Cars and moving vans double-park on the south side of West 115th Street.
PHOTO: Ron Brownlow

By Ron Brownlow

Before you complain about parking conditions on your street, get a load of this one.

The section of West 115th Street between Broadway and Riverside Drive across from Columbia University is home to two undergraduate dorms, a graduate dorm, a fraternity house, the school’s Jewish student center, a UPS store, a church, a private school, a construction company’s office — and a Morton Williams grocery store. Gridlock is always just around the corner, as moving vans and delivery vehicles jostle for spaces with residents of the block’s walkups and three apartment high rises.

The church obtained a minister’s exemption for parking registration, which takes a space on the block out of play all week, except Sundays. Though this space remains empty other days, people who park there can be fined.

To top it off, production companies film movies and TV shows such as “Law and Order” on the block at least once a month, residents say.

Which makes it particularly difficult for people who live on the block to comply with alternate side parking rules and move their cars when the street sweeper comes.

“It makes the street a total nightmare” for parking says Keitha Fine, also chair of the tenants’ association at 425 Riverside Drive, one of the three residential high rises.

Fine says the rush to comply with alternate side parking regulations turns the block into “a complete log jam” several times a month, as too many vehicles attempt to park or change spaces at one time.

Parking cops tend to look the other way when cars double park to make way for the street sweeper, which comes between 11 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. But woe to the driver who’s double-parked after that.

“A minute after 12:30 they’re here ticketing you,” Fine says.

Fine thinks the city should limit the church’s parking exemption to Sundays and make parking on the street off-limits for delivery vehicles, except during restricted times.

But do the street’s residents resent the street sweepers? Visit the park on the other side of Riverside Drive on a warm summer night and you’ll see the answer: dozens of rats feeding from trash cans placed at regular intervals along the park’s sidewalks.

When humans approach the rats scurry into the bushes or the gutters on Riverside Drive — most of the time.

“We’re particularly interested in having the street spiffy,” Fine says.
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A street sweeper makes its rounds on West 115th Street.
PHOTO: Ron Brownlow

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Two contractors (left) wait in their vans for spaces to open up.
PHOTO: Ron Brownlow

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