There is a number that should end every argument about outdoor dining in this city, and it is this: at the height of the pandemic program, New York had somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 restaurants seating customers on the sidewalk and in the roadway. Today, by the Comptroller's own accounting, the program has shrunk to a few hundred approved locations, and nearly 1,000 more operators are stuck in a backlog waiting for permission they cannot get.
