Everything I Know About Driving in NYC
It’s Christmas here in New York, my favorite day of the year. It is the one day I get to enjoy the most favorable driving conditions this city has to offer. The streets are mine, and mine alone. Free legal parking as far as the eye can see, paired with zero traffic: my own personal Toyotathon!
To pay it forward, I thought I’d share some free tips on surviving – even thriving – while driving in New York. (It can be done!) I’m pretty confident that you’ll find something useful in this list whether you’re just learning to drive, a grizzled veteran of the roads, or anywhere in between.
You may also find some things in here to passionately disagree with. Everyone thinks they know everything about driving, right? I will humbly offer my credentials. I learned to drive in Brooklyn, and have been licensed here for twenty years. I drive a 2005 Toyota Prius, which has spent most of its life on these streets, but has also accompanied me around the country multiple times. It is nearing 200,000 miles, at which point I can write to Toyota for a commemorative sticker. It has survived being hit by a deer in the Bronx.
I am car-brained but also a NUMTOT. I drive, but I also citibike, bus, ferry, kayak, and of course walk to get around this town. I spend a comical amount of my free time advocating for stop signs and traffic signals. Everyone has a favorite bus; mine are the BM1/BM2/BM3/BM4 express buses, which have fancy plush seats and travel straight from my house in Ditmas Park to either Battery Park City or E. 23rd St with nary a single stop in between.
Okay, let’s get started.
The basics.
If you’ve driven a lot in other places, most of what you know will still apply when hurtling down our potholed roadways, with some simple watch-outs.
It is illegal to make a right on red anywhere in NYC, including the outer boroughs, unless otherwise posted. (I am also aware of exactly one street in this city from which you can legally make a left on red!)
Yellow lights here are very, very short — even on roads with near-highway speeds. If you’re from New York and have ever stopped short near the beginning of a very long yellow light in some other city, you are me.
The speed limit here is 25mph. Slow down.
That white line near the intersection? It’s a stop line. It’s there for a reason. If you don’t stop at it, you will probably have to reverse when a big bus or truck comes down the street. We have a lot of illegal 53′ box trucks trying to navigate ridiculously tight intersections; don’t make their lives or your life any harder.
In a U-Haul? Watch your height. At Etsy, we had a Slack channel called #stucktruck that marked every time a truck over 11′ tall had to be laboriously backed off the Brooklyn Bridge by the NYPD, usually snarling traffic for an hour or so. This happened almost daily.
Commercial vehicles (including self-driven moving trucks) are not allowed on parkways here. (What’s a parkway, you ask? It is a highway. I suspect maybe we call them parkways because Robert Moses built them all while he was parks commissioner, but that is mere speculation. We also have expressways. We do not have freeways.)
Space is different here.
You will learn to use space differently in New York, in every possible way. This is true walking on crowded streets, and it is true driving.
I recently came back from Denver, where drivers seemed very anxious about switching lanes and often did their merging a mile in advance. That is not how we roll in New York. You will have to change lanes a fair amount. Use your signal — but be prepared to use the nose of your car as a signal too. Many drivers here won’t let you in unless you get a little pushy. Learn to do this safely but promptly.
Perhaps you’ve heard the term “don’t block the box.” When driving in the city, intersections can be challenging. If you politely wait for traffic to clear at every intersection, you may never cross. But that doesn’t mean you should block the intersection if there’s no room for you to cross it safely. Remember, you’ve started to think about space differently. Your eye goes to the car in front of the car in front of you. Are they at a red light or a green light? Do they have room to pull up? Do you have even a partial car length to squeeze into next to them? Fit in when you can fit in, without blocking traffic.
Start to learn the width of your car. You’ll spend a lot of time squeezing past double-parked cars and UPS trucks, and you’ll find the narrow lanes of tunnels like the Carey Tunnel (aka the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel) separated by bollards that are only inches away from you. You have more space than you think; learn to use it wisely.
You should develop a sense of how long it takes you to get from the left lane to the right lane safely when you’re driving on a highway here. In my case, it’s about 0.4 miles. If I’m traveling at highway speeds and we’re getting close to that threshold, it’s time to get over.
People will honk. They will whiz by you. Take it in stride. You’ll see them all at the next red light.
There are easy roads, and there are hard roads.
The island of Manhattan has a grade-level highway running up its west side, and an elevated highway running up its east side. The West Side Highway has red lights every block or two, generous lanes, and lower speeds. The FDR Drive, built in the 1930s, has very tight lanes, lots of curves, higher speeds, and no shoulder. Avoid the FDR until you’re ready. The same can be true for other older expressways (and parkways) throughout the city, like the Jackie Robinson connecting Brooklyn and Queens.
Certain streets are rougher than others. These are often ones that lead to highway or bridge on-ramps, or ones that feature a lot of pedestrian traffic. Canal Street is a perfect storm of both: at its western terminus, it leads to the New Jersey via the Holland Tunnel. Closer to its eastern terminus, it leads to the Manhattan Bridge. In between you will experience the overflowing streets of Chinatown, Little Italy, SoHo, TriBeCa, etc. Avoid it until you are ready for it.
On highways, you’ll learn that certain lanes are uniquely treacherous or advantageous at different times.
For instance, on the FDR Drive, you’ll need to be in the left lane to exit at 61st St. In Brooklyn, on the Prospect Expressway, you’ll want to avoid the right lane near the 3rd / 4th Avenues exit, where the short off-ramp leads to a traffic light and cars and trucks can come to a complete standstill from highway speeds. The same is true at the Wythe exit on the BQE.
Okay, so maybe just stay in the middle lane. (Just watch for the cars stopped there, trying to cut the line for the exit lane.) You’ll figure it out. I believe in you.
Don’t be too proud to use GPS.
I learned to drive in NYC, and have driven here for over twenty years. I still use Waze almost every time I get in the car. Why? I trust it to have more up-to-date information than I have about current traffic conditions. What if it’s the day of the 5-Boro Bike Tour? What if there’s a pile-up or protest on the Brooklyn Bridge?
It can also help you get out of situations as simple as turning onto a narrow, one-way road and getting stuck behind a garbage truck or a tanker making an oil delivery. You will have to awkwardly back out of a one-way street at some point during your time driving in New York. I guarantee it.
You can also set it to recommend routes with or without HOV features, tolls, or challenging turns. It’s a great way to get acclimated to driving in New York.
Alternate-side parking: know the broom, fear the broom, love the broom.
This town offers you rent-free parking of your personal vehicle at the curb [a far less efficient use of space than pocket parks or street eateries, btw] and asks you only one gentle favor: move your car for the street sweeper, also known as the broom.
“Alternate-side parking” refers to weekly or biweekly restrictions placed on curbside parking, clearing space for ~30-90 minutes so that the broom can pass and clean the curb. If you park at the curb, you should move your car. In some neighborhoods it’s normal to double-park on the opposite side of the street during that time. (Please leave your phone number on the dash if you do this.) In other neighborhoods drivers will spend those minutes sitting in their car to avoid a ticket, enjoying their alone time and perhaps reading Tepper Isn’t Going Out, moving awkwardly out of the way as the broom passes and then settling back into place. (There’s another tip hiding in here: in this city, you will basically never get a parking ticket if you’re sitting in the driver’s seat of your car.) Some people will simply swallow the risk of the $65 ticket since it’s certainly cheaper than any monthly garage.
(Actually, you can reserve a dedicated monthly NYCHA parking space without living in NYCHA housing. This is an incredible deal at a little over $100/month; it’s not uncommon to pay hundreds more each month for a commercial garage spot.)
At any rate, you should have the annual alternate-side parking rules calendar on your fridge. Major legal holidays are marked in bold; on these days, alternate-side parking and parking meters are suspended. On lesser holidays, alternate-side parking is suspended but parking meters are still enforced. (Confused? You should check out To Park or Not to Park?, my friend Nikki Sylianteng’s incredible parking sign visualization project.)
The alternate-side calendar also includes a super helpful explainer on the difference between no stopping, no standing, and no parking restrictions. I’ll reproduce it here:
| NO STOPPING | NO STANDING | NO PARKING | |
| Can I stop to drop off or pick up passengers? | No | Yes | Yes |
| Can I stop to load or unload a package, or merchandise at curbside? | No | No | Yes |
| Is waiting allowed? | No | No | No |
One good thing about alternate-side parking is that it frees up parking spots. Many years ago I built a little webapp called Parkour that you can use to find the best time to park at any given address in NYC — the time just before alternate-side parking restrictions end, when spots briefly become available.
But even without using this toy, a good rule of thumb is that it’s very common for parking restrictions to clear up at 6pm or 7pm, even in the most congested areas of Manhattan. I’ve swooped in, parked legally and freely on 9th Ave, and then walked to a Broadway show. Few things in the world feel better than that.
Remember that stop line from earlier? Yeah, it’s not relevant when parking. You can park up to the crosswalk, but don’t break the plane.
Lastly, if there’s snow in the forecast, you’re gonna want to park on the left side of a one-way street to avoid the avalanche: DSNY plows are angled to the right.
So you got a parking ticket. Now what?
I’ve fought many parking tickets successfully. In some cases, even on appeal!
Recently I’ve started using ChatGPT to help me draft my defense. It’s also helpful to use Google Slides to annotate all your evidence. Drown the administrative judges in data, like photos of your parked car from every possible angle. Use specific language. Lean on facts, rather than appealing to empathy. Remember that you don’t get a chance to submit new evidence on appeal, so your first defense should be as detailed and airtight as possible.
Oh and if you deserve the ticket, you should pay the fine, sorry.
So you got into a crash. Now what?
Sadly this will probably happen at some point during your time driving in New York. Don’t leave the scene, but do move your car from any active roadway. Take lots of photos, including the insurance cards and license plates of everyone involved. You will soon discover that the NYPD really doesn’t like to show up or bother with paperwork when it comes to minor fender-benders, but you should still try. They will probably tell you to head online and fill out your own crash form. Insurance consequences aside, you should do this because crash data is really useful when advocating for stop signs and safe street interventions!
Did you make it this far? Okay, here’s your Christmas present.
Both LaGuardia and JFK are fantastic airports for public transit. The fastest way to get to LaGuardia is by bike, but don’t count out the M60 SBS. If you’re traveling to or from JFK, you should probably consider taking the LIRR from Jamaica into the city, but the A train is reasonable too. Newark is so comically bad for any solution other than an Uber, unless you like switching from the EWR AirTrain to NJ Transit to the PATH to the subway. I do not.
You can literally walk to both LGA and JFK, though. Which means you can ditch your car on any side street before your trip. I believe this is safer to do near JFK, which also features an AirTrain with proximity to many quiet residential streets without alternate-side parking restrictions. In New York City, you can legally leave your car parked at the curb for up to 7 days (unless there are other posted restrictions), but it won’t get towed until someone complains and the NYPD responds, at which point the 7 day clock starts tolling. As a practical matter this means you can just leave your car near JFK for two weeks and head out of town, which I have done many times. Obviously this is an idiotic and highly risky idea, probably you should not do this, also I can’t believe I’ve just given away my greatest NYC travel secret, merry Christmas.
I will leave you with the best parallel-parking job of my life. I executed it in DUMBO on the morning of June 23, 2017, and yes I would be happy to autograph copies of this photo.
