THE city may finally be doing something about the parking mess in lower Manhattan, where government workers have turned many streets into freebie parking lots.
The Department of Transportation has commissioned a $400,000 study of curb-space usage below Canal Street, including how official parking placards are used and misused.
“This is a huge, huge geographic area,” Deputy Commissioner David Woloch said. “This is more than just going around looking at placards. It’s placards; it’s truck loading; it’s double parking; it’s comprehensive.”
The study, conducted by ARUP consultants and BA Engineering, is to be completed next spring. Business owners have protested for years that the parking situation downtown is out of control, with few spaces ever open for drivers without perks.
Numerous agencies issue parking placards, as do unions representing uniformed workers. They’re not official but seem to carry as much weight as the genuine ones. Counterfeit placards abound.
Every crackdown has been followed by a return to privileges as usual.
When The Post reported last month that official parkers were taking up spaces in a “no stopping” zone off the Brooklyn Bridge, the NYPD erected orange cones to keep the block clear.
But within a couple of weeks, the cones were gone and the parkers were back.