Tractor trailer trucks clogging residential streets plague NYC neighborhood

Giant trucks plague southeast Queens, say local activists who gripe that City Council proposals to redesign New York’s truck routes and provide truckers with parking spaces overlook the problem entirely.

By law, trucks with 53-foot trailers aren’t supposed to be on residential streets streets at all — prompting neighborhood activists to ask why the city can’t get rid of them.

Wayward truckers wreak havoc in the middle of the night in Springfield Gardens, said Gloria Boyce-Charles, a neighborhood resident and community activist.

“There are entire neighborhoods coming out at 2 and 3 in the morning to help trucks negotiate turns,” said Boyce-Charles. “If your car happens to be the car that’s on that corner, somebody might ring your bell and say, ‘Can you come out, can you move your car?’ at 3 in the morning.”

“If you leave your car parked out anywhere near the corner, you might come back the next morning and find that it has been sideswiped,” she added.

And then there’s the pollution. “You open your window on summer days in the morning, and by midday, the windowsill is just covered in soot,” she said.

City Council Transportation Committee Chairwoman Selvena Brooks-Powers (D-Queens), who represents Springfield Gardens, said the issue extends well beyond her district.

“Coming into the Council, I thought it was a southeast Queens issue,” she said Friday. “This is a New York City issue.”

“I’ve seen the trucking issue up in the Bronx and near the George Washington Bridge,” she said. “I’ve seen it in Brooklyn — from downtown to central Brooklyn.”

One Council proposal would set in motion a redesign of the city’s network of truck routes, which was established in the 1970s. The other would build “at least one designated off-street parking location for tractor trailers in each borough” by 2025 in an effort to stop trucks from parking overnight on residential streets.

Both ideas address longtime concerns of the trucking industry.

The Trucking Association of New York, an industry group, has for years pushed for a review of the truck route system.

The group also would like to see more overnight truck parking, acknowledging part of the problem seen by Springfield Garden activists. The Council proposal “will ensure that our hardworking truck drivers will have a safe place to park and our communities will have safer, cleaner streets,” Trucking Association spokesman Zach Miller told the Council’s Transportation Committee last week.

Boyce-Charles told the Daily News that the Council proposals don’t go far enough to get big trucks out of Springfield Gardens and other neighborhoods.

“Is there going to be an effort to kind of just normalize the 53-footers on our local streets?” she asked. “How are you going to put a parking lot in a borough when these people are not supposed to be in the boroughs?”

Springfield Gardens, which borders Kennedy Airport, is awash in trucks serving the airport’s cargo terminals — which handle 100,000 tons of freight a month, according to data from the Port Authority.

The trucks have grown bigger over the years as freight operations at the airport have increased, said Boyce-Charles.

“Around the 2000s, we started to see box trucks coming through,” she said. “And a couple of years after that, we started to see these 18-wheelers coming through.”

The standard tractor trailer truck on American interstates pulls a 53-foot long trailer. Together with the cab, the trucks can total some 70 feet in length.

New York City law limits 53-foot trailers to the major highways that lead upstate and to Long Island, Connecticut or New Jersey. A change in the rules in 2015 allowed the big trucks to travel along the Van Wyck Expressway to access the Kennedy Airport cargo terminals.

Truckers ignore rules that bar them from veering off the designated routes into nearby residential neighborhoods, said Boyce-Charles. “The trucks that facilitate that air cargo industry are coming in off the Van Wyck when they’re going to JFK,” she said.

Meanwhile, the NYPD’s shoe-leather enforcement has focused on keeping the big trucks from parking on residential streets overnight — which nets truck drivers a $265 ticket.

The NYPD has issued 15,591 parking summons to 18-wheelers so far this year, according to a department spokesman — a 96% increase over this time last year. Cops have also towed 269 large trucks so far — up from 29 in the first four months of 2022.

Enforcement in southeastern Queens increased last summer, when Mayor Adams announced a ticket blitz against illegally parked trucks.

Cops last August wrote 597 summonses, booted 89 trucks and towed 55 illegally parked vehicles in the effort.

“It made such a difference. ... For a time, it was helpful — the trucks were on notice,” Brooks-Powers said of last year’s enforcement blitz.

“While the blitz was great, it’s not a permanent solution,” Brooks-Powers added. “We need to make sure [trucking companies] aren’t able to fold the consequences into their business plan. A $265 ticket isn’t putting a dent in anything.”

The activists in Brooks-Powers’ district want the trucks gone — and say plans to provide them with parking and regulate their routes won’t go far enough to get rid of them.

“The law says that 53-footers are not allowed in the city,” said Barbara Brown, chairwoman of the Eastern Queens Alliance, a civic group that represents the southeastern part of the borough. “They’re not supposed to be just driving around the streets.”