Below are a few photographs showing U-Haul’s takeover of 23rd Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues on the West Side of Manhattan. Recently I was forced to walk in the street against oncoming traffic — dodging cars, trucks, busses, cyclists and skateboarders — with two dogs on leashes, one of whom is a puppy who doesn’t always pay attention to where she is going. Why does U-Haul feel entitled to take over an entire sidewalk and push pedestrians into the street? You can see the orange NYPD tickets on some of the windscreens; U-Haul apparently deems this just another cost of doing business. Oftentimes 23rd Street is littered with these tickets, suggesting U-Haul has such a low opinion of City law it doesn’t even bother to remove the parking violations. They treat them as trash that, presumably, someone else will clean up. Why the City allows a corporation to commandeer a major boulevard is mystifying. But it continues unabated.
Message to U-Haul and its stockholders: please tell your employees to stop using West 23rd Street as a corporate parking lot. The sidewalks of New York City belong to all of us.
U-Haul trucks blocking West 23rd Street
Two lines of U-Haul trucks on West 23rd Street, late morning May 20th, 2015. Earlier that morning there was a third van at left, rendering the entire block unpassable
U-Haul vans with parking tickets
U-Haul van with parking ticket