods treated as an afterthought, and now the city has moved forward with its truck parking pilot, without including Southeast Queens, one of the areas most affected by illegal truck parking,” she added. “That is completely unacceptable.”

Last week, the DOT announced “Safer Truck Parking for Safer Streets,” a pilot program which introduces a new metered parking option in select industrial business zones for commercial vehicles, including large tractor trailers, in an effort to improve parking compliance and minimize overnight truck parking in residential areas.

The pilot will start at IBZs in Flatlands in Brooklyn, Hunt’s Point in the Bronx and Maspeth – but inexplicably to the local officials – not Southeast Queens.

“I'm actually quite confused as to why my community was not included in this pilot,” said City Councilmember Nantasha Williams. “I know tons of communities deal with truck parking related issues, but I will endeavor to say that the Southeast Queens community…have been dealing with this issue for far longer than I've been in the Council.”

The confusion was uniform among locals. Many have seen Southeast Queens highlighted as a specific hot spot for illegal truck parking in the media, and even prioritized by the city before when the mayor announced “Heavy Duty Enforcement” last year with a focus on Southeast Queens.

“The Department of Transportation dropped the ball,” said local business improvement district president James Johnson. “I don't understand it. We have been asking for enforcement.”

In October, Williams introduced legislation in the Council to address the parking issue. The legislation would create a new 90-minute parking limit across the city for large commercial vehicles like truck trailers, tractors or semi-trailers. The NYPD would be tasked with enforcing the time limit.

“I wanted to try to find a comprehensive solution to a persistent problem in our community,” said Williams, who said she was "particularly frustrated” with DOT because she introduced the legislation with the area in mind.

Queens officials including Councilmembers Selvena Brooks-Powers and Nantasha Williams want Southeast Queens added to a pilot program to address illegal truck parking. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach

Brooks-Powers said that she did not hear anything from DOT before the announcement of the pilot, which she found out through the media.

She said even though she was with DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez twice last week, he did not mention the new pilot program.

“I reached out at that point to the administration and expressed my concerns about this, and so we hope to have a conversation,” she said on Thursday.

In response to the councilmembers’ calls, DOT said they have reached out to the officials, and intend to work with them to address the issues, but said that the JFK area has unique challenges.

“NYC DOT selected an initial set of locations in close proximity to industrial areas to avoid legalizing the parking of large trucks in front of New Yorkers’ homes and small businesses,” DOT said in a statement. “We are aware and working on the freight challenges in Southeast Queens – including supporting a dramatic expansion of truck parking at JFK – and will review any proposed locations from local officials for a pilot expansion.”

The agency said that in the area close to JFK, there are few spaces where overnight truck parking could be legalized.

For now, the issue continues to persist.

On Thursday at the press conference, several dozen tractor-trailers and other large vehicles could be seen illegally parked up and down Rockaway Turnpike.

Locals say it hurts their quality of life, and creates an often dangerous situation.

“We've really been inundated with the truck traffic in our communities,” said local Gloria Boyce Charles. “Children are not safe in a community where trucks are parked all along our boulevards that they can't even see the other to get to school, to get to the park, to play, and this is the problem we're faced with.”

“We have a community where trucks are either parking or traveling all day long,” she added. “The emissions from those trucks are so harmful to the people who live in those communities trying to make a home with a community where trucks are being repaired, traveling up and down and parking illegally all day….It's an indignity, and it's disrespectful, and something needs to be done. There's no reason why Southeast Queens should not have been included in this pilot project.”