Roadway Dining is Back For Season, DOT Now Wants Year-Round

Outdoor roadway dining is back for the season, and could soon be returned to a year-round enterprise, if legislation promised by New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin ends up passing.

In the meantime, the number of roadway setups available to city diners–the DOT wants to retire the term “sheds,” due to rules that now ban roofs and side enclosures—has dropped precipitously in the past few years.

A total of 500 roadway setups are now operating this spring, a spokesperson for the agency told Straus News, while 1,300 sidewalk setups (which are year-round eligible) are in use. Conversely, observers say that at least 8,000 “sheds” of either type could be found scattered throughout the city when the relaxed pandemic era rules were in effect.

The most generally-accepted reason for this implosion in outdoor dining points to one source: the DOT’s formalization of the program that was rolled out in 2024, otherwise known as Dining Out NYC, which came with plenty of new regulations and steep costs.

Crucially, the rules mandated that roadway setups become a seasonal-only enterprise, meaning that they must come down between November and April. Some restaurant owners deemed the costs of having to assemble and disassemble the sheds every season prohibitive, on top of the other application fees and new material requirements.

Some local residents applauded the new stricter seasonal rules at the time, arguing that the new rules helped cut down on rats and trash that critics said the old year round sheds attracted. Plus some residents were happy to have the added parking spots back even if it was for only five months of the year.

Under Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the DOT now supports Menin’s desire to change course—siding with restaurateurs who believe that seasonal restrictions, enacted by the previous administration, are a barrier to entry for businesses eager to partake in outdoor dining.

While the agency does oversee enforcement of the current setup rules, they note that they’re legally mandated to do so, until the City Council formally adopts changes to rules now in effect. Menin’s office had not returned several calls by press time.

The DOT points out that this season’s number of setups roughly match last year’s figures on a “year-over-year” basis. Though down from its COVID era peak, the numbers seem to have stabilized this year compared to a year ago. Backers of revising the regulations believe that a return to year-round roadway dining would begin pushing overall numbers up again.

The change in direction by the DOT was made clear in a March 15 Daily News op-ed penned by new Commissioner Mike Flynn, which was simply titled: “It’s time for us to save outdoor dining.”

As for a bill that could get the ball rolling in the other direction, Menin has said that she is looking to back something similar to a bill introduced last session, by Council Member Lincoln Restler; she served as a co-sponsor for that bill, which would have made roadside dining year-round, before it died as the year’s session ended.

A reintroduced bill has yet to be unveiled this session, and it appears that it’s still being tinkered with behind the scenes. A spokesperson for Menin did not return comment as of press time.

However, the Council Speaker did telegraph her intentions in early February, when she told the Association for a Better New York—a business lobbying group—that returning roadway dining to a year-round enterprise would “help small businesses survive and adapt by basically clearing up policies of the past.”