City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and her city-owned Chevy Suburban in 2008. Photo copyright Steven Hirsch.

To hear Christine Quinn tell it, New Yorkers are crying out for relief from unjust parking policies. Over the last two years, it seems that when City Council members weren’t flogging legislation to add layers of bureaucracy to DOT’s street safety program, they were tripping over themselves to absolve motorists of one responsibility after another.

No matter that most New York commuters don’t drive to work. Or that drivers would be best served by rational prices for on-street parking, not endless cruising for free spots. Or even that one bill, prohibiting the sanitation department from placing stickers on vehicles parked in the path of street sweepers, would put an end to a practice that has benefited the entire city by improving street cleanliness. Nothing has stood in the way of Chris Quinn’s mission to free the put-upon car owner from the tyranny of onerous city edicts.

Including public opinion, it appears. According to a Quinnipiac poll released today, a majority of city voters disagree with Quinn and the council that city sanitation stickers are “unnecessarily punitive.” The poll found that 60 percent of voters, including 57 percent who park on the street, support the use of the stickers.

Support for the yellow stickers ranges from 56 – 40 percent each in Brooklyn and The Bronx to 66 – 26 percent in Manhattan. Men are stuck on the stickers 63 – 33 percent while women want them 57 – 37 percent. There is little partisan difference.

“Even voters who park on the street and do the Alternate Side Parking dance are stuck on the stickers by a wide margin,” said poll director Maurice Carroll in a Quinnipiac media release.

You’ll recall that the sanitation sticker bill was the brainchild of Brooklyn Council Member David Greenfield, who promoted it with characteristic zeal (“I mean, what’s next? We’re going to start slashing people’s tires when they don’t park on the correct side?”). It was also championed by transportation committee chair James Vacca, who called the stickers “cruel.” Weighed against the reality of voter sentiment, such inflammatory rhetoric makes the council look out of touch. It could be that New Yorkers aren’t as worked up about this stuff as their electeds think.

You don’t have to be a political scientist to know that governing by pet peeve is not likely to result in sound policy. Now that Speaker Quinn and the council have impartial evidence that a small number of gripes doesn’t necessarily reflect the opinions of the electorate at large, maybe they will turn their attention to actual problems, starting with the hundreds of fatalities and thousands of injuries suffered on city streets every year.

This is not a graphic from Christine Quinn's transportation report. In fact, the report says nothing at all about transit.

If you’re like most New York commuters, you took a train or bus to get to work today. And like most New Yorkers, you are invisible to the City Council and speaker Christine Quinn.

On Tuesday, Quinn issued a letter, co-signed by transportation committee chair James Vacca, bragging about the accomplishments of a council obsessed with the perceived needs of city drivers. You know the bills: the muni-meter grace period, the elimination of the alternate side violation sticker, the loosening of parking fine deadlines. While she makes mention of the law that requires NYPD to post traffic crash data online, Quinn also touts the council’s success in adding red tape to the installation of bike lanes, a proven safety measure.

November 2010: Quinn and Vacca take aim at safer streets.

The council’s transportation achievements add up to three bills written to address the pet peeves of certain car owners, three bills that allow council members to grandstand for codifying existing DOT protocols, and one genuinely useful bill to help make streets safer.

More broadly, Quinn’s “Transportation Report” contains not one word about public transportation. Framing the council’s transportation agenda as a win for “nearly every New York City driver,” Quinn ignores the 55 percent of commuters who rely on transit. Quinn and the City Council are kowtowing to the city’s motoring elite the same way Republicans in the House of Representatives are writing legislation to please oil companies.

You can find the full text of Quinn’s missive after the jump. Have at it.

January 31, 2012

Dear New Yorker,

A special thank you to everyone who responded to our first NYC Council Transportation Report! We were thrilled with the positive response, and the feedback we received was very helpful and informative.

There’ve been a number of important transportation-related developments since then, many of which you’ll find detailed in our newest report below.

As we explained in our first issue, our goal with these reports is to stay better connected and engaged with you and other New Yorkers about the important and challenging transportation issues affecting our city and communities, so please keep the comments and feedback coming!

If you have any questions about the initiatives below, please feel free to contact either Lyle Frank or Nivardo Lopez in the Council’s Human Services Division at lfrank@council.nyc.gov or nlopez@council.nyc.gov.

Thanks so much, and we look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Christine C. Quinn

Speaker

NYC Council

James Vacca
Chair, Transportation Committee
NYC Council

Making Parking Enforcement in NYC Fairer for Motorists

Nearly every New York City driver has a story about getting a ticket they clearly didn’t deserve.

To help make parking enforcement in our city fairer, the City Council recently passed a series of bills, collectively known as the “Fair Parking Legislative Package.”

The first bill, Intro. 490, presented by Speaker Quinn during her 2011 State of the City address and introduced by Council Member James Gennaro, is aimed at helping drivers who receive a parking ticket while in the process of paying for a muni-meter spot.

Right now, traffic cops aren’t allowed to cancel tickets for any reason, forcing drivers to dispute tickets at a later date.

Under our new law, anyone who receives a ticket while doing what they’re supposed to do – purchasing parking time from a muni-meter – won’t have to fight it later on if they present their time-stamped muni meter ticket to the agent within 5 minutes of the ticket being issued.

This legislation only applies to tickets written electronically (which account for about 85 percent of parking tickets written in the City), so there shouldn’t be any dispute over the time stamped on the ticket and the muni-meter receipt.

The City will also be required to report the number of cancelled tickets annually to the Council, providing us with valuable information about any trends.

Intro. 610, introduced by Council Member James Sanders, prohibits the City from charging drivers late fees on parking tickets until 30 days after a ruling is made

Motorists have every right to dispute parking tickets and shouldn’t be penalized before a final determination is made in their case.

The way the law currently works, drivers begin to accrue fees 30 days after a ticket is written, regardless of whether they’re fighting the ticket in court.

Our bill will provide parking ticket recipients a greater degree of fairness as they await the ruling of an Administrative Law Judge.

Finally, Intro. 546, introduced by Council Member David Greenfield, prohibits the City from placing adhesive stickers to mark vehicles purportedly violating alternate side parking rules.  These stickers are attached even before motorists are given the chance to prove their innocence.  Besides the fact that many people successfully challenge alternate side tickets, cars shouldn’t be subject to such a nuisance before a finding of guilt.  Actions like these are unnecessarily punitive, and our bill will end this practice once and for all.

We’d like to Council Members Gennaro, Sanders and Greenfield for all the hard work and effort they put into the passage of these bills.  Our Fair Parking Legislative Package will provide relief to motorists while promoting more judicious parking enforcement and ticketing practices citywide, and we urge Mayor Bloomberg to sign all three of these bills into law.

Increasing Community Input on Bicycle Lanes

According to the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT), since 2008, over 200 miles of bicycle lanes have been installed, and the City is planning to have installed 1,800 miles of bicycle lanes by 2030.  The City’s bicycle lane network has now been expanded to all five boroughs, including:

• Flushing Avenue (Brooklyn);

• Grand Concourse-Mosholu Parkway (Bronx);

• Columbus Avenue (Manhattan);

• Center Boulevard (Queens); and

• North and South Railroad Avenues (Staten Island).

Now, there’s no disputing that the development of a safer, more accessible biking infrastructure is good for our city.  In addition to the recreational benefits that bicycling offers, bicycle lanes also provide an important, environmentally friendly alternative form of transportation.  However, the expansion of these bicycle lanes has also raised a number of safety and community consultation concerns.

In response to these concerns, the City Council passed Local Law 61 of 2011, sponsored by Council Member Lew Fidler.  Scheduled to take effect later next month, this law will allow local communities the opportunity for greater input in the process of where and how bicycle lanes are installed and removed.  While Local Law 61 doesn’t prevent DOT from installing or removing bicycle lanes, it formalizes a process of consultation with local community boards.  These community boards can then provide additional input to achieve the best and safest means of bringing bicycle lanes to individual communities.

Specifically Local Law 61 requires the DOT to:

• give affected Council Members and community boards at least 90 days’ notice before constructing or removing a bicycle lane; and

• offer to make a presentation at a public hearing held by such affected community board.

If the local community board accepts the DOT’s offer, the hearing must be held within 45 days of the notice given.  The DOT shall then make a presentation of the proposed plans and receive input and will not be permitted to construct or remove such bicycle lane until at least 45 days after the public hearing. However, if no hearing is held, the construction or removal of the bicycle lane may not occur until 90 days after the notification.

Local Law 61 further requires that if the notification is given between June 20 and August 6, the period for a public hearing shall conclude on September 20, and the bicycle lane may not be constructed until 90 days following the notification or 10 days after the hearing, whichever time period is later.  This is done to ensure maximum participation of community boards, most of which are in recess during the summer.

We’d like to thank all of our colleagues, especially Council Member Fidler, for helping us ensure that the DOT is working with community boards and fully considering feedback from neighborhood residents on where, and how, bicycle lanes are installed.

TrafficStat – A Reality!

Good news: Accident and summons data is now available to the public for the first time on the New York City Police Department’s website, thanks to Local Law 12 of 2011, sponsored by Council Member Jessica Lappin.

The crash data, which includes the number of moving violation summonses, the number of traffic crashes, and the number of injuries and fatalities citywide and by borough, can be found at http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/traffic_reports/motor_vehicle_accident_data.shtml.  The summons data can be found at http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/traffic_reports/traffic_summons_reports.shtml.

Having this data available online to the public will help us come up with better solutions to the many traffic and pedestrian safety issues affecting many of our communities.  Armed with this information, we’ll be better able to make our streets safer for everyone.

A special note of thanks to Council Member Lappin and our colleagues for helping to make this happen.

City Council & Mayor Bloomberg Launch Interactive Street Closures Map

Residents will now find it easier to navigate the City, thanks to the launch of NYC Street Closures – a new interactive website that maps closed-off streets across the five boroughs.

This online tool came out of legislation, sponsored by Council Member Garodnick, requiring the NYC Department of Information Technology and Telecommunication (DoITT) to create an online, interactive map displaying current and planned closings due to construction, street fairs, and parades.

The map is available online at NYC.gov and will be updated as often as practicable and necessary but not less than once a week.  Users can search the map based on date, time, and location.

With this information literally at their fingertips, New Yorkers will be better able to navigate the city and get from point A to B with less hassle.

We’d like to thank the Mayor and his Administration for working with us to help make New Yorkers’ lives a little easier.  Our sincere thanks as well to Council Member Garodnick for his leadership and support authoring the bill that created this new online tool.

Interagency Consultation PRIOR to Major Transportation Projects

In a continuing effort to involve and notify community boards and affected Council Member of transportation projects in their districts, the City Council passed and the mayor signed into law Local Law 64 of 2011, sponsored by Council Member James Vacca.

The law, which goes into effect February 12, 2012, requires the Department of Transportation (DOT) to consult with the Police Department, the Fire Department, the Department of Small Business Services and the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities before undertaking any new projects.   (The term “major transportation project”, is defined as “any project that, after construction, will alter four or more consecutive blocks, or 1,000 consecutive feet of street, whichever is less, involving a major realignment of the roadway, including either removal of a vehicular lane(s) or full time removal of a parking lane(s) or addition of vehicular lane(s).”)

When the City takes on a major transportation project, it stands to reason the DOT would consider input from relevant city agencies.  Thanks to Local Law 64, not only will city departments be involved in the planning of new transportation projects,  but Council and Community Board members will have full access to the data, ensuring that the soundest decisions are made to better our neighborhoods.

Statistic Reporting AFTER Completion of Major Projects

Another new law related to major transportation projects was also recently passed by the City Council and signed by Mayor Bloomberg.

Local Law 66 of 2011, sponsored by Transportation Chair James Vacca and scheduled to take effect February 10, 2012, requires the Department of Transportation (DOT) to provide statistics related to a major transportation project not less than 18 months following the completion of that project.  These statistics must include data on the average number of crashes over the five-year period prior to installation and the one year subsequent to the project.

In addition, DOT must also measure the impact the project has had on the flow of traffic in the area following the completion of the project, most importantly as to emergency vehicles.

All of the information must be made available to the affected community boards and council members and posted on DOT’s website.

Transportation & Our Quality of Life

Transportation-related issues are among the most pressing quality-of-life issues facing our communities today.

In addition to working collectively on these initiatives, the City Council is also working individually in our respective districts to help identify and respond to transportation-related issues and concerns at the local level.

As always, community input and involvement in these efforts are key, so please don’t hesitate to reach out to your local Council Member if there’s a transportation-related concern or issue in your community that needs addressing.  Contact information for all 51 members can be found on the City Council’s website at www.council.nyc.gov.

Together we can make our neighborhood and city a much better place to live!

Under Speaker Chistine Quinn, shown here with council members James Vacca and Diana Reyna, the current City Council has added red tape for bike projects and reduced incentives to obey parking rules. Photo: DNAinfo

A year ago Quinn made it clear that her top transportation priority wouldn’t be improving conditions for straphangers or making streets safer for walking and biking. Nope. In a city where 54 percent of households don’t own cars, Quinn focused on reducing the perceived inconvenience of storing cars on public streets.

Now the speaker is getting her moment in the spotlight from this agenda, with the passage of three bills yesterday. One would ban the Sanitation Department from placing stickers on cars that violate alternate-side parking rules. The Sanitation Department opposes the legislation, but the bill has enough votes on the council to override a mayoral veto. Another would let motorists escape a ticket if they show the parking enforcement officer a muni-meter receipt timestamped within five minutes of the violation, and the third would give illegal parkers more time before late fees kick in on their violations.

The 54 percent who don’t own cars get nothing out of this package, except maybe dirtier streets.

The real irony is that car owners don’t get much out of these bills either. The fact is that parking will remain a headache as long as New York gives away most of its scarce curbside space for free, or at bargain rates.

The City Council could learn a few things from San Francisco, where car owners are incurring fewer parking tickets thanks to a program that aligns parking prices with demand. Rather than bend over backward to address a few pet peeves, Quinn and Vacca would do more to lessen parking dysfunction by encouraging the city to move quickly with its own program to put the right price on curbside space. Instead, any time the city tries to adjust meter rates, the council is the loudest opponent.

After the jump, read the email blast that Quinn’s office sent out yesterday claiming victory against “unfair” and “unnecessarily punitive” parking enforcement.

Council Votes to Ease Parking Regulations
The Fair Parking Legislative package will promote more judicious parking enforcement and ticketing practices, providing relief for motorists citywide.  

At today’s Stated Council Meeting, my colleagues and I voted on the Fair Parking Legislative package – three bills intended to make parking enforcement fairer and to eliminate excessive ticketing in New York City.

The first bill, which I first presented during my 2011 State of the City address, will help drivers who receive a parking ticket while in the process of paying for a muni-meter spot. Under the legislation, Traffic Enforcement Agents, with electronic ticketing devices, will now be able – and required – to cancel the ticket immediately, averting the need for New Yorkers to dispute it later, saving them time and effort.

My colleagues at the Council and I also voted on legislation to prohibit late fees on parking tickets prior to a determination of liability. Under current law, late fees may start accruing 30 days after a ticket is issued, rather than 30 days after a determination is made in these cases. This bill will suspend the accrual of late fees until at least 30 days after a finding of guilt, or thirty days after an appeal is decided.

Finally, we voted to end a practice that utilizes adhesive stickers to mark vehicles allegedly violating alternate side parking rules. These stickers are unnecessarily punitive and this bill will end this practice.

IMMEDIATE CANCELLATION OF UNFAIR PARKING VIOLATIONS
To address complaints heard from New Yorkers who park their car and receive a ticket while in the process of paying at a muni-meter, my colleagues and I passed a bill earlier today to require Traffic Enforcement Agents to cancel a ticket on the spot when presented with a muni-meter receipt that shows a time no later than five minutes after the time the ticket was issued.

Currently, when an agent issues a ticket but is then presented with a valid muni-meter receipt, there is no option to cancel the ticket instantly. Under this law, anyone who receives a ticket while doing what they are supposed to do – purchasing parking time from a muni-meter – will not have to fight it later on.

This legislation only applies to tickets written electronically, which account for approximately 85 percent of parking tickets written in the city, so there can be no dispute over the time stamped on the ticket and the muni-meter receipt. Finally, the Administration will be required to report the number of cancelled tickets annually to the Council, which will provide valuable information about any trends.

This local law will take effect 180 days following enactment, provided that during this period, the New York City Department of Finance will be required to appropriately train agents to enforce the law.

Today, we’re tackling a recurrent problem for many New Yorkers– unfair tickets. Nearly every New York City driver has a story about getting tickets they clearly didn’t deserve. Ticketing is supposed to help us enforce the law – not unfairly punish people with no chance for swift recourse. With this bill, we’re saying to New Yorkers, “We’ve listened, and we want to make your lives a little easier.”

PROHIBITING LATE FEES PRIOR TO A DETERMINATION OF LIABILITY
Motorists have the right to dispute parking tickets and should not be penalized before a final determination is made in their case. However, as it stands now under the law, the late fee “clock” starts 30 days after a ticket is issued instead of 30 days after a determination is made in the case. This means that if a driver fights a ticket and is ultimately found guilty, fees may have accrued even before that finding is made.

My colleagues and I passed a bill that will freeze such late fees until at least 30 days after a finding of guilt. In addition, if someone appeals their decision, late fees or penalties may not accumulate until 30 days following a notice of determination of the appeal.

ALTERNATE SIDE PARKING STICKER BILL
Finally, we voted to prohibit the City from placing adhesive stickers to mark vehicles purportedly violating alternate side parking rules. These stickers are attached even before motorists are given the chance to prove their innocence. Besides the fact that many people successfully challenge alternate side tickets, cars should not be subject to such a nuisance before a finding of guilt. Actions like these are unnecessarily punitive.

Admitting the problem is the first step. Photo: Brooklyn Paper

“Any driver who has been towed knows that a trip to the impound lot can be one of the most frustrating experiences in New York City,” Greenfield said.

Under the new legislation, instead of towing, vehicles would be locked with devices called “boots,” which prevent drivers from moving until they call in and pay their outstanding fines, plus a $50 processing fee. Once paid, drivers receive a code that allows them to unlock the boot and drive away, as long as they return the boot.

Cars left booted for 72 hours could be towed under the bill, as could cars parked in tow zones, bus stops, crosswalks, fire hydrants or driveways.

Greenfield said the bill comes after numerous complaints from residents who accused the city of unfairly targeting them to make cash.

Drivers whose cars are towed under the current system have to schlep to an impound lot and then pay $185 in towing and $20 in storage a day, in addition to tickets, Greenfield said.

“This bill would give drivers a chance to pay their debts to the city without wasting an entire day trying to retrieve their vehicle,” he said. “It’s a simple and fair way for the city to enforce its parking laws without excessively punishing drivers.”

Retrieving a car from impound has got to be a frustrating ordeal, which is pretty much the point. Not that the boot itself isn’t a deterrent, but if nothing else this is further evidence of a City Council preoccupied with making life easier for motorists who believe laws should not apply to them.

Of course this is old hat for Greenfield, whose obsession with loosening parking regulations seemingly knows no bounds, and who a year ago went online to rant about the city clearing snow for safer walking and biking. Yet when reckless drivers inflict serious injury and death in his district, Greenfield has nothing to say.

Greenfield’s bill has been referred to the transportation committee, with support from council members including Brad Lander, Tish James, Lew Fidler, Robert Jackson and Ydanis Rodriguez.

Edison ParkFast advertises its bike parking at Hester and Centre Streets. Photo: Noah Kazis

Two years after the City Council passed the Bicycle Access to Garages law, which set aside space for bike parking in commercial garages, legislators are turning their attention back to the issue. In response to low demand for the garage spaces, a bill sponsored by Queens rep Karen Koslowitz would loosen up some of the design requirements for the bike parking spaces while maintaining the total amount of bike parking required.

A report from the Council’s Consumer Affairs Committee, chaired by Manhattan rep Dan Garodnick, lays out the current state of bike parking in garages [PDF]. The law has created 16,378 secure bike parking spaces but, according to a survey of the major garage operators, on average only 27.7 spaces are used each day. That unused space presumably has some garage operators chafing.

Koslowitz’s legislation, which received a hearing last Wednesday, wouldn’t reduce the number of bike spaces garages need to set aside. Currently, garages with more than 50 car spaces must provide one bike spot for every 10 cars, up to their first 200 car spaces. For garages with more volume than that, one bike spot is required for every 100 additional car spaces.

The Koslowitz bill would give garages more latitude in how to provide bike parking, however. A requirement that each bike be given a 2′ x 3′ x 6′ space, for example, would be eliminated, as would certain requirements meant to protect parked bikes from moving cars.

Caroline Samponaro, the director of bike advocacy for Transportation Alternatives, said she didn’t have a problem with the legislation. “The good thing about the bill is it maintains the same number of parking spots.” She said providing garage operators with some flexibility in how they provide the parking was a reasonable adjustment to a new law and that the important thing was that ample parking is still provided. “The lack of secure bike parking is one of the deterrents to people riding in New York. Parking garages can be part of that solution.”

Cost is also an ongoing concern for the Bikes in Garages law, though not one the Council is addressing. While many have cheered Edison Parking’s dollar-a-day bike parking rate, other garages have set rates so high it’s hard to imagine anyone paying them.

Intro 626 requires the department to consult with the NYPD, FDNY, Department of Small Business Services and Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, which DOT already does. While the original version of the bill required DOT to produce a written report about each consultation, the amended version passed today only demands that DOT certify they did so.

Similarly, the requirements of Intro 671, which DOT did not endorse at a hearing held last September because it lacked flexibility, have been loosened. While the original included rigid mandates for DOT to report on the average speed of regular traffic and emergency vehicles before and after street redesigns, the new version requires DOT to post data on speeds, traffic volumes and vehicular level of service “to the extent such data is relevant to the project.” While level of service has been widely criticized as an auto-centric measure poorly suited to an urban environment, this language seems to suggest that the appropriate measure will vary with the intent of the project. The police and fire departments can set their own guidelines for measuring the impact of changes on their vehicles. The bill also requires DOT to study before-and-after crash data and post it on its website.

Each of the bills would only cover projects which add or remove a lane of traffic or parking for four blocks or more.

Next up for this visionary committee: a hearing on the MTA’s readiness for winter.

Little-known fact: Lew Fidler's bill also requires the city to notify community boards before a bike lane is removed. Photo of Bedford Avenue bike lane erasure: Elizabeth Press

“Our legislation will ensure the Department of Transportation works with community boards and fully considers feedback from neighborhood residents on where, and how, bicycle lanes are installed,” Quinn said in a statement.

This is kind of like bragging about legislation that ensures the Department of Sanitation will pick up the trash. The city already brings bike lane proposals to community boards. The past few years have produced a long record of community board votes in favor of safer streets, as well as a few that went in favor of the status quo. With or without this bill, the bike lanes are going in where the community boards sign off on them.

Defending the need for the legislation, Vacca told NY1, “I don’t think it’s anti-bike to make sure that local neighborhoods have input as to where bike lanes go.”

Can’t argue there. Having a public process for bike lane installation is not anti-bike. What’s anti-bike is to imply that the recent expansion of bike lanes has somehow lacked sufficient public input, which is the message that comes across from the coverage of this bill.

It’s also strange that the City Council thinks it’s necessary to mandate notification for all bike lanes, but not for all changes to motor vehicle lanes. If the city wants to carve out some left-turn bays from a pedestrian median, for instance, there’s no law requiring a public hearing.

So yeah, it’s anti-bike to grandstand about the imaginary problem of community input on bike lanes when the council could be focusing on real transportation problems like the MTA debt bomb, obscenely wasteful subsidies for stadium parking, or NYPD’s refusal to disclose information on traffic crashes.

In any case, Quinn, Vacca, and Fidler missed their chance to boast about the real innovation in this bill. It requires the city to inform community boards before any bike lane is removed:

…at least ninety days before the construction or the removal of a bicycle lane is to begin, the department shall notify each affected council member and community board via electronic mail of the proposed plans for the bicycle lane within the affected community district and shall offer to make a presentation at a public hearing held by such affected community board.

From now on, City Hall can’t make political bargains to rip out bike lanes without telling the affected community board and council member first. Whether the local CB and council member act on that information to notify the broader public seems to be up to them. So the bill isn’t quite a failsafe against future surprises like Bedford Avenue and Father Capodanno Boulevard, but it is a step forward.

NYC DOT has not opposed the bill, and the mayor is expected to sign it into law.

RPP is intended to curb traffic by designating street parking for local residents. On Wednesday the council’s State and Federal Legislation Committee passed a home rule resolution supported by council members who say their neighborhoods are being used as parking lots for out-of-area commuters and sports fans.

While support in the City Council is strong, passage of the Albany bills, introduced by Senator Daniel Squadron and Assembly Member Joan Millman, is not assured. The Bloomberg administration, which introduced its own RPP plan three years ago, has expressed limited interest in the concept. Meanwhile, legislators including Republican senators Marty Golden and Andrew Lanza have said they will work to kill the bill. Even if the legislation clears both houses in Albany, the city would still have to devise and pass a program.

Then-Council Member David Yassky examines the proposed design for a residential parking permit system put forward by the Bloomberg administration in 2008.

A City Council committee took the first step toward bringing residential parking permits to New York City neighborhoods this afternoon. Details haven’t been worked out yet, but committee members signaled their desire to move forward on a system that would restrict a portion of curbside parking space to use by local residents.

While most council members wanted to see residential parking permits brought to neighborhoods across the city, the Department of Transportation opposed RPP except perhaps in the areas immediately around stadiums.

The action in the City Council today marked an early milestone in what would be a complicated path to passage. The State and Federal Legislation Committee, chaired by Council Member Helen Foster, passed a home rule resolution allowing state legislation sponsored by State Senator Daniel Squadron and Assembly Member Joan Millman to move forward. If passed, the Squadron/Millman bill would then authorize New York City to set up its own RPP program with a few restrictions. The city would still have to work out the details and pass an actual program.

The Bloomberg administration opposed the first step in that process today, testifying against the home rule amendment and the Squadron/Millman bill. While the administration had put forward an RPP system during the push for congestion pricing in 2008, today officials said that a citywide RPP program wouldn’t be worth the trouble if it’s decoupled from road pricing. Council members, meanwhile, expressed high expectations for how RPP might alleviate the traffic and parking woes in their districts.

Foster, the bill’s sponsor, argued that her district needs RPPs are needed in her district, which is just a block from Yankee Stadium. On game days, she said, Yankee fans’ parked cars block residents from finding a parking space in their own neighborhood or even being able to walk safely. Foster said cars can regularly be found on the sidewalk and in front of hydrants during home games. Fans fill up the on-street spaces despite the thousands of empty spaces in the city-subsidized Yankee Stadium parking system. “If I could park on the sidewalk, why would I pay $45 to park in a garage?” asked Foster.

Almost every council member in attendance supported the RPP concept. Parking permits are “a long time coming,” said Stephen Levin, who noted that his Downtown Brooklyn constituents had been clamoring for an RPP program for years. The district has “a real danger with cars driving around looking for a space,” he added. Letitia James, whose district includes the Atlantic Yards site, said that RPPs would ease congestion, protect pedestrians and reduce air pollution. James Vacca, the East Bronx-based transportation committee chair, said that parking permits would encourage the use of mass transit, “which is what we want in this city.” Brad Lander called RPP “the one piece of public policy that can make a difference” on Atlantic Yards traffic.

DOT representatives disagreed, arguing that RPPs should be limited to the area immediately surrounding stadiums, if put in place at all. “Where RPP has worked, it has generally been in cities with low densities and less demand for curb parking,” argued DOT Deputy Commissioner for External Affairs David Woloch. In New York City, he said, RPPs would have “enormous potential for unintended consequences.” Because New York City has so many cars and so little on-street parking, Woloch said residents would purchase permits but still have no guarantee of finding a parking space. He also said that in other cities with RPP programs, such as Boston, Chicago and Washington, D.C., the cost of administering the program exceeds the revenues.

Woloch’s critiques included both concerns with the concept and implementation of RPPs. He argued that an opt-in system would create “a sense of exclusion between adjacent neighborhoods.” And he said that striking the right balances in setting the boundaries of RPP zones would be too difficult. He also took issue with some of the specific provisions of Squadron and Millman’s bill. The legislators want to use the proceeds of the RPP program to help fund transit, for example, but Woloch argued that would saddle the city with implementation costs without any offsetting revenues.

That said, NYC DOT is in the process of completing studies on the use of RPPs within half a mile of Yankee Stadium and the new Barclays Center at Atlantic Yards, two locations with some of the most insistent calls for permits. “DOT does believe that the benefits of RPP may be worth the costs in areas with a very large trip generator,” said Woloch. The studies are set to be completed early next year.

Most Council Members did not want to limit RPPs to stadium areas, however. Upper Manhattan rep Robert Jackson said that his district merited inclusion in any RPP system due to the large number of commuters coming off the George Washington Bridge. “They drive in across the bridge and park there all day long,” said Jackson. “Stadiums are not the only concern.” Elizabeth Crowley, too, said that her neighborhood could use a permit system despite the lack of sports arenas.

Woloch said that neighborhoods like Jackson’s would have been part of the city’s RPP plan when it was paired with congestion pricing. That was different, Woloch argued, because then the city worried that neighborhoods outside the congestion pricing zone would be park-and-rides. “Not would be,” shot back Jackson. “It is.”

The only City Council Member to speak out against the proposal was southern Brooklyn rep Lew Fidler, who seemed to have forgotten about both the city’s extensive transit system and the existence of metered parking. Wealthy communities will opt into the system, Fidler argued, at which point “you might as well put a gate up around them.” He also worried that RPPs would send New York slipping down “this slope of charging people to park on the streets.”

For their part, residents testifying made clear that they didn’t expect a RPP system to guarantee them parking, contrary to the city’s argument. RPP is “a tool to reduce demand for local streets, not a guarantee of parking for local residents,” said the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council’s Gib Veconi. He said that 3,000 vehicles are expected to look for free parking on residential streets during Barclays Center events and that an RPP system could discourage them from driving.

Added Jo Ann Simon, a Democratic district leader, “We want to make sure we are not completely overrun, that our children are not killed crossing the street, and that we can breathe.”

While most of those testifying came in support of the RPP concept, some disagreed. “Our church members come from all five boroughs” said Antonio Rodriguez, representing Downtown Brooklyn’s First Baptist church. A residential permit parking system, he said “would unfairly discriminate against our church” and interfere with what he called their First Amendment right to free worship.

December 2010: Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca rallies to keep parking prices low.

James Vacca is redefining the role of the City Council Transportation Committee.

If you’re concerned about issues such as the gradual collapse of the transit system, the scandalous waste of taxpayer money used to subsidize parking for billion-dollar businesses, or the shocking injustices suffered by victims of traffic violence, there isn’t much on the agenda for you. On the other hand, if you’re a car owner who’s distraught over the appearance of bike lanes, or who perceives the enforcement of parking laws as a personal affront, Vacca’s committee is at your service.

The latest indignity to garner the attention of the committee is the sticker that the Department of Sanitation attaches to the windows of cars that impede city street sweepers. While it seems like a distinctly Noo Yawk brand of poetic justice — your car trashes up the city, the city trashes up your car — according to Vacca and fellow City Council Member David Greenfield, it is insult added to injury.

“A $60 ticket or $65…is enough,” says Vacca (the fine is $45 to $65, depending on location). “The sticker is cruel, the sticker is overkill, it is unnecessary, it is excessive.”

“It’s really cruel and unusual,” agrees Greenfield, who has proposed a bill to eliminate the stickers.

Though sanitation officials say the sticker, in use since 1988, is a more effective deterrent than a fine — a point arguably bolstered by the hyperbole employed to condemn it — the safe money says the council will again bow to drivers who flout the law and order the policy altered or abandoned.

Assuming the suggestion box is open to all New Yorkers, and not just the affluent car-owning minority, what transportation-related policies do you consider “cruel and unusual”? No gripe is too trifling for Vacca’s Pet Peeve Committee.

Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca. Image: CBS 2

The City Council Transportation Committee held hearings on three bills today, each of which would add more requirements to the Department of Transportation’s review process for street redesigns, especially bike lanes.

For the most part, the bills codify what DOT already does: present bike projects to community boards, coordinate with other agencies before implementation, and report back on the results.

Intro 412, sponsored by Lew Fidler, would require community board hearings on all bike lanes at least 90 days before construction. (An existing law already mandates CB hearings prior to the installation of most bike lanes.) Intros 626 and 671, both sponsored by committee chair James Vacca, would require DOT to consult with other city agencies before undertaking a major transportation project and mandate the release of safety and traffic speed data for those projects. Each of the three bills would amend Local Law 90, which the council passed at the end of 2009, requiring DOT to go to community boards for all projects that add or remove a travel or parking lane for more than four blocks.

DOT only opposed one of the bills. “We agree with the idea behind Intro 671,” said Deputy Commissioner for External Affairs David Woloch, “but we also believe that since each project DOT conducts is unique, it requires a customized data collection plan.” Woloch said that Gale Brewer’s Local Law 23 of 2008, which created the agency’s Sustainable Streets Index, was preferable in that it maintained the needed flexibility of measurement. During the hearing, Vacca did not spend significant time discussing this bill or pushing back on DOT; he focused on the other two pieces of legislation instead.

The other two bills merely codify existing department practices, Woloch said, adding that DOT already goes to community boards for all bike lane projects, as Fidler’s bill would require. “This process has been successful in gaining community understanding and support for bicycle lane projects,” he said. DOT also already consults with NYPD and FDNY on all street redesigns and works with the Department of Small Business Services and Mayor’s Office for People With Disabilities on more general policy issues. While Woloch said that DOT would need to see some minor changes to the bills’ language — changing the wording to clarify that community boards would hold hearings over bike lanes, not DOT itself, for example — the department was on board with the basic concepts.

That made for a conciliatory hearing while DOT’s reps were testifying. “I’m thrilled that the commissioner is behind it, because I think she gets it,” said Fidler of his bill. He also said that he could tell DOT’s public outreach had significantly improved. “There’s been a notable difference in DOT’s outreach, at least in my community, in the last few years.” While he carped about “bike lanes dropped from the sky,” Fidler also said that he expected his bill to constrain future administrations more than this one, which was already complying with its rules.

Transportation Alternatives came out strongly against Fidler’s bill, saying that it would add unnecessary red tape to nuts-and-bolts safety improvements. With Local Law 90 on the books, the Fidler bill would only cover the smallest bike projects, which shouldn’t require additional oversight unless community boards or the DOT want it, he said. Currently, the law already requires DOT to get community board input on projects that take away or add a travel lane or parking lane for four blocks or more.

“We’re talking about the most minor, the most routine bike lanes that DOT paints,” said TA general counsel Juan Martinez. “When we’re talking about these routine improvements, the months of delay that happen when you have to go through the community board means New Yorkers’ safety is delayed.”

When Vacca responded, he didn’t acknowledge that Martinez had suggested community boards retain the option to comment on a project, if they want to. “You disagree with their right to have input?” Vacca shot back. “Maybe you consider it mundane, but maybe people in that community consider it important. That’s patronizing and unacceptable.”

Martinez also pointed out that only bike lanes were covered under the Fidler bill. “This bill doesn’t ask for more community input over crosswalks or to add more parking.”

Fidler seemed to acknowledge that public review could grow excessively burdensome. If you went to the community board for every transportation project, he responded, “government would be paralyzed.” But he insisted that even the smallest bike projects — even sharrows — need this level of scrutiny because they’re extremely controversial. Fidler also reiterated his ostensible commitment to building bike lanes — “we need to have safe and complete streets,” he said — and suggested that while he’d opposed proposed lanes in his district, bike infrastructure that brought people to the subway or to parks would be a better fit.

Whether Fidler’s singling out of bike lanes was meant to throw a wrench into efforts to build more bike infrastructure or not, anti-bike activists showed up to support the bill. Jack Brown, the founder of the Coalition Against Rogue Riding, never once mentioned community boards or public planning in his statement in support of Intro 412. He did, however, refer to “bike bedlam,” “a public safety crisis,” and — not once, but twice — compared cyclists to terrorists.

Representatives from community boards who attended the hearing each testified that DOT’s public outreach process is not only adequate but commendable. “My experience is that DOT adheres to the letter and spirit of the law” requiring community input, said Ian Dutton, the former vice-chair of Manhattan Community Board 2′s transportation committee. “I can say categorically that DOT has not installed a single bicycle infrastructure project without the input of CB 2.”

Wally Rubin, the district manager for Manhattan Community Board 5, said he’d seen a lot of DOT as they installed bike lanes and pedestrian plazas through Midtown. “With each of these efforts, they have reached out to us, the BIDs, and the larger community,” he said. “They have listened to us and more than once gone back to the drawing board.” Projects that began as extremely controversial, like the redesign of traffic around Union Square, were explained and revised until the community got on board; they ended up as major successes once complete, said Rubin. “We only wish that other city agencies would be as responsive and interested in our input as DOT.”

A demonstration Bixi bike-sharing bicycle sits in Union Square in 2009. An official announcement about New York City's bike-share program is expected this week.

New York City’s bike-share plans are poised to make a big leap this week, with the city expected to select the winner of the contract to operate the system very soon, according to Transportation Nation. The announcement will come after top City Council leaders have signaled that they back bike-share.

“We support the bike share program for New York City,” said Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Land Use Committee Chair Leroy Comrie in an e-mail statement to Streetsblog. “We think it’s an important amenity that will improve the lives of New Yorkers and tourists.”

Michael Grynbaum reported in the New York Times on Friday that the council and City Hall recently resolved a dispute over whether the plans for bike-share went through the proper procedural steps, in particular a vote in the City Council. The arrangement they reached calls for oversight hearings on the program in the council, rather than a vote. The council’s press office did not provide any details about which committee would hold those hearings or when they might take place.

The question at issue was whether bike-sharing is a franchise, a kind of contract the city makes with a private firm that requires legislative authority before a competitive bidding process can start. The Council maintains that the administration should have considered bike-share a franchise, Quinn and Comrie said, adding that they “appreciate the improvements to the process that the administration has agreed to.”

Also helping build momentum is the successful launch of Boston’s Hubway bike-share system. Boston hoped to sell 2,000 annual memberships by Thanksgiving according to the Boston Globe, but had already topped 2,300 subscribers by the end of August, after only one month of operation. Hubway’s ridership has so far eclipsed that of similarly-sized systems in Minneapolis and Denver, and the bulk of complaints are from people who want to see the system expanded into their neighborhood. As with all American bike-sharing systems, theft and vandalism have not been problems in Boston.

The success of bike-sharing in other American cities has only strengthened the impression that NYC has some catching up to do. As Comrie told the Times, “No one is against bike-share — it’s something that every major city across the world is adopting and embracing.”

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer rallied for a car-free summer in Central Park five years ago, and voted in favor of a similar proposal yesterday. Photo: Transportation Alternatives

Though Mayor Bloomberg has ruled out the possibility of implementing a car-free Central Park trial this year, opting for further data collection instead, public support for the proposal continues to grow. At a meeting of the Manhattan Borough Board yesterday, the car-free trial picked up support from still more community boards and new City Council members.

The Borough Board consists of every City Council member and representatives from every community board in Manhattan, as well as the borough president. The board was unanimous in its support for a car-free trial. (The full roll call, provided to Streetsblog by car-free park activist Ken Coughlin, is available at the bottom of this post.)

Of Manhattan’s 12 community boards, 11 have now voted in support of the plan. The only exception is CB 12, which was absent from yesterday’s meeting and had not voted on the proposal previously.

Elected officials, too, voted in favor of the trial. Borough President Scott Stringer, a long-time supporter of such a plan, voted yes. So did Council Members Gale Brewer, who has sponsored legislation to take cars out of both Central and Prospect Parks permanently, and Dan Garodnick, who supported a car-free trial in 2006. Rosie Mendez was the only other council member to vote; she too was in support. As is her practice, Christine Quinn abstained in deference to her citywide duties as council speaker.

No council member has publicly opposed a car-free trial this year.

Here’s the full Borough Board roll call:

• CB 1 – Yes
• CB 2 – Yes
• CB 3 – Yes
• CB 4 – Yes
• CB 5 – Yes
• CB 6 – Yes
• CB 7 – Yes
• CB 8 – Yes
• CB 9 – Absent
• CB 10 – Yes
• CB 11 – Absent
• CB 12 – Absent
• Brewer – Yes
• Chin – Absent
• Jackson – Absent
• Mendez – Yes
• Rodriguez – Absent
• Lappin – Absent
• Garodnick – Yes
• Dickens – Absent
• Quinn – Abstain
• Mark-Viverito – Absent
• BP Stringer – Yes

To borrow from the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay, this NY1 segment starring City Council Transportation Chair James Vacca seems to come straight out of the “shrill and embarrassing” early 2011 phase of NYC bike coverage.

Once reporter Michael Herzenberg intones in his best investigative journalist voice that “believe it or not, many of the most controversial lanes were actually part of a city master plan developed under a different administration,” we are well into bizarro land. An NYC where there’s no public opinion data showing 56 percent of voters favor the expansion of the bike network, where one cyclist is presumed to speak for everyone who might ride a bike, and where a document from 1997 — an era when no one ever considered building a protected bike lane on the streets — is controlling the bike policies of today.

And there is the transportation chair, waving at a street and expressing his consternation that it may one day sport a bike lane. Or maybe just bike stencils. Who knows? Yes, it’s on a Giuliani-era map of potential bike routes, but DOT hasn’t actually proposed implementing a bike lane there.

Eventually, we get to the actual news, which is that Vacca has proposed a bill requiring the city to update the bike master plan every five years, starting in 2012. Innocent enough, right? But here’s the bizarro part: Vacca’s bill would compel DOT to estimate, “to the extent practicable,” where every route in the plan would eliminate parking spaces or travel lanes. Safety first.

The fact is that every bike project already goes through the community board process before implementation. Vacca’s bill would add an extraneous layer of bureaucracy to the long-term endeavor of building out a connected network for safe cycling.

Vacca spokesperson Bret Collazzi compared the bill to long-range exercises like the city’s waterfront plan or the school construction authority’s five-year plans. But the waterfront plan is an outline. So is the bike plan — details like configuring the bikeway and determining what happens at the curb don’t get hammered out in a long-range plan.

Collazzi also contended that presenting detailed projections upfront, even for projects that might not get built for decades, is “a more responsible way to do community planning.” He cited the Prospect Park West redesign as an example of a project that would have benefited from Vacca’s approach, since it appears in the master plan as a one-way, un-protected lane. But the PPW process was as community-based as you can get, the result of years of public workshops, meetings, and votes. It was, in fact, the community board that asked DOT to study the two-way protected bike lane that was eventually built.

As it happens, the point about PPW’s place in the 1997 master plan was also raised by none other than former deputy mayor Norman Steisel, a fierce opponent of the PPW project, in an email to DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, and copied to Vacca, last fall [PDF]. When Steisel forwarded his message to Marty Markowitz and Iris Weinshall, he said of Sadik-Khan, who worked under him in the Dinkins administration: “she once considered me a mentor, now her tormentor.”

Transportation Alternatives responded to the Vacca bill in a statement:

What’s more valuable: a human life or a parking spot?

Bike lanes save lives. These street safety improvements are proven to reduce fatal crashes by 40 percent for everyone — bicyclists, pedestrians and drivers.

This bill co-opts the already-extensive and participatory community process in order to prioritize the convenience of motorists over everyone’s safety.

There’s just no good reason to single out bike lanes for extra bureaucratic review. Community input in transportation planning is important, that’s why we have Local Law 90, which requires the City to present and take community feedback on all of its bike lane projects.

Duplicating the existing mechanisms for community process and adding the requirement to highlight lost parking is a simply a way to obstruct and slow down life saving street safety improvements. This bill will drown out the voices of ordinary New Yorkers, who are clamoring for these safety improvements by a significant majority.

Collazzi denied that Vacca sought out the cameras, saying that NY1 found out about the bill from someone else. “They came to us,” he said. “We’re not looking to fan the flames of bike hysteria. We’re not in a position where we’re trying to get everyone hyped up about this.” Yet, that is basically what happened, with Vacca starring in a segment that pushes a narrative about the city building “a controversial proliferation of bike lanes.”

Vacca did not share the proposal with NYC DOT before introducing the legislation. Collazzi said Vacca expects to speak with DOT about the bill soon, and plans to hold another bike hearing sometime this year.

The torment continues, apparently.

Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca at a rally against the 25-cent meter rate bump in December. That rate hike went through in Wednesday's budget. Photo: YourNabe/Council Member Vacca's office

After a grim day, it’s nice to be able to head into the holiday weekend with some good news.

In a vote on Wednesday, the City Council allowed a proposed parking meter rate hike to move forward. The cost of parking on the street for an hour will increase from 75 cents to a dollar in Manhattan above 86th Street and in the other four boroughs.

In the last budget fight, council members led by Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca and Brooklyn rep Diana Reyna successfully fought to keep meter rates at 75 cents, though they allowed them to rise in the Manhattan core.

All indications suggested that the council would again fight to keep on-street parking as subsidized as possible. Vacca announced his opposition to the rate hike at a council budget hearing in early June; Vacca and Queens rep Karen Koslowitz promised to fight for the low rates in a Daily News article published later that month.

This time around, however, the council opted against removing the parking meter rate hike from the budget. Neither Vacca’s office nor that of council Speaker Christine Quinn would explain why they let the hike go through, though both confirmed that they did.

The council’s official press release on the 2012 budget touts their prevention of teacher layoffs or firehouse closures; perhaps council members understood that the roughly $14 million that would be raised by charging more for parking was needed elsewhere.

It’s also possible that they finally realized that underpriced parking just makes it harder to find a spot and clogs the streets with drivers endlessly cruising for an open spot. Given past behavior, that seems less likely.

This fake placard for the New York State Numismatic Agency escaped ticketing over seven hours of illegal parking thanks to lax enforcement. NYPD claims, however, that its placards are designed with the appropriate security features. Photo: Kevin Hagen for the Daily News

At a City Council Transportation Committee hearing today, the New York Police Department announced its opposition to legislation that would curb parking placard abuse by requiring barcodes on official placards. NYPD claimed that it has placard abuse under control and that only Police Commissioner Ray Kelly should have the power to determine what tools are used to defend against it. Testimony from NYPD and DOT also revealed that there are currently 118,000 official placards in circulation, tens of thousands more than previously realized.

Putting barcodes on placards would allow traffic enforcement agents to easily and accurately know whether the laminated plastic sitting on a car’s dashboard legitimately grants extra parking privileges. That wouldn’t solve every kind of placard abuse, but it would empower agents to ticket the truly bogus placards.

Council Member Dan Garodnick, the bill’s sponsor, cited yesterday’s experiment by Transportation Alternatives, in which a placard from the “New York State Numismatic Agency,” marked with the official seal of Bulgaria, escaped ticketing during seven hours of illegal parking in Lower Manhattan, Downtown Brooklyn and Times Square, proving that placard enforcement was effectively non-existent. “It’s clearly time for the city to take a bolder step,” said Garodnick.

Council members from across the city understood that allowing placard holders to hoard curb space and escape parking regulations is hurting their neighborhoods. “It seems like New York City has become the Wild West of parking permits,” said Brooklyn’s David Greenfield. Said Queens rep Jimmy Van Bramer, “Others, particularly those who work for a city agency, are held to a different standard.”

The only person who didn’t see the need for action on placard abuse was Susan Petito, the assistant commissioner for intergovernmental affairs at NYPD. While Petito gave lip service to the council’s concern, she ultimately claimed that the NYPD had the problem under control.

When Garodnick asked Petito whether the placards currently issued by the NYPD are “secure and free from fraud today,” Petito said they were: “The actual placards have security features that we think are very robust.”

Garodnick then pointed out the obvious: “Does it really matter how great your security features are if an agent looks at your perfectly secure placard and looks at a photocopied bogus placard and can’t tell the difference?”

Petito and DOT Deputy Commissioner David Woloch revealed that there are currently far more official placards in circulation than previously announced. In its April report on placard abuse, Transportation Alternatives cited 78,000 as the official placard total. But between NYPD and DOT-issued placards, the total has crept back up to 118,000, Petito and Woloch testified. Much of the progress made by the Bloomberg administration to reduce the number of placards has been eroded.

Petito also put forward a constantly shifting set of rationales rejecting the addition of barcodes to parking placards. First she claimed that NYPD’s equipment couldn’t scan though the windshield onto the dashboard. When Van Bramer suggested turning placards into stickers, Petito moved on to suggesting that the scanners didn’t have enough memory to store the database of barcodes.

As the discussion progressed, Petito would not describe what system NYPD believes would effectively allow traffic agents to determine the validity of a placard, claiming that explaining the current features in public would compromise their security. NYPD wouldn’t object to legislation that allowed the police commissioner to determine what security features he felt were necessary — the status quo, in other words.

Several times, Petito displayed a failure to understand the basic intent of Garodnick’s legislation. When she argued that there wouldn’t be a barcode on the fake Numismatic Agency placard anyway, Garodnick tried to explain that was the point. “We do not issue placards to them,” Petito still maintained.

Petito’s explanation of current placard enforcement revealed the NYPD’s lack of commitment to solving the placard abuse problem. In response to a question by Council Member Peter Koo about what an ordinary traffic enforcement agent is supposed to when he sees a placard, Petito told him,”They will look at a permit and if it looks legitimate, they will not issue the ticket,” unless the car is parked at a hydrant or some other location where even placards do not allow one to park. “If it looks like a fraudulent placard,” she continued, “then they will notify the Internal Affairs Bureau for further investigation of that placard.”

When I spoke to James Huntley, the president of the traffic enforcement agents’ union, he said his members do indeed give out parking tickets to cars with obviously fake placards and only call in Internal Affairs for cases where the placard seems to be a fraudulent reproduction or imitation of an official NYPD placard. If Huntley is right, it would be another indication that Petito did not understand that placard abuse goes far beyond the abuse of official placards.

The special placard division of Internal Affairs has issued 29,885 summons and towed 6,484 cars using improper placards, in addition to roughly 100 more serious actions, since April 2008, said Petito. With a dozen officers working in the placard division, that only works out to about two and a half placard abusers caught by each Internal Affairs officer each day. In contrast, Transportation Alternatives volunteers found 330 fake or illegally-used placards in just one day in Downtown Brooklyn last January.

In public testimony, many argued for more sweeping changes. “It is the fault of a broken placard system,” said Transportation Alternatives general counsel Juan Martinez. So long as a laminated piece of paper is enough to have free access to valuable parking spaces, he said, “You’re inviting abuse. You’re inviting fraud.”

Jonathan Kalkin, who has served as the chair of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation Operations Committee, suggested that the city “make citizens able to scan, get that information and then upload it as a complaint to 311.” Combining some sort of technological solution with crowdsourcing would “stop police officers from worrying about protecting their own,” he argued.

Six other parking bills were up for discussion at the hearing, all of which made it easier to park or to pay or contest a parking ticket. The most far-reaching was sponsored by Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca. His legislation would require that traffic enforcement agents affix photographs to parking tickets for certain violations as additional evidence. NYPD opposed the bill on the grounds that it would imply that the sworn statement of the agent is not good enough to find someone guilty of a parking violation.

The City Council wants more potholes filled, like this one on Linden Boulevard, but budget pressures and a harsh winter have strained DOT's capacity. Image: NYC DOT.

Call it the case of the missing demagoguery. Yesterday’s City Council transportation budget hearing was less notable for what was said than what wasn’t. Attacks on the city’s proposed parking meter rate increase were largely absent, and the scapegoating of bike lanes and pedestrian plazas that has dominated recent hearings in James Vacca’s committee failed to materialize. Mostly, council members just talked about potholes.

That isn’t to say that the hearing was entirely free of grandstanding. Vacca told DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan that he intended to again oppose a proposed increase in parking meter rates from 75 cents per hour to one dollar. “Increasing parking meter rates will discourage people from going to those mom and pop shops,” he argued.

And Queens Republican Dan Halloran asked whether the engineers who designed a traffic island in Little Neck that got on the wrong side of Marcia Kramer had been disciplined.

But unlike recent transportation committee hearings, neither Vacca nor other committee members put DOT on trial, and the hearing never strayed beyond garden-variety political theater. That’s somewhat surprising given the main topic of conversation: The fact that there are more potholes on city streets than ever and that there isn’t money in the budget to pay for more repair.

“There’s not enough money to get all of the pothole pieces done,” Sadik-Khan told the committee at one point. Although the city has filled 27 percent more potholes than at this point last year and increased its repaving target by 250 miles, bad winter weather left the roads in unusually bad shape. At the same time, said Sadik-Khan, the DOT’s capital plan, currently budgeted for $7 billion over the next decade, has been reduced by a full 47 percent over the last four years as the recession has led the city to slash its budget.

That might have opened the door for repeats of May’s plaza hearing, when Eric Ulrich wondered “why can’t we just get back to basics and worry more about paving the streets than we are about installing bike lanes and putting in pedestrian plazas even if people don’t want them.” Maybe it was the absence of CBS2 cameras, or maybe it’s actually sunk in that far larger forces are affecting the multi-billion dollar capital program than a few bike and pedestrian projects, but for whatever reason, no one, Ulrich included, took the bait.

In fact, a few more City Council members joined the significant number of their colleagues who have spoken in support of the plaza program. “I want to congratulate you on the plaza program, which I strongly support,” said Oliver Koppell, while Ydanis Rodriguez told Sadik-Khan that he wanted another plaza for his district in addition to the planned Plaza De Las Americas.

Image: CBS 2

New York City is in the midst of re-envisioning the way street space is allocated, and the results are impressive: fewer traffic deaths and injuries, better bus service, and more people choosing to ride bikes for transportation. A transportation chair committed to safe streets and better transit could do a great deal to help extend these benefits throughout the city.

But Vacca has used his position primarily to inflate the perception of resistance to change. While he’s helped move forward some good bills and he talks a good game about slowing down speeders, overall Vacca hasn’t walked the walk as transportation chair. His performance at yesterday’s hearing on the city’s public plaza program was the latest in a series of public statements and political theatrics that only serve to obstruct progress.

Vacca’s stock in trade is to try and have it both ways. He’ll repeat the windshield perspective argument against street redesigns without claiming it as his own. “There is a view among many that with the failure of congestion pricing, that there are other things being done to drive car owners crazy,” he said at yesterday’s hearing. “I don’t want people to feel that, but they do.”

Presumably, as chair of the transportation committee, Vacca pays a modicum of attention to PlaNYC 2030 and did a little research before his hearing on the plaza program. So he should know that the city’s goal of creating new public spaces in park-starved neighborhoods has been a part of the plan for four years now and has nothing to do with the demise of congestion pricing. He should know that the taxi GPS data collected before and after the midtown plaza projects took effect — an incredibly robust dataset generated by millions of trips — shows that Midtown traffic is flowing better today than it was under the old configuration.

If you “don’t want people to feel that” improvements for pedestrians are “being done to drive car owners crazy,” then why repeat it at your City Council hearing with the cameras rolling? Any media-savvy NYC pol knows the only part that gets picked up by knuckleheads like Marcia Kramer and broadcast to millions is the part about driving car owners crazy.

This has been Vacca’s M.O. for a while now.

At last December’s bike policy hearing, he opened the proceedings by declaring: “Too many people are starting to get the impression that bike policy is about getting them to give up their cars.” The problem, for Vacca, is always the impressions of other people — but only certain perspectives seem to catch his notice. In an op-ed in City Hall News last summer, Vacca wrote that the Prospect Park West bike lane had been installed “over the objections of local residents and elected officials” when in fact the project had the backing of the local community board and council member. It was just Vacca’s pal Marty Markowitz who objected, and a former high-ranking commissioner or two (and a sitting U.S. senator).

There are real problems on New York City streets, and they’re not hard to spot. Motorists run over and kill pedestrians who have the right of way with terrifying frequency, and seldom get so much as a summons from police. Where’s the Vacca hearing on NYPD’s woefully shoddy crash investigations?

Pedestrians are getting killed on streets like Atlantic Avenue and Hylan Boulevard at stunning rates, and the death toll is entirely preventable. Where’s the Vacca hearing on how to expand the safety gains on streets like Ninth Avenue and Allen Street, where injury rates have plummeted, as quickly as possible?

Bus riders are flocking to new Select Bus Service while service cuts keep them away from transit elsewhere. Shouldn’t Vacca investigate how to make service better for all of NYC’s 2.2 million daily bus riders and turn around flagging ridership?

Vacca has shown that he can bring the heat for a good cause — witness his performance during the first round of hearings on the “Saving Lives Though Better Information Bill” — but NYC needs more from him right now. Residents of other cities are fortunate to have legislators like Tommy Wells and Tim Burgess who are well-versed in transportation policy and unafraid of taking political risks to promote good ideas. New Yorkers need the same from their transportation committee chair. We need someone who will actually lead.

Back when NYC DOT was the big limiting factor restraining the city from modernizing its surface transportation system, Streetsblog ran a regular series called “Weinshall Watch” — keeping tabs on then-DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall. Today it’s the City Council that’s become a huge drag on transportation improvements and safety innovations. James Vacca can keep on weighing down progress, or he can help make New York a safer, more livable city.

It’s time for “Vacca Watch.”

Flushing Council Member Peter Koo likes pedestrian plazas so much that he wants hundreds of them to be built. Photo: Daily News.

You wouldn’t know it from opening the newspaper or turning on the television, but yesterday’s City Council hearing on pedestrian plazas actually showed how widespread support for the plazas are. Only two council members appeared to be at all opposed to the plaza program — though of course those two have dominated the headlines — while the rest were busy figuring out how to get a plaza in their district. It’s no wonder why: the community members and business leaders who spoke at the hearing were nearly unanimous in their support for the plaza program, testifying to its success in creating high-quality public space in neighborhoods that badly need it and helping business along the way.

Perhaps no one, even at DOT, was as excited about plazas as Flushing rep Peter Koo. “I want you to do more plazas in other boroughs,” said Koo before offering DOT a litany of suggestions for new kinds of plazas. He suggested plazas dedicated to specialty markets — one just for electronics vendors, say, and one just for clothes merchants — and suggested late-night plazas along the model of Taiwan’s famous night markets.

Perhaps most ambitiously, Koo suggested that one plaza be dedicated for every nationality of immigrant in the city, 148 in total. It could be a tourism draw, he said: “Visit New York, see the whole world, because we have these 148 different plazas.”

Other reps asked DOT how to improve the chances for plaza applicants in their neighborhood. Jackson Heights’ Daniel Dromm, who made a point of showing up even though he doesn’t serve on the transportation committee, asked DOT for examples of model programming for the plaza space and for an explanation of what standards sponsoring community organizations need to meet. “I have a community that is very much in favor of having plazas in our district,” he explained. Brad Lander, too, wanted guidance for his plaza-requesting constituents.

Deborah Rose hoped that a waterfront site in her North Shore district — she seemed to have a couple in mind — would become the first pedestrian plaza on Staten Island. Clinton Hill’s Letitia James interrupted DOT’s testimony with a few “yays” and an “amen” when they discussed the Myrtle Avenue plaza under development in her district. David Greenfield, representing Midwood, concluded that “overall, it seems like a good program,” while the Upper West Side’s Gale Brewer hoped her district could have the plazas that Eric Ulrich didn’t want.

The widespread enthusiasm for the plazas should come as no surprise. The facts on the ground show they’re working, as the community and business leaders who testified at the hearing attested.

Dan Biederman, the head of the 34th Street Partnership and the Chelsea Improvement Company, called the plazas in his districts “hugely successful.” If the businesses he represents were suffering, he said, he’d know. “I’m not hearing complaining anymore,” he reported. Traffic flow and loading work fine, he said, while the pedestrians who actually shop are far safer. Concluded Biederman, “This is the best team we’ve seen at DOT in the 30 years I’ve worked in the public sector.”

But plazas aren’t just for the heart of Manhattan. Daniel Murphy, the head of Brownsville’s Pitkin Avenue BID, recalled “our great happiness” when DOT approved plans for a plaza at the Zion Triangle. Now he walks down the street and hears excitement about the project from neighbors who walk by. “Their interest is not simply passive but active and positive,” he said.

Alexandria Sica of the Dumbo Improvement District explained how much the two plazas in her neighborhood have done for business and for community. The arch under the Manhattan Bridge, which used to be used for DOT storage, has become a “place for a casual lunch meeting, neighborhood stoop sales, public art and exciting community events,” she said. Next to the Pearl Street triangle, said Sica, three new businesses have opened despite a rough economic climate.

Other community leaders testified about how much a plaza could do in their area. “Corona is the most overcrowded school district in the entire city,” said Prerana Reddy, the director of public events at the Queens Museum of Art. “We need a place for young people and families to enjoy public spaces.” Reddy talked about how Corona Plaza, which she said was mostly a parking lot right now, is already used for a greenmarket and diabetes screening. With real high-quality public space, Corona Plaza could do so much more for Corona residents.

Statements of support for the plaza program also came from residents of the South Bronx, Jackson Heights, the West Village, and Hell’s Kitchen, as well as advocacy organizations like Transportation Alternatives, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, and Project for Public Spaces.

Only two people spoke in opposition: a representative from who claimed to worry about the environmental impact of the plazas and Corey Bearak, the anti-congestion pricing activist, who argued that any removal of street space from motor vehicles should require environmental review. An advocate for the blind also expressed concern that the DOT’s temporary plazas do not include tactile safety features so the vision-impaired know where pedestrian space begins and ends.

If City Council Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca wanted media attention for "getting tough" on DOT, he got it. Image: CBS 2

When James Vacca called a hearing of the City Council transportation committee to discuss the DOT plaza program yesterday, what was he trying to get out of it?

For many neighborhoods, the plaza program offers the best and only chance of expanding their limited supply of public space, and most of the council members who showed up used the opportunity to clarify a few points about how to get a plaza for their neighborhoods. (We’ll have more on that in a follow-up post.)

Vacca struck a much more theatrical tone than his colleagues. He tiptoed around attacking DOT directly, preferring insinuations and gotcha questions instead. It was the performance of someone looking to score points in the tabloid media — knowing full well his inquisition had no merit.

In one line of questioning, for instance, Vacca grilled DOT over the cost of making the Times Square plazas permanent. DOT Assistant Commissioner Andy Wiley-Schwartz explained that Times Square had been set for a full-scale reconstruction for years, well before any plans to pedestrianize Broadway had been introduced. The funding for the plan was the same, he said, only the design of the reconstruction changed.

Vacca put on his best prosecutorial demeanor. “So what will it cost?”

Wiley-Schwartz again explained that the price tag was for a much larger project than the plazas, reconstructing the street from sidewalk to sidewalk on both Broadway and Seventh Avenue, but that the total will be $20 million. The pedestrian plazas barely added to the cost. “Basically, instead of putting asphalt there, you’re putting concrete there,” he explained.

Vacca seized on the $20 million and feigned ignorance, pretending that the plaza would cost $20 million itself. “It’s going to be a very expensive pedestrian plaza at the end of the day.”

But Vacca isn’t dumb. After one more back-and-forth, Vacca made clear that he understood that the plaza wasn’t a significant cost item and moved on. He “got tough” with DOT for the benefit of the tabloids and the TV cameras, but then corrected course, presumably to avoid embarrassing himself further in front of the people in the room.

Vacca’s loaded questions presented DOT with several “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” moments. After asking whether the Midtown plazas were an attempt to keep people from driving into Manhattan, Vacca followed up by asking whether traffic volumes in the area had gone down. If the answer had been yes, it would no doubt have been taken as proof positive that the plaza program is really a plot to make life more difficult for car owners.

According to DOT, though, total traffic was the same. At Times Square, it just flowed more smoothly down Seventh Avenue instead of Broadway. That set Vacca off on a string of accusatory questions implying that the increased traffic on Seventh was destroying that street. “That concerns me from an access point of view, from a traffic movement point of view, and certainly from a pedestrian safety point of view as well.”

Just to be clear, neither safety risks, congestion, nor air pollution shifted from Broadway to other avenues. Pedestrian injuries fell by 35 percent in the entire study area for the Green Light for Midtown project, which included not just Broadway but also Seventh near Times Square and Sixth near Herald Square. And while air pollution plummeted in Times Square after the creation of the plazas, according to recent environmental data, it didn’t rise in the rest of Midtown.

Vacca played the same game when asking whether DOT planned to bring plazas to every community district. It was a no-win: Either DOT would be favoring certain parts of the city or foisting plazas on potentially unwilling communities. (For the record, the plaza program is entirely opt-in — a paragon of community engagement — and Wiley-Schwartz nailed the answer, saying that the goal is for every community to eventually request one.)

While the mainstream press coverage today is mainly about a “contentious hearing,” the only council member who really blasted the plazas was Eric Ulrich. Unlike Vacca, Ulrich hewed to his conviction: that making any more room for pedestrians and public life is a waste of money. That’s a foolish position, but at least a coherent one. Vacca never took such a stand — he never had to. By using his committee chairmanship to lob innuendo and false assumptions at DOT, he did far more to impede the continued improvement of NYC streets than Ulrich.