De Blasio “Placard Crackdown” Update: Placard Holders Monopolize Livingston Street Bus Lane

As many as 40 buses an hour are disrupted by public employees who have taken over the curbside lane on Livingston Street. Video still: @JarekFA
As many as 40 buses an hour are disrupted by public employees who have taken over the curbside lane on Livingston Street. Video still: @JarekFA

Nine months after Mayor de Blasio announced his big placard crackdown, it has yet to reach Livingston Street in Downtown Brooklyn, where bus riders stew in traffic while placard-holding government employees illegally park in the bus lane.

Streetsblog reader JarekFA took this footage at 11:30 this morning. The bus lane, on Livingston between Smith Street and Boerum Place, is supposed to be car-free from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

This corridor, which got transit priority about seven years ago, sees more than 40 buses per hour during peak hours. The B41, B45, B67, and B103 all use this bus lane.

But as you can see, the lane — in front of a courthouse and Department of Education building — is useless to bus riders because it has been taken over by placard-bearing government workers who know there’s little to no chance they will ever get a ticket.

Watch as JarekFA counts placard after placard:

Years of Google images suggest a bus lane occupied by parked cars is the normal state of affairs.

De Blasio is allowing public employees to torpedo city efforts to improve bus service in Downtown Brooklyn — further evidence that New Yorkers who rely on buses just don’t matter that much to the mayor.

  • JarekFA

    There’s literally a parking garage right there!

  • AnoNYC

    We need a hero.

  • Fool

    But that involves money.

    Placard parking, just like PBA Card Tolerating, are a form of compensation to our civil servants. It allows them to drive into the urban core while only enduring the marginal costs of gas and mileage.

  • Adrian Horczak

    Parking in the bus lane also involves money when you have to pay a ticket … theoretically

  • Knut Torkelson

    I was just thinking we should organize a guerilla gang of activists to key these cars daily, but of course that would mean the NYPD would actually get involved (to crack down on the vandals, not the illegal parkers, obviously).

  • Menachem Goldshteyn

    That would be a great way to make drivers look like the true victims… Maybe not post such ideas on here?

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG