More than half of NYC's outdoor dining permits took over 19 months to approve, comptroller finds

Restaurants that applied to put tables on New York City sidewalks and streets under the city's permanent outdoor dining program have often waited well over a year and a half for an answer, according to an investigation released Tuesday by City Comptroller Mark Levine.

More than half of the restaurants that have received permits since the Dining Out NYC program launched in March 2024 waited more than 19 months from application to license, the comptroller's office said. That is far longer than the roughly eight-month timeline the Department of Transportation has cited.

What the investigation found

• Of 4,911 applications received through June 15, 2026, just 1,405 had resulted in licenses, a rate of 28.6%, amNewYork reported from the findings.
• 2,115 applications were still pending with DOT on June 15, including 58 filed when the program first opened, amNY reported.
• Only 1 of 388 applications submitted in 2026 had been approved as of June 15, and fewer than 20 applications overall had been approved within DOT's eight-month estimate, according to the comptroller.
• Restaurants often spent months going back and forth with DOT over paperwork, including technical drawings of their proposed setups that the report says go well beyond what a small business owner can reasonably produce.
• DOT could not show how long applications spend at each stage of review, or track reasons for denials, which the comptroller says makes it hard to know what is causing the delays.

The comptroller's own step, registering the permits, takes an average of 7.9 days, the office said, and since September 2024 it has let DOT allow restaurants to start operating as soon as a permit is filed for registration.

Under the seasonal rules that applied until this fall, roadway cafes could only operate from April through November, so some applicants waited long enough to miss more than one season, according to the report. "The permitting process is a maze of approvals that takes far too long," Levine said in a statement.

DOT says it has caught up

The report also credits DOT with speeding up sharply this year. From March 2024 through January 2026, the agency sent an average of 29 approved applications a month to the comptroller for registration; starting in February that rose to more than 228 a month, peaking at 475 in July, amNY reported. Another 1,092 applications were submitted for registration between June 15 and Oct. 21, the comptroller said.

"NYC DOT has no backlog of applications awaiting review," the department told amNY. A city official said pending applications are either in legally required public review or waiting on more information from restaurant owners, and that the full process typically takes a few months. DOT did not give amNY a current count of unresolved applications.

Why it matters now

Participation has dropped from a pandemic peak approaching 13,000 restaurants to just under 2,500, out of about 27,000 in the city, the comptroller said. In August, the city passed Local Law 135, which lets roadway cafes operate year-round again, but it left the permitting steps in place.

Those steps are on the Nov. 3 ballot. Question 1, proposed by the mayor's Commission on Government Efficiency, would combine the sidewalk and roadway cafe applications, drop mandatory public hearings and some newspaper notices, and end the City Council's power to reject individual sidewalk cafe applications, amNY reported. The commission estimates the changes could cut approval times from eight months to two. The comptroller's office has not taken a position on the measure.

Whatever voters decide, the comptroller recommends that DOT publish regular reports on processing times and pending workloads, set time targets for each stage and for clearing the backlog, build a tool that fills in location details and helps restaurants sketch their setups, and allow a wider range of furniture, including all-season designs. Crain's New York Business also reported on the findings.