Postal Service Street Cheats Double Park Personal Cars on Empire Boulevard Sidewalk

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Streetsblog reader and safe streets advocate Dave “Paco” Abraham sent us this photo of the sidewalk outside the James E. Davis post office at 315 Empire Boulevard in Crown Heights.

Though they’re obviously personal vehicles, each SUV has a postal service “official business” placard on the dashboard.

“USPS placards do NOT allow sidewalk parking,” writes Abraham. Yet placard abuse by postal workers is “a daily occurrence.”

“The customer service inside is notably miserable and local electeds keep writing letters to the Brooklyn postmaster general to improve conditions,” Abraham says. “But at the very least, getting employees to stop parking on the sidewalk would be a decent start.”

Check out Google and sure enough, illegal sidewalk parking here is a tradition.

We’ll be adding this location to our NYC placard abuse map. If you’re tired of Street Cheats stealing public space where you are, send your photos to tips@streetsblog.org.

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  • Ken Dodd

    The United States Postal Service is a classic example of how arrogant people become in government jobs in which there are virtually no consequences for bad behavior and/or underperformance. When people are not hired on their merits, when you encourage them to think that they’re somehow “special” because they’re in public service, when you impose no discipline whatsoever and create a working environment in which it’s virtually impossible to get fired – this is the result. You only have to read the Yelp reviews for post offices across New York to get a sense of how goddamn awful these post office employees are. Indeed you only have to visit a post office once to see for yourself. They’re lazy, entitled, ignorant, unhelpful, incompetent, obtuse, malicious and oh my God I could keep going all night about USPS and its wretched staff.

  • Tom Rorb

    Same in Jax Heights post office at 78th Street. And worse: they park right down center of sidewalk so it’s hard to get by in a stroller.

  • Vooch

    It’s impossible to deliver mail in NYC without using large trucks

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLzNM_rzDSme6P4gvpkVIVGEo1ta2TFMeS&v=PqJCBrNSjnc

  • neroden

    Let’s just change the law to allow private towing of cars illegally parked on the sidewalk. This will clear right up once these cars are impounded and crushed.

  • Hugh Shepard

    Ha! This place is right next to my Aunt’s apartment, walk past it every time I take the subway there. And every time I walk past it, at least one car is parked on the sidewalk in front of the post office. Sometimes the post offices trucks are even parked on the sidewalk. Reminds me of China, except in China it wouldn’t be placard abuse, it would just be lack of enforcement, because they don’t really do ticketing of illegally parked cars there.

    One car parked on the sidewalk is annoying, but two cars parked on the sidewalk means you actually have some trouble getting past. If you are looking for more placard abuse articles to write, what about the funeral home down Empire Boulevard closer to Prospect Park? I have seen sidewalk-parked cars around there multiple times. However, I don’t think the funeral home is publicly operated and so it probably wouldn’t be able to issue placards.

  • Hugh Shepard

    How annoying. Shows how little these placard holders care about how disruptive they are too the public. I mean, even the minimal effort and time required to park their cars to the side of the sidewalk is just too much for them.

  • Hugh Shepard

    Yeah, they also deliver mail by e-bike in China and by motorcycle in Japan. They also sometimes deliver mail by foot in NYC. Have you ever seen the mailmen (or mailwomen?) pushing their mail carts down the sidewalk, stopping at houses and apartments?

  • Hugh Shepard

    This is only viable for short distances, though, so to get the mail to the post office, you need a vehicle that can travel longer distance. E-bikes could do this, but then that would mean more labor as you would have to do more runs to carry the same volume of mail that you could carry in a truck.

  • Joe R.

    Do any placards allow sidewalk parking? Also, if so, then why is it legal for cars to drive on the sidewalk but not for bikes?

  • Vooch

    Somehow every other country on earth does not need to run semis to deliver mail to the post office.

    and then use big trucks to ‚stage’ mail.

    In Manhattan it’s absurd.

    The post office is less efficient using those big trucks than if they used bikes.

  • Hugh Shepard

    No, placards do not legally allow for sidewalk parking. The police are just afraid to ticket any car with a placard.

  • qrt145

    At another funeral home I know, they get away with parking violations by issuing home-made “placards” which are just a piece of paper that says “attending funeral”. NYPD does nothing about it because they clearly agree that the bereaved are too distraught to be expected to park legally.

  • BkBiker

    That’s nothing – 7 blocks south and one over (NY Avenue between Parkside and Winthrop), the Department of Sanitation, parks at least 25 private vehicles on the sidewalk every day. This has been going on for many years and you can even some cars on the sidewalk on Google maps – although they fill up the sidewalk these days.

  • JarekFA

    Damn. You weren’t kidding. Kinda surprised since DoS penalizes their employees for placard abuse (but I guess not always).

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