Christopher found a green adhesive shame sticker slapped on his car window earlier this week, even though he was parked legally under Prospect Heights's brand-new alternate-side parking rules. He was one of dozens of Brooklyn drivers caught up in a botched rollout that saw legally parked cars hit with both the stubborn stickers and $65 tickets on the very first days of a pilot program meant to make street parking easier, not harder.
The seven-week trial, which began Monday, August 3, covers 12 streets centered around Underhill Avenue between Atlantic Avenue and Eastern Parkway, according to the office of Council Member Crystal Hudson. Instead of the twice-weekly street sweeping that typically applies across Prospect Heights, the pilot limits enforcement to just one day, either Thursday or Friday, depending on which side of the block a car is parked, cutting the number of required moves in half. But as the New York Post reported, the city botched the first two days of the program, leaving traffic enforcement agents ticketing cars that were legally parked under the new schedule.
Stickers and Summonses Pile Up Together
The confusion was compounded by timing: the Prospect Heights trial launched the same week the Department of Sanitation revived its fluorescent green window warning stickers citywide, deploying them in neighborhoods including the Upper West Side for the first time in more than a decade, per CBS New York. Brooklyn drivers in the pilot zone ended up with both the erroneous $65 fines and the notoriously hard-to-remove neon stickers, according to the Post's reporting. The NYPD did not disclose how many summonses were issued in total.
According to a source close to the issue, the Department of Sanitation sent only one notice about the pilot without any confirmation or follow-up, and sources said traffic agents had not received information about the initiative before it began. That account conflicts with a separate claim, also reported by the Post, that DSNY had notified the NYPD and the Finance Department about the pilot in the weeks before it started. An insider described the underlying problem as a lack of coordination between the Department of Sanitation and the NYPD.
City Promises Fixes and Voided Tickets
The NYPD has confirmed that the erroneous $65 fines were dismissed, and the department later voided the summonses altogether. Hudson said the city's blunder would be corrected for the following week, and her office said drivers had reported receiving summonses on non-enforcement days. Her office received roughly a dozen complaints and reached out to the Department of Sanitation, local NYPD precincts, and the NYPD's chief of traffic to sort out the mess. The NYPD has also committed to working with DSNY to build a formal process for notifying officers about future parking-rule changes.
Glenn Sainsbury was among those who criticized the city's ticketing error, according to the Post's reporting. Part of the trouble traces back to a decision that left the physical metal street signs on the 12 pilot blocks unchanged, according to Hudson's office. The signs still display the standard twice-weekly sweeping times, per Time Out, meaning enforcement now depends entirely on public messaging and inter-agency communication rather than anything drivers or traffic agents can see posted on the block.
Old Fight Over Shame Stickers Resurfaces
The sticker controversy itself isn't new. The City Council banned DSNY's adhesive warning notices back in 2011 after drivers complained the sticky residue damaged car glass and that the stickers amounted to public shaming, with the ban taking effect in January 2012. That changed this past June, when the Council passed Intro 92, sponsored by Council Member Gale Brewer, reauthorizing DSNY to place adhesive notices up to 8.5 by 11 inches on violating vehicles, a shift Hoodline covered in its earlier report on the sticker revival.
The reduced-sweeping experiment itself is being watched closely by city officials, who have warned that if street cleanliness scores decline or driver compliance fails to improve during the seven-week run through September 25, DSNY will simply cancel the Prospect Heights pilot rather than expand it, according to News 12. Sanitation data cited by that report shows roughly 500,000 vehicle owners across the city violate alternate-side parking rules every week, which is part of why officials wanted to test whether fewer required moves could still keep streets clean.
This isn't the first time New York City has tinkered with alternate-side parking frequency. The city suspended the second weekly sweeping day citywide in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic under Mayor Bill de Blasio, only for Mayor Eric Adams to reinstate full twice-weekly rules in 2022 to combat rat infestations and street litter, according to Gothamist. Lawmakers have also pushed legislation to outfit street sweepers with automated enforcement cameras that could ticket violators without relying on traffic agents at all, per ABC7 New York. For now, drivers with disputed citations still have to formally request a hearing within 30 days of issuance to avoid escalating penalties, even when the ticket stemmed from an agency's own error, under standard Department of Finance rules.
