Streetsblog New York City

A commenter on Uncivilservants.org noticed that Mayor Bloomberg's attempt to reign in parking permit abuse is already being met with some good old-fashioned NYPD blowback:

Posted on Fri, Jan 25 2008 at 10:49 PM

Found on the Rant: "The new placards are slowly circulating to individual mos and all that has changed is the addition of small lettering stating "IF YOU SEE THIS CAR PARKED ILLEGALLY CALL 311". If this is the best the feeble mayor can do to piss the PBA off then he is ill prepared. This is nothing that 2 generic PBA Cards (the ones that say PBA where the shield number should be) can't solve. Just place one over each area on the placard that advertises your command and BADDA BING, 311 is nullified. If on the off chance that a summons is issued just visit the delegate of the issuing command and have him pull the summons. CASE CLOSED!

Interesting side note: Dad got his newly minted placard before I did and he has been retired over 2 yrs. So much for the mayor's new rules. Cops taking care of cops; now thats the way it should be."

Mere mortals, meanwhile, are reminded that DOT continues its series of public workshops (tonight in Queens and tomorrow in Brooklyn) to address parking in neighborhoods that may be affected by congestion pricing. One non-car owner can make a big difference at these workshops. Please check the calendar for more information.

Photo of NYPD "Sidewalk Nibbler" via Uncivil Servants 

The following was contributed by Samuel I. Schwartz, AKA Gridlock Sam.

Mayor Bloomberg correctly recognizes that reining in city workers' parking privileges is a pre-requisite to congestion pricing. But his goal of 20 percent is too modest, and he should know it's easier to do than it looks. Believe me I know; I led the effort to reduce government parking under Mayor Koch in the 1980s, even under threat of arrest. Here's what Mayor Mike needs to do in 2008 under my ten-step plan:

1. Set up a triumvirate to review every permit application. Put DOT, NYPD and the Mayor's Office on the team, an NYC parking version of "checks and balances."
2. Publish the names and civil service titles of every placard recipient. A small number belonging to undercover officers would not be revealed, but their number would be published to ensure no significant changes without explanation.
3. Establish just two recognized machine scannable permit types: 'Law Enforcement' and 'Agency.' Include State and Federal Permits into the mix. Currently, I estimate around 75 different permits, some of which are phonies.
4. Ticket first, ask questions later. If a car has a permit and is in violation, tag it. Let the recipient pay or argue his or her case before the triumvirate.

Read more...

Another DOE employee not abusing a parking placard, courtesy Uncivil Servants

Following United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten's "deeply troubling" letter to Mayor Bloomberg earlier this month protesting the city's directive to reduce parking placard issues by 20 percent, this week UFT chapter leaders and delegates approved a resolution not only demanding an exemption from placard reform, but calling on the city to increase the number of placards and parking spots reserved for motoring teachers.

This in and of itself is not terribly surprising, except that in December UFT members passed another resolution condemning America's avaricious consumption of fossil fuels, dependence on foreign oil, lack of interest in alternative energy, and production of greenhouse gases.

Hmm... where have we seen this before?

Here are the two rezos in their entirety, first from December:

Resolution on Protecting the Environment -- Reducing Dependence on Fossil Fuels

Whereas, it is a well established scientific fact that greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming, resulting in great dangers to our environment; and...

Yesterday we wondered if the city might be convinced to reconcile its vision of a sustainable city with its anti-urban parking policies. We'll mark this one in the "no" column.

Late last week Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz was busted by Uncivil Servants for parking on the sidewalk in front of Borough Hall during a meeting in which DOT unveiled its long awaited Downtown Brooklyn Transportation Blueprint -- check out Priority Initiative #9 below (or download the entire list)...

Regardless of DOT priorities, it turns out that parking on sidewalks is only illegal for drivers who aren't the Borough President or members of his staff, as the Daily News reports:

Streetsblog reader Richard Conroy sends along these photos and writes:

Yesterday there was an article about Randi Weingarten saying teachers don’t abuse parking permits. I found that amusing since my daily commute takes me past P.S. 161 in Harlem where there are numerous vehicles parked on the sidewalk every school day. This school is on Convent Ave.

In her letter to the Mayor, United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten claimed that "teachers
are not abusers of parking permits, and to publicly suggest that they
are is deeply troubling." The letter was a response to the Mayor’s plan to reduce the number of city government parking permits and prevent unions from printing their own placards. 

At least they’re not parking on the playground, I suppose.

A car with a teacher's permit on the dashboard is parked beneath a "No Parking Anytime" sign. The license plate number does not match the one printed on the permit. (UncivilServants.org)

United Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten sent a letter to Mayor Bloomberg Friday expressing objections to his plan to reduce the number of city government parking permits and prevent unions and city agencies from printing their own. Weingarten's letter echoed Teamsters president Gary LaBarbera's recent assertion that "parking permits are a form of compensation for teachers"and other city employees (Is anyone paying taxes on that "compensation?" Is it accounted for in any city budget?)

In her letter, reprinted below in full, Weingarten makes three particularly remarkable claims:

1. "Teachers are not abusers of parking permits."
   A quick visit to UncivilServants.org (or your own neighborhood streets) shows Weingarten's blanket claim is, obviously, incorrect.
   
   
2. "Teachers do not clog areas such as lower Manhattan" with their personal vehicles.
   Not only are teachers' cars part of the Lower Manhattan traffic jam, in a city where 43 percent of elementary school kids are unhealthily obese, teachers and education officials have been known to clog school playgrounds with their personal vehicles. In one notorious case, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum intervened to stop city employees from using the Tompkins Square Middle School's playground as a parking lot in 2004.
   
   
3. Parking permits are necessary to "attract the best and the brightest to teaching" in New York City.
   Really? I'm no education policy expert and I'm sure that some teachers really do need to use cars for work, but do the world's best and brightest come to live and work in New York City for the convenient parking?
   

I think Weingarten and the unions may find that they are fighting a costly and losing battle here. The public has little sympathy for the maintenance of a city employee parking system that is so blatantly abused. Few issues draw the ire of such a broad range of New York City civic groups as city government parking placard abuse.

A recent Independent Budget Office report found that cops, firefighters and teachers drive to work at double the rate of any other group of New York City workers. Why?

As DOT Deputy Commissioner Bruce Schaller told Streetsblog in the very first post we ever published, "Free parking has a tremendous impact on the decision whether to drive or take transit." Moreover, among teachers working in Manhattan, "nearly all of these auto commuters have transit alternatives," Schaller said. His 2006 study found that ninety-five percent of the government employees driving into Manhattan from Brooklyn and Staten Island live in neighborhoods where the majority of their neighbors use transit.

No one is proposing eliminating teachers' permits. Rather, there just needs to be a more centralized and rational system for distributing parking permits based on real need. And there needs to be real enforcement. Hopefully Weingarten and the unions will realize that they are better off pushing for a parking "cash-out" law like California's than fighting to maintain their oft-abused parking privilege.

Crosby Street, Soho: A veritable government employee parking lot. (Photo: UncivilServants.org)

As reported last week on NYPD Rant, the City Hall crackdown on government employee parking placards has arrived. Acknowledging the dissonance between his congestion mitigation efforts and City employees' flagrant parking abuse, Mayor Bloomberg today announced a reduction in the number of city government parking permits and new, more centralized procedures for the issuance of placards. From the press release:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today announced that the City of New York, as part its efforts to reduce traffic congestion, decrease the City's carbon footprint, encourage the use of public transportation, and reduce the demand for curbside parking in connection with City business, is implementing a comprehensive program to reduce the number and misuse of government parking placards. First, every City agency will reduce its number of parking placards by at least 20 percent. Second, the issuance of parking placards will be centralized and only the Police Department and the Department of Transportation will have the authority to issue them. Third, the NYPD will create a new enforcement unit to ensure compliance and agencies will develop enforcement procedures to prevent the abuse of placards. A multi-agency working group will implement and coordinate the various measures being taken and take additional actions, including a review of existing agency parking-space allocations and on-street parking regulations.

While this is a major step forward, the fact the NYPD is still in the placard printing business raises an eyebrow. The big question though is whether the police union (or PBA) is also going to be in the placard printing business. For a sense of what City Hall is up against in this initiative, again, we turn to our good friends over at NYPD Rant:

if the city yanks our plaques, then the war is on. the pba can have some printed for its members, active and retired, and i will bang out every car with official plates that is illegally parked or runs a light (the offenders can explain themselves in front of an administrative judge at AAB or parking violations bureau)....JUST WAIT AND SEE

Here's the rest of the City's press release:

 
60 Minutes curmudgeon Andy Rooney is grumpy about a lot of things but using an expired press placard to park an S.U.V. in front of a fire hydrant doesn't seem to be one of them. It looks like Gawker scooped Uncivil Servants on this one:

Over the weekend, a correspondent came across a white BMW S.U.V. It was parked just off West End, around the corner from Zabar's, about four feet from a fire hydrant. Its user, 88-year-old Andy Rooney, was wearing a white short-sleeve shirt and tan pants with white sneakers. According to our spy, his belt was right under his armpits and his eyebrows needed trimming. Also? His press card, taped to the windshield, the presence of which presumably made him feel he could hydrant-park, was long-expired. (Shouldn't he have his press vehicle card on the car-isn't this his working press card, and doesn't it say "Not for parking purposes" on the back?) Good for you, grumpy old maybe-racist column man! In any event, you'll all be pleased to know his registration doesn't expire until 2009 and his emissions is good through '08. You may be alarmed to know he's on the road in a large car though.

Carrie McLaren and Steve Lambert are working on a public service photo project called "People's 311." They want New Yorkers to submit shots of things like potholes, bike lane hazards, dying trees and broken traffic signs.

People's 311 is a "crowdsourcing" response to the Street Conditions Observation Unit (SCOUT) program, a new team of inspectors dispatched by the Mayor's Office of Operations to drive every city street (in scooters) once per month and report problem conditions to 311. McLaren and Lambert think this is something citizens could help with. They eventually plan to map all photos for a more comprehensive picture of reported problems.

Check the Stay Free! Magazine Blog for details. And for more experiments in crowdsourcing, see Brian Lehrer's SUV count from earlier this month, and, of course, Streetsblog's favorite project, Uncivil Servants.

Remember, after the launch of the Uncivil Servants web site last spring, the retired NYPD officer who wrote, "Ungrateful Liberal Scum... we do not summons our own!" We were reminded of that infamous and highly entertaining NYPD rant after Sean Roche of Newton Streets and Sidewalks forwarded along this news story from London where city police are racking up nearly £900 a day in traffic tickets (that is $1,816 thanks to the plummeting U.S. dollar):

Police drivers in London are fined almost £900 every day for offences including parking illegally, speeding and ignoring bus lanes.

The Metropolitan Police paid £325,563 in vehicle fixed penalty notices in the last financial year. The figure, revealed in new budget documents, was an increase of a third on the previous year when police coughed up £245,377 in fines.

Penalties were imposed because of illegal parking, speeding, driving in bus lanes, red route offences and driving the wrong way up one way streets.

Tickets issued to the drivers of vehicles responding to emergencies or on operations are cancelled by Transport for London and local authorities. But there are no exemptions for police drivers caught breaking the law in other circumstances.

Photo: Ryan van Laar/Flickr