NYC could lose about 30K parking spots to get trash off sidewalks with upscale Manhattan nabes hit hard

Nearly 30,000 parking spots across the five boroughs are set to be wiped out to make room for garbage containers over the next several years as part of New York City’s ongoing “trash revolution,” a new study shows.The eye-grabbing figure was revealed in a draft environmental impact statement published by the Department of Sanitation this week as part of the city’s controversial “Empire Bin” program to curb trash bags littering the sidewalks and keep rats at bay.Sanitation Dept.officials said booting cars from city curbs to make way for the 66,000 Empire Bins was “an extremely worthwhile tradeoff,” according to the report released Wednesday.The bulky garbage containers would gobble up 29,842 parking spaces by 2032 — with upscale Upper Manhattan neighborhoods getting hit the hardest, the documents show.Former Mayor Eric Adams launched what he called a “trash revolution” to “containerize” city trash instead of having garbage bags strewn across sidewalks.

The effort, which already placed containers in slivers of Manhattan and Brooklyn, has continued under the watch of his successor, Mayor Zohran Mamdani.“In the wealthiest city in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, no New Yorker should have their sidewalks covered in garbage,” Mamdani said in April about expanding trash containerization.The number of spots set to disappear in the next five years, according to the study, amounts to about 1.52% of the city’s 1.96 million parking spaces, though some areas will see greater losses than others.Both the Upper West Side and the Upper East Side could lose around 10% of their parking spaces – or 1,460 and 1,658 spots, respectively, data shows.The Bronx will dump 2.49% of all spots and Brooklyn will hemorrhage 1.65% of spots.Queens and Staten Island drivers will deal with the least street space casualties at .58% and .10%, respectively.Overall, Manhattan will suffer the highest turnover, at 6.42%, out of the five boroughs.

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