The city Department of Transportation has launched a pilot program to deter commercial trucks from parking illegally in residential areas — but those efforts will not reach many neighborhoods most affected by the issue, according to a data analysis by THE CITY.
That irony was not lost on the residents and elected officials of Southeast Queens, who on Thursday gathered along a truck-lined street in Springfield Gardens to urge the transportation department to make them a part of the pilot.
“The people who live in our community deserve better than to have our neighborhoods treated as an afterthought,” said City Council transportation committee chair Selvena Brooks-Power, who represents parts of Queens Community District 13. That area logged 2,438 complaints about overnight commercial parking last year through 311 reports — second citywide only to Maspeth, Queens.
Councilmember Selvena N. Brooks-Powers (D-Queens) speaks on Rockaway Boulevard, March 27, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Complaints about the issue have increased consistently across the city over the last decade along with the rapid proliferation of e-commerce warehouses and distribution centers, 311 data shows. And Southeast Queens locals say they have borne the brunt of that burden, in large part due to their proximity to John F. Kennedy Airport, the busiest hub for international cargo in the northeast.
“Children are not safe in a community where trucks are parked all along our boulevards, and they can’t even see how to cross from one side of the street to another to get to school, to get to the park to play,” said community organizer Gloria Boyce-Charles. “There’s no reason why Southeast Queen should not have been included in this pilot project.”
The DOT pilot, launched earlier this month to introduce 45 parking spaces made for tractor trailers, covers just two of the 10 community districts with the most complaints about overnight commercial parking last year: Maspeth in Queens and Flatlands in Brooklyn.
Hunts Point in The Bronx — located in a community district that logged just 104, or 0.3%, of those citywide complaints last year — was selected as the third.
Southeast Queens Councilmember Nantasha Williams, who in February introduced legislation to establish overnight parking spaces in industrial business zones across the city, lamented how DOT had failed to consult local residents and elected officials while planning for the pilot project.
“When I got into the Council, one of the requests I gave was to have an interagency task force to address trucking related issues. I didn’t get any feedback on that — then all of a sudden, the administration created this and didn’t tell us,” Williams said.
DOT spokesperson Vincent Barone said the department has reached out to both Brooks-Powers and Williams upon learning of their interest in the pilot program, but said there are few opportunities in Southeast Queens where overnight truck parking could be legalized without encroaching on spaces outside local homes and businesses.
“We are aware and working on the freight challenges in Southeast Queens — including supporting a dramatic expansion of truck parking at JFK — and will review any proposed locations from local officials for a pilot expansion,” Barone said, adding that the project at the airport would provide more truck parking without having to put more trucks on local streets in the neighborhood.
Long Haul Parking
Just blocks away from JFK on Thursday, dozens of oversized trucks lined both sides of Rockaway Boulevard, blocking bus stops, obscuring local businesses and jamming up traffic.
Some of the trucks donned parking tickets on their doors and windows, while others had their license plates removed entirely to avoid enforcement. Many of them have been parked there for days, even months, locals say.
“See that green truck right there? That’s a bus stop. That truck has been parked in the bus stop for a week now,” said Craig Grant, 54, who lives just blocks away from a Q6 bus stop at the intersection of Rockaway Boulevard and 144th Terrace.
Grant’s 72-year-old mother often misses her stop because the parked trucks cover it completely, he said.
“Sometimes, if it’s a new bus driver, he doesn’t even realize that the bus stop is there because there’s a line of trucks and they pass the stop, so she gotta walk over,” said Grant. “I’ve been living here 20 years and it never looked like this.”
For 53-year-old Navin Jaimangai, a seafood wholesaler near Rockaway and Baisley boulevards who relies on truck drivers to deliver his goods, the inundation of illegally parked trucks — along with the scarcity of legal parking space — have also increased the cost of doing business.
“We’re getting issues from truckers that are saying, ‘We’re not coming to New York because we have nowhere to park’… Now they’re sending smaller trucks to do the pick-ups, and it increases shipping costs,” Jaimangai said. “We have a serious issue that’s developing and it’s getting worse every year.”
At a local deli, 57-year-old manager Mary Kim said sales there often come and go with truck drivers. And business has been hurting over the last year, she added, because there’s nowhere for them to park.
“They will stop by and they come here, get breakfast. But no more, because there’s no spot,” Kim said.
“They don’t stop anymore. That’s it.”
Southeast Queens deli manager Mary Kim speaks about trucks parking in her neighborhood, March 27, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
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