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.

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.

Plans call for doubling the mileage of bus lanes in Jamaica. Image: NYC DOT

We missed these when they were first released in late March, but DOT has come out with its preliminary recommendations for improving bus service in downtown Jamaica [PDF]. The plan calls for adding roughly a mile and a half of new bus lanes and beefing up an equal amount of existing lanes. It would also redesign two intersections and create new pedestrian space.

Anything that helps buses move quickly, smoothly and reliably through downtown Jamaica would be an enormous boon to Queens transit riders. Jamaica is both a subway hub and a job center unto itself, with 47 different bus routes running through the area. Archer Avenue carries more local buses than any other road in New York City, according to the DOT, with a staggering 180 buses per hour in each direction.

Along Archer, the existing bus lanes between 150th and 160th Streets will be visually strengthened, getting a coat of terra cotta paint and new signage. The eastbound lane will be extended on both ends, from Sutphin Avenue to Merrick Boulevard.

Similarly, along Jamaica Avenue the existing lanes (serving 90 buses per hour in each direction) will get the new paint and signage as well as expanded hours of operation and some new turn restrictions. The westbound lanes will be extended from Parsons Boulevard to Sutphin.

New dedicated lanes on Merrick Boulevard and 165th Street will help buses enter and exit the 165th Street bus terminal.

Currently, camera enforcement is not an option for these bus lanes, since the state law which enabled bus cams on Fordham Road and First and Second Avenues only applies to officially designated “Select Bus Service” corridors.

Turning the southern point of Home Lawn Street into a two-way street would allow buses to avoid an unnecessary turn while creating room for a new pedestrian plaza.

Some of these bus lanes will be offset from the sidewalk, leaving room for curbside parking, while most will run next to the curb. Queens merchants opposed to the loss of parking killed a bus rapid transit route along Merrick Boulevard in 2007, and similar complaints could crop up again.

For this project, DOT has incorporated several measures to address concerns about curb access. New truck loading zones are slated for 146th Street and 91st Avenue to ensure that businesses can receive deliveries, and the bus lanes may not be in effect during off-peak delivery windows. DOT would also set aside certain areas for livery vehicles and commuter vans.

Intriguingly, DOT’s proposal identifies the need to “relocate placard parking.” Placard users clog Jamaica’s streets, according to the recent Transportation Alternatives report “Totally Bogus.” Asking placard users to park somewhere else may not be too effective, however. Right now, 59 percent of placard users are using their permit illegally, according to that report.

In addition to adding and strengthening bus lanes, DOT’s preliminary plan calls for redesigning two intersections. Right now, buses traveling south on Home Lawn Street are forced to turn onto 169th Street just north of Hillside Avenue. DOT calls for straightening out Home Lawn so that buses can move south directly, eliminating the extra turn. As part of that plan, added pedestrian space would be carved out of the street, creating a small public plaza. Another street redesign, not shown in the March powerpoint presentation, would be implemented at 168th Street and Jamaica Avenue.

The local City Council Member, Leroy Comrie, is hosting an open house on the project tomorrow evening, co-sponsored by colleagues Mark Weprin, James Gennaro, Ruben Wills and James Sander Jr. DOT will have some new findings to present from outreach to local businesses.

Photo: Noah Kazis

It’s an open secret that agents won’t ticket placarded vehicles, or any vehicle with a placard-like thing on the dash, out of fear of reprisal from higher up. As this placard abuse story indicates, in some cases the agents may just be following orders. Streetsblog was copied on this message sent to NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau and the Manhattan DA’s office, from a reader who asked to remain anonymous:

[Yesterday] afternoon around 2:00, I saw Traffic Enforcement Agent Faruque walking down Gramercy Park North checking for Munimeter tickets on the dashboard of parked vehicles. When he passed by a vehicle with no proof of payment, which also had an expired NYPD Restricted placard, I asked why he did not write a summons. He insisted he was not able to write a summons because his supervisor had instructed him not to issue summonses to any vehicles with NYPD placards. I pointed out that the placard was clearly expired, and therefore could not be valid, but he insisted he could not write a summons, and stated that I would need to speak with his supervisor…

If a supervisor has ordered or otherwise directed TEAs to not write summonses for actual violations to vehicles with NYPD credentials, the matter should be properly investigated and prosecuted. I remind you that this organized effort to park without paying constitutes theft of services, and I find it absolutely shocking that this would continue in broad daylight with the attention already directed to the ticket fixing scandal. For us to have any faith in the NYPD, and a bearable quality of life in this city, it is important that police officers and those familiar to them are held equally accountable as everyone else under the law.

Please also be advised that I have written the Commissioner on more than one occasion about the many violations with vehicles using NYPD placards that persist in the area around Gramercy Park, the Academy, and the 13th Precinct. These also include parking at fire hydrants, at crosswalks, using reflective license plate covers, and dark-tinted windows. Despite my repeated pleas, the NYPD has made no apparent effort to address the highly visible illegal conditions created by its own officers in this area.

Only a minority of the placards on the street are being used legally, according to a new Transportation Alternatives report.

What happens when you put a police station, a courthouse, and borough hall in one place? Utter lawlessness.

In a new report [PDF], Transportation Alternatives looked at the dashboards of the vehicles parked in the civic centers of each borough. In areas just a few blocks wide, hundreds of vehicles were displaying placards boasting of their special parking privileges. Fifty-seven percent of them were being used illegally.

In Concourse Village in the Bronx, for example, half of the 262 placards on display in a mere five block area were legitimate permits improperly being used to park, perhaps in a no standing zone or on the sidewalk. The other half were simply fake: they were handed out by the police union, a photocopy of another placard, or an item like an NYPD patrol manual that implies that the owner is a cop.

In Manhattan’s civic center, the problem was even worse. Only eleven out of 244 placards on display in a thirteen block area were being used legally.

At a press conference in front of City Hall today, T.A. joined with Council Members Dan Garodnick, Leroy Comrie, and Margaret Chin to call for an end to placard abuse. One top priority is Garodnick’s bill to put bar codes on official placards in order to make it easy for traffic enforcement agents to know with just a scan whether a placard is real and being used legitimately.

“It’s dangerous,” said T.A. executive director Paul Steely White. “When motorists are parking in front of fire hydrants, in front of crosswalks, on sidewalks, they’re blocking emergency vehicles from getting through. They’re making life very difficult and dangerous for pedestrians in particular.” Placard abuse also contributes to congestion by giving a sizable population free parking wherever they like.

Garodnick argued that putting bar codes on placards would not only give traffic agents the information they need to enforce the law, it would also empower them to take on the privileged placard-holders by creating a bright line rule. “Parking permits denote a level of prestige and privilege and many traffic agents do not want to risk running up against someone in a position of power,” said Garodnick. “If there’s no bar code, there’s no reason not to write a ticket for a parking offense.”

Garodnick’s bill currently has 21 sponsors. Though a hearing has not yet been scheduled for the bill, said Garodnick, Transportation Committee chair Jimmy Vacca has expressed interest in holding one.

“This is a commonsense bill,” said Comrie. “Our retail centers are losing available parking because of people that are parked all day while they’re walking less than half a block to get to their jobs.” In Jamaica, which Comrie represents, the T.A. study found that 59 percent of placards were being used illegally.

Small business owners from St. George and Atlantic Avenue joined Comrie in attacking placard abuse for making it hard to get deliveries and for customers to reach their stores safely on foot or easily in a car. “Our neighborhood has become a park-and-ride,” said St. George gallery owner Theo Dorian.

“For many years, activists in Chinatown have been fighting against all this placard parking,” said Chin. “Let’s get this bill passed.”

While the bar code bill would help cut down on placard abuse, change can’t happen until the police department decides to change its priorities. Adding barcodes won’t make it any more obvious that placard holders can’t park in front of a fire hydrant, for example, nor will it stop the police from passing over cars displaying a “clergy” sign that doesn’t purport to be an official placard in the first place.

Garodnick also called for further reductions in the number of official placards handed out in the first place. Though the Bloomberg administration reduced the number of placards it issued by roughly 40 percent, there are still seventy-eight thousand legal placards out there. “Seventy-eight thousand seems like an awfully high number,” said Garodnick. T.A.’s study was an update of its previous two investigations of placard abuse, Uncivil Servants and Above the Law.

Is the operator of this car on official Parks Department business or praying? And why does either activity excuse parking in the bike lane? Photo: Peter Kaufman

At this point, it’s hardly news that the length of the Henry Street bike lane was filled with parked cars yesterday (see here and here). Being a Sunday, it was par for the course, though still infuriating, that churchgoers were taking advantage of an informal agreement with the police to snatch that lane away from cyclists and give it to parkers during services. Can it get more outrageous than the status quo? Yes it can.

Ink Lake blogger Peter Kaufman snapped a few pics that nicely capture the multiple layers of exemptions and perks that NYC’s entitled motoring class employs at the curbside. A white SUV was parked in the bike lane. On the side and rear windows was printed “City of New York Parks & Recreation, Construction Division, Official Use Only.” On the front dashboard sat a homemade placard: “Attending Liturgy: Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral.”

From the driver’s perspective, this was probably a sensible belt-and-suspenders approach. If the police officer wouldn’t give the driver a pass for being a fellow city employee, being at church should put him over the top.

From the perspective of common sense and the law, of course, the doubled-up exemption shows just how absurd the system has become. The city had better hope that its employees aren’t attending mass as official business, or this could pretty quickly turn into a matter for the ACLU and not just transportation advocates. And whether it’s waiving the rules for city employees or worshippers, the NYPD doesn’t have the authority to change the rules for groups it favors and put cyclists’ safety at risk in the process.

A state-issued parking placard, in this case owned and cut in two by Senator Tony Avella. Governor Cuomo has called for reforming the state's placard process. Photo: Transportation Nation

In response to some high-profile abuses of state-issued parking placards and a report by the state’s Inspector General, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced yesterday that he will be reforming the way placards are issued and releasing ten percent fewer total placards. The new state placard regime will be only modestly more strict than before, but creates a framework for regulating what have become coveted perks and magnets for petty corruption.

Currently, there are 2,210 state-issued parking placards, 1,730 of which are ostensibly police placards. Under Cuomo’s plan, the total will drop to 1,993 placards and most will be converted to “official business” placards. For comparison, New York City issues tens of thousands of official placards.

The list of state officials caught abusing their placard privileges could fill a book, but the issue grabbed the spotlight when the Times reported that State Senator Carl Kruger, now indicted for corruption, had managed to swing police placards for his housemates Michael and Gerard Turano. In October, Brooklyn Assembly Member Vito Lopez’s car was photographed with no fewer than three separate placards on the dashboard.

Cuomo’s plan also sets into place a formal application process for receiving a placard, something that did not previously exist, according to the governor’s office. Applicants will need to explain why they need a placard and which vehicle they’ll be using it with, and they’ll have to sign a statement accepting the proper use of placards. Those applications will then be reviewed by both the applicant’s agency and by either the State Police or Governor’s Office of Public Safety.

That application process will allow the redesigned placards to display the license plate number of the car it belongs to, theoretically making it more difficult to share the placards or use them on personal vehicles after hours.

Lots of questions linger about the state’s placard program, and neither the Inspector General nor  the governor’s office have replied to our inquiries. For example, are “official business” placards meaningfully different from police placards to the person handing out traffic tickets? And does Cuomo have any plan to address symbols like an MTA vest in the windshield that aren’t technically placards but send the same message?

The proof will be in the pudding: the number of days before another state legislator gets caught abusing his placard.

A new bill could make it easier to discern official parking placards from fakes, like the one above. Photo: Noah Kazis

The Bloomberg administration substantially cut the number of city placards in 2008, after a concerted advocacy campaign to wrestle the proliferation of officially sanctioned parking perks — and all the traffic they cause — under control.

The potential for abuse is still high, though, since traffic enforcement agents are reluctant to ticket any vehicle that bears the stamp of official privilege. As Streetsblog has reported, there’s a whole cottage industry devoted to the manufacture of fake parking placards. Synagogue- and church-goers have shown no compunction about putting placard-esque items on their dashboards to get away with parking illegally.

Garodnick’s bar code proposal would help traffic enforcement agents tell the difference between what’s real and what’s fake. “The idea is that this would make it easy for them to scan a placard, to remove the element of doubt when a TEA may be uncertain of whether this is a legitimate placard,” said Dan Pasquini, Garodnick’s communications director.

Other forms of placard abuse will be tougher to stamp out. The bar codes wouldn’t help agents muster the will to ticket vehicles with official placards parked in front of bus stops and fire hydrants, which are illegal spots no matter what’s on the dash.

The bill has been introduced in the transportation committee, where Garodnick’s office hopes to get a hearing soon.

Spotted outside Our Lady of Lebanon on Henry Street on a recent Sunday.

A few weeks ago we ran an update on the Henry Street bike lane in Brooklyn Heights, where members of the First Presbyterian Church illegally park on Sundays and police look the other way. The era of NYPD-sanctioned bike lane blocking had supposedly come to an end this summer, right before primary day, when local Assembly member Joan Millman said she’d told the 84th Precinct to start enforcing the law. But afterward, the lane-blocking resumed, and Millman explained to Community Board 2 that she’d brokered a “compromise” that allowed churchgoers to keep on parking in the bike lane during services.

One reader went to check up on the situation and found that the bike lane-blocking churchgoers not only get a free pass from law enforcement — they’re all part of the same fraternity. Here’s his tour of Henry Street on a recent Sunday, starting at First Presbyterian:

Most cars (there were 15 in the bike lane) had bogus “Church Business” placards on their dashboard, though one had a DOT Agency Business Permit, and one parked in the No Parking Anytime zone had a District Attorney placard! Calls to 311 were made, but according to the 311 web site, the cops showed up hours after church service was over. In fact, the only police activity I saw was two NYPD Highway Patrol employees illegally park their cruiser in a “No Standing Anytime” zone for an hour while they grabbed lunch at a nearby diner.

It seems that the siren call of parking sin has spread elsewhere in Brooklyn Heights. Further down Henry Street, at the corner of Remsen Street, the Catholics are taking a cue from the Presbyterians, and are one-upping their brethren! Members of Our Lady of Lebanon were observed parking upwards of 15 cars simultaneously in the bike lane and on the sidewalk, as well as several in front of the Church in a No Parking Anytime zone. All sported bogus Church placards, sacred offerings to the saints of traffic.

While investigating the situation, I came across a Traffic Enforcement Agent giving a ticket to a commercial van parked at a hydrant at Henry Street and Montague Street. The owner of the van yelled out of a nearby window, unsuccessfully pleading with the TEA not to ticket him. I called the TEA over and asked him if he was going to ticket the drivers parked in the bike lane too. He responded that he could not, saying that his bosses said the church members could park there during services. I asked who, specifically, this order came from — the response was “Brooklyn North.” [Editor's note: Brooklyn North encompasses several precincts. The commanding officer is Chief Gerald Nelson.]

Now, while I agree that the commercial vehicle should have received the ticket, it does not strike me as fair that the small businessman pays, while the church-goer gets to sin with impunity.

I noticed that in both locations, the legal spaces were unmetered and filled to capacity. Perhaps, in addition to the NYPD enforcing the law, the DOT should meter those spaces in order to allocate those spaces more efficiently and cut down on the “need” to park illegally.

More scenes from the placard orgy over at mybikelane.com.

This unofficial placard illegally grants its owner free access to a no-parking zone near Union Square every workday. Photo: Noah Kazis

Because free parking perks granted to police and other public employees directly contribute to traffic congestion on gridlocked streets, the Bloomberg administration moved to clamp down on them in 2008. The city has eliminated tens of thousands of official placards, but the abuse of both official and fraudulent placards persists. While traffic enforcement agents are only supposed to honor a few specific types of placards, all issued directly by New York City, in practice, any dashboard decoration that looks semi-official can intimidate agents into giving the owner a pass. 

So how do you get your hands on one? Here's the deal. If you're an MD -- or belong to a loosely-defined cadre of medical professionals, including dentists, acupuncturists, and even "chaplains" -- you can send a copy of your medical license, diploma, resume, and a $250 check to Amtrak Police Lodge #189, an affiliate of the Fraternal Order of Police based in Maple Shade, New Jersey. You also agree to treat members of the lodge. They'll designate you an "Amtrak Police Surgeon" and send along a parking placard, like the one shown above, that looks suspiciously like an official document.

But they only look official. While completely illegitimate and invalid on the streets of New York City, these placards grant their owners de facto immunity from the law and provide free access to some of the most valuable curbside real estate on the planet.

One Streetsblog tipster reported seeing an SUV using an Amtrak police surgeon placard pull into the same no-parking zone on 13th Street at Fifth Avenue every weekday, without fail. When I went to investigate this morning, there it was. Law enforcement doesn't seem to mind, even though only government-issued placards are valid in New York City (other municipalities can honor what they choose).

Another brand of unofficial police surgeon placard. Photos: Uncivil Servants

Becoming an Amtrak police surgeon isn't the only way for you and your car to skirt the law. If you prefer, you could become a member of the Surgeon Division of the New York State Police Investigator Association, a local of the International Union of Police Associations. The requirements are exactly the same. In fact, the same man administers both programs, Dr. Sheldon Werner of Wappingers Falls, New York. 

So what do these placard providers have to say for themselves? Werner wouldn't return our calls, nor would any member of Lodge #189's leadership. The Police Investigator Association's Jim O'Connor, however, was willing to explain his view of the placards.

"It's just a courtesy placard," said O'Connor, "it doesn't give you any specific rights." According to O'Connor, the placards are simply a way to identify doctors who have committed to serve state police investigators. 

The rules don't apply to you if you've got one of these on the dash. Photos: Boogiedowner

The bike lane on the Grand Concourse has been a positive addition for a lot of Bronx residents. As you know, there is a serious lack of parking on the Grand Concourse, but I have always respected the bike lane and apologize for blocking it. In this instance, my car was left in the bike lane for a few moments while I was unloading supplies for my district office. I realize that caused some inconvenience and will make every effort to avoid blocking the bike lane in the future.

A few refreshers. Forcing cyclists into traffic isn't just an "inconvenience," it endangers other people. The rate of injuries and deaths on the Grand Concourse led the Tri-State Transportation Campaign to name it the second most dangerous road in the Bronx last year. Also, as Transportation Alternatives' Wiley Norvell told the Bronx News Network, a placard on the dash doesn't make bike lane-blocking legal. But it's enough to intimidate traffic agents into not issuing a ticket.

Gibson, a freshman Assembly member who replaced her former boss, Aurelia Greene, after a special election last fall, didn't explain why she was using a police placard. Giving it up for good might help her keep the promise not to block the bike lane. It will still be tough to find a safe, legal place to park and unload stuff in front of the district office, so the next step would have be to putting in a request with the city for performance parking on the Grand Concourse.

To offset the effects of its terror trial security zone, NYPD should adopt a zero tolerance policy for placard abusers.

The soft perimeter appears to include around five-and-a-half linear miles of streets comprising 17 "lane-miles." (These figures exclude Park Row and other streets already taken out of service by the NYPD since 9/11.) Clearly, restricting vehicular travel on these streets will aggravate gridlock, but by how much, and at what “time cost” to travelers? City Hall isn’t saying, of course, but with the help of the Balanced Transportation Analyzer, it’s possible to make a rough estimate.

Assuming that the restrictions take away one-quarter of the carrying capacity of the affected streets (one-half for streets within the inner section), vehicles in the area can expect to spend 2,200 additional hours stuck in traffic each weekday. Scaled to a full year, that translates to $30 million in lost time for motorists, truckers, taxi riders and bus passengers. (Go to the “Cordon” tab of the BTA spreadsheet to view derivation.)

This is a mere drop in the regional bucket, which now loses $13 billion a year to gridlock, according to the Partnership for New York City [PDF]. But locally, where most of that lost time will tick away, the impact could be tangible -- particularly in Chinatown, the epicenter of post-9/11 business closings and a major component of the area targeted by the NYPD.

Yet this new gridlock could be mitigated, and perhaps even offset altogether, if the city took steps to reduce car commuting into lower Manhattan. Using the BTA, I calculate that eliminating 4,000 to 5,000 daily round-trips by car into and out of the area around Foley Square would cut traffic levels in proportion to the travel restrictions. That is, even with street capacity reduced by 25 percent throughout the NYPD's soft perimeter, traffic speeds could be held steady via a 4,000 to 5,000-car reduction in commuting in the vicinity of the trial.

This calculation is extremely preliminary and should be firmed up by a street-level engineering analysis. Nevertheless, it suggests a possible path for averting a potential traffic and economic nightmare for Chinatown and the Civic Center area.

The alternative is to move the trial out of Lower Manhattan altogether, perhaps via the Menin plan. Police Commissioner Kelly appeared open to considering Governors Island as a venue — at least before federal officials warned him off the idea, according to The Times.

If Governors Island is indeed off the table -- and the feds’ arguments should be carefully scrutinized -- Mr. Kelly’s good intentions could still be channeled into a full-frontal assault on placard abuse. Not only would the benefit outlast the upcoming trial. Weeding out free parking in Lower Manhattan would also help “upstream” communities whose streets and roads are clogged with privileged government employees driving to their free parking spots.

So, outside my house is a street with two hour parking. Today a Jaguar with dealer plates was parked there all day. When I checked, it was because there was an FD placard on the car.

No news there, right? Except our tipster was Streetsblog LA's Damien Newton, and the placard in question was emblazoned with the logo of the FDNY Uniformed Firefighters Association.

Placards without borders. Gotta love it.

We posted the link in today's headlines, but you really need the visuals that go with this story of bike-lane blocking, curb-mounting Sunday motorists, and the police who sanction them. Via Gothamist, the video comes courtesy of Ink Lake blogger Peter Kaufman, a Brooklyn Heights resident who noticed that all the cars illegally parked on Henry Street during Sunday services at First Presbyterian sport postcards on the dash. They say "Church Business," and the 84th Precinct honors them as if they were etched on stone tablets.

John del Signore at Gothamist got some officers at the 84th to explain the compact between police and the church:

Officer Brandon Bunting fielded our call and admitted that "it's a sensitive issue. I live in Harlem, and sometimes people park three cars wide there. But you're not allowed to block the bike lane, placard or no placard; if some kid is riding his bike there and has to go out in traffic, it could be bad. At the same time, it's a sensitive community issue and we try to work out a compromise." Another officer said, "For years we have allowed people to park in front of the church while they worship."

These wink-and-a-nod agreements are hardly exceptional. Last year, Uncivil Servants shined a light on an Upper East Side synagogue, the Park East, that fashioned bogus parking placards for its employees, all with the tacit approval of the local precinct.

As Streetsbloggers suggested this morning, think of what a blessing it would be if our local houses of worship tried to welcome their flocks in a way that doesn't maximize driving and endanger other people using the street.

To signal their displeasure with law enforcement, Council members David Weprin, Simcha Felder, and Vincent Gentile ripped up parking tickets on the steps of City Hall. Photo: Daily Politics.

According to Council Member Peter Vallone, Jr. the bills are "an attempt to legislate common sense and discretion." But really, what we have here is old-fashioned pandering combined with a failure to comprehend the consequences of giving away curb space.

The council calls it a "grace period," but what does it really mean to ban parking agents from issuing a ticket until five minutes after the allotted time expires? Well, if you drive somewhere and pay for 40 minutes of metered parking, now you get 45 minutes. The bill gives on-street parkers more bang for their buck -- a subsidy for the minority of New Yorkers who get around by private car.

With less turnover of metered spaces, drivers will double-park more and cruise around longer as they search for open spots. Whether you're walking, biking, riding a bus, or driving, you'll have to contend with more traffic clogging up the streets.

The expansion of parking placards for clergy will have the same effect -- more free curb space for an entitled class of drivers, with less to go around for everyone else. The bill flies in the face of placard-reduction policies that the Bloomberg administration began enacting in 2008 with an eye toward cutting congestion.

City Room reports that Bloomberg, predicting "chaos and enormous increases in contested tickets," is ready to veto the grace period bill. A council override would not augur well for the next four years of New York City transportation policy.

Last year, the number of placards issued by the Department of Education -- some 63,000 -- was reduced to bring it in line with the number of on-street spots allotted to schools. The DOE cuts were part of a broader crackdown intended to bring order to a largely unregulated system rife with abuse, wherein placards issued regularly exceeded available spaces and parking agents often could not tell a legitimate permit from a fraudulent one.

While the United Federation of Teachers eventually came to an agreement with the city, CSA balked at the cuts, and won an arbitration ruling in August determining that the placards should be reissued under the terms of its contract. But as Gotham Schools reports, the ensuing two weeks brought no resolution, and yesterday CSA filed a lawsuit against the city, DOE, and Mayor Bloomberg.

"Nobody has gotten an answer from the City about why it won't honor the arbitration," a spokeswoman for CSA, Chiara Coletti, wrote in an email. Coletti said that the decision not to reinstate the 6,500 permits came from the mayor's office.

Jason Post, a spokesman for the mayor, did not address whether the city felt it was in compliance with the arbitrator's decision, but said the current system should continue.

"For most City agencies and their workers the system has worked well for over a year, yet the CSA has stubbornly tried to hold onto their perks and has refused to work with us to combat misuse and abuse. The current system for the Department of Education limits the number of placards to the number of parking spots at schools, a fair and reasonable policy that we think should continue. We have not yet received the legal papers for this case," Post wrote in an email.

In a press release announcing the suit, CSA President Ernest A. Logan said that, without the placards, administrators "who travel from school to school, particularly those working in the outer boroughs, could be forced to continue cruising around city streets for hours a day, polluting the environment, and sacrificing time that they need to serve our children."

And just how many administrators travel during the school day? Considering that CSA by its own account represents a total of about 6,400 school supervisors, it's obviously far fewer than the 6,500 placards -- or even the 5,000 reported by the Post -- the union is demanding. Not to mention the fact that the fewer permits issued, the less trouble floating administrators would have finding a spot. But who cares about facts and logic when you can just yell "My parking perk is good for the children!" and leave it at that. 

An RPP program, which would establish districts within the city where car owners must display permits to park legally in most on-street spaces, needs Albany's assent to become law. Assembly Member Joan Millman and State Senator Daniel Squadron have introduced bills in their respective chambers, with the details of the permit system left up to the city. Council Member David Yassky is carrying the banner for RPP at City Hall.

This is not the first time lawmakers have turned their attention to residential permit parking. Most recently, RPP got a serious look during last year's congestion pricing debate, when DOT devised a plan to assuage fears that car commuters would cram on-street parking spaces just outside the cordon zone.

That version of RPP included only nominal permit fees -- just enough to cover the cost of running the program. This time around, the bill's sponsors are touting permit fees as a new revenue source for the MTA. Separated from congestion pricing, however, an RPP system won't pack quite the same punch. Reports the News:

A Transportation Department spokesman said permits alone aren't enough to solve parking problems, and should be accompanied by a congestion pricing plan.

"Without such a plan, we don't believe this bill will actually solve neighborhood parking problems," said Transportation Department spokesman Seth Solomonow.

The sheer size of this vehicle, which I encountered while walking down Court Street in Brooklyn the other day, was what made me stop and take a picture. As you can see, the traffic enforcement officer's head basically just reaches the hood. (Makes you wonder what the driver's visibility is.)

Right, the traffic enforcement officer. I waited to watch her write a ticket for the vehicle, which had been left idling with no one behind the wheel, blocking a fire hydrant and parked a couple of feet out into the lane of travel (it's a sharrow lane to boot), while its owner apparently made a stop in the bodega.

But she just kept walking.

"Aren't you going to write him a ticket?" I asked.

"Can't ticket a placard," she replied with a shrug.

I could barely see up onto the dashboard, but there was some kind of placard there. Then I noticed the letters "VAS" on the plates, which apparently stand for "Volunteer Ambulance Service."

You'd think a Volunteer Ambulance Service member would realize that leaving an unattended vehicle idling is unsafe. You'd think someone trained to save lives might think twice about it. You'd think.

Thompson is also advocating a new surcharge on vehicle registrations in 12 counties served by the authority, which he estimates would raise an additional $1 billion a year for transit. As explained by Thompson's chief economist Frank Braconi on WNYC's "The Brian Lehrer Show" this morning, the surcharge, like the existing state fee, would be based on vehicle weight, and would result in an average fee of $200. Currently, motorists pay $30 in city registration fees every two years.

Naturally, Braconi was peppered with questions from indignant motorists, one of whom asked why he should "subsidize" transit. Braconi's reply:

"There are many hidden subsidies of auto drivers ... But the truth is that mass transit [riders] subsidize auto drivers in many ways. For example, the fact that we can park free on our streets for the most part ... But the fact is we are all one city, and we all benefit from mass transit. Parking and driving would be virtually impossible in this city, it would be so congested, without a functioning mass transit system, and vice versa. I think mass transit users benefit that there are automobiles to deliver goods, and taxis, et cetera, et cetera ... [Drivers and transit users should] realize there is some fair way to distribute the costs of making the city work properly."

Fielding a call about motorists dodging the fee through registration fraud, Braconi said that residential parking permits are included in Thompson's proposal.