The Police Department boasted nabbing two would-be toll evaders with obscured plates on Tuesday, but the issue of covered and phony plates will be a much steeper challenge for the Adams administration — if Hizzoner really wants to keep motorists from undermining the historic toll.
City Hall has been largely quiet on congestion pricing since its launch on Sunday, and on the first-in-the-nation program's third day, the mayor seemed to be almost in awe of the "ingenuity" some plate coverers come up with to avoid the $9 charge to drive below 60th Street.
"There is going to be an entirely new industry on how to evade tolls. That’s just the ingenuity of mankind," Adams told reporters during his weekly press questions session. "Trust me, right now as we sit, there’s somebody trying to figure out a way to circumvent the process."
The police's press shop declined to provide information of any further efforts cops were undertaking to tackle the covered plates in the new toll zone in downtown Manhattan, simply confirming that officers caught two drivers at 60th Street at York Avenue on the East Side and 11th Avenue on the West Side.
Obstructed and phony plates have been big news this first week of congestion pricing, surfacing in major outlets like the New York Times and the New York Post, the latter of which called the lawbreaking "clever." Inside Edition labelled the lawbreakers "creative" during an interview with Streetsblog Editor Gersh Kuntzman, who preferred the term "entitled."
And who could forget right-wing, law-and-order Queens Council Member Vickie Paladino who raised the stakes to another level by suggesting drivers damage toll cameras with laser pointers? On Tuesday, Adams shrugged that off as just a joke.
"The Councilwoman says she was joking and I would like to believe she was," Adams said. "I just think sometimes we take each other too seriously all the time, everything we say — you’re almost afraid to crack a joke nowadays, you know, all of a sudden you are demonized."
But Streetsblog readers have become all too familiar with the scofflaw plate concealers, thanks to extensive reporting. What the Metropolitan Transportation Authority dubs "maliciously obstructed" plates have been on the rise, foiling other tolling infrastructure and the city's network of speed and red-light cameras.
Transportation luminaries like the late former MTA chief Dick Ravitch sounded the alarm more than two years ago that toll cheats could "eviscerate" the traffic reduction policy.
On Tuesday, the Department of Transportation and NYPD brass also touted a "new rule" banning more obstructions of license plates, such as see-through covers and even dirt or grime, but the change simply mirrors a state law from September.
The city has made some inroads removing dozens of cars a day with so-called ghost plates off the street, thanks to a recent joint task force between NYPD and the Sanitation Department, but traffic veterans called on officials to do more to root out the license plate abuses that have been percolating for years.
"There’s a lot more the city can do," said "Gridlock" Sam Schwartz, who served as Traffic Commissioner during the 1980s. "The city should instruct every single traffic agent and police officer on parking duty to inspect plates."
It all comes back to placards
The city should turn its eyes first to cars with placards and other illegal parking paraphernalia on their dashes, said Schwartz, who was in charge of parking enforcement during the Ed Koch administration, when traffic enforcement agents were still separate from the NYPD.
"You’ll find a correlation between those trying to flout the parking rules and those flouting the congestion pricing rules," Schwartz told Streetsblog. "When a car is not moving, it’s the easiest time to ticket and tow the vehicle."
The city's premier anonymous placard watchdog agreed that more was needed, but also noted some improvements in the city's more recent efforts together with the Sanitation Department, whose commissioner, Jessica Tisch, recently moved over to lead New York's Finest.
"Even a strong effort would probably take some time to reverse years of corruption incubated on our streets by police corruption. But hopefully it is starting to turn around," wrote the person behind the social media account Placard Corruption.
The placard class has been among the loudest complainers about the new $9 charge to drive into the most transit-rich part of the country, but it will require a mayor and police commissioner with a backbone to tackle the entrenched low-level corruption Schwartz said.
That sense of entitlement even leads to cops arresting parking enforcement agents for ticketing their cars during the Koch years, Schwartz remembered, but he was able to prevail thanks to the backing of then-police commissioner Benjamin Ward.
"I had the backing of the police commissioner and I believe Jessica Tisch is the kind of person that would want her own people to set examples — good examples, not bad examples.," Schwartz said. "I would volunteer to go and lead an enforcement crew."
