Daily News Busts Govt Employee Valet Parking Racket

11:22 AM EDT on August 8, 2006

Triple-parked cars of government employees in front of the "The Tombs" in Lower Manhattan

State Court officials have turned Mulberry Street in Chinatown into their own private parking lot, valet service included. Today's Daily News has a great article on the scam. Every morning two uniformed State Court officers block off the street with orange traffic cones allowing only their fellow employees to drive in and park their private vehicles -- on the sidewalk. From The News:

When The News first arrived at 7:45 a.m. last Tuesday, bright orange cones lined the west side of the street, reserving the precious parking spots for court employees with special parking placards. When court employees arrived, one of the two state court officers sitting in an unmarked car would jump out and remove the cones. The drivers would then glide into their reserved spot, parking halfway on the sidewalk, which is illegal.

After the Daily News picked up on revelations of illegal government employee parking in Streetsblog a couple of months ago about, Mayor Bloomberg promised to fix the problem.

Aaron Naparstek

AARON NAPARSTEK is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparsteks journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is the author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage" (Villard, 2003), a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by the endless motorist sociopathy observed from his apartment window. Prior to launching Streetsblog, Naparstek worked as an interactive media producer, pioneering some of the Web's first music web sites, online communities, live webcasts and social networking services. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Naparstek is a co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. You can find more of his work here: http://www.naparstek.com.

Stay in touch

More from Streetsblog New York City

Congestion Pricing

Stockholm Leader’s Message to NYC: ‘Congestion Pricing Just Works’

"In Stockholm, people really thought that congestion pricing would be the end of the world, the city will come to a standstill, no one would be able to get to work anymore and all the theaters and shops would just go bankrupt. None of that happened."