City Council introduces bill to strengthen safety rules for NYC parking garages
It comes four months following the collapse of a parking garage in Lower Manhattan, which left an employee dead and five people injured.
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Stricter safety rules could be coming to parking garages across New York City.
The possibility comes four months following the collapse of a parking garage in Lower Manhattan, which left an employee dead and five people injured.
Rhett Keller and his Nicole lost their car in the collapse. They say they had reservations about keeping their car there.
"Compared to previous garages we had parked our cars in the city, it did not look structurally sound from the beginning," Rhett Keller says.
Since the collapse, the Department of Buildings has inspected round 80 parking garages and has issued several temporary vacate orders for those that have structural damage.
Council Member Selvena Brooks-Powers and four of her colleagues introduced a package of bills that would tighten rules around parking garages.
"We want to make sure what happened at Ann Street doesn't happen again," Brooks-Powers says.
The bills would include setting weight limits on multilevel garages and require garage owners to weigh each car before letting them in. It would also require inspections every four years instead of six years and double the fines for garage owners that do not comply.
The bills would also create a checklist for garage owners to inspect their structures proactively and require the DOB to study the weight capacity of parking garages across the city.
The City Council will be holding a public hearing on the proposed bills in the coming months.
