The placard class is at it again.
In East New York, MTA workers are parking on the sidewalk and not moving their cars for street cleaning, forcing neighborhood residents to live in filth and walk into traffic.
Council Member Sandy Nurse (D-East New York) slammed a representative for the MTA during a land-use hearing last week, testifying that for more than three years she has been asking the agency to rein in its employee personal vehicle parking around the Broadway Junction and Alabama Avenue train stations and keep the area — which is under MTA jurisdiction — clean with no lasting results.
“I feel like pulling my hair out. The only time any cleaning happens is if I beg Sanitation to do it,” Nurse said at the Sept. 9 hearing. “You have an obligation to this community. I am not asking for a favor, I am asking you all to do your jobs and I am asking you to comply with the law.”
She even brought photos.
"This is weeks' worth of caked-up litter, shit all on the sidewalks that we constantly ask about. Sanitation can't get a broom on here because MTA worker cars are always there," she said. She also testified that she asked the MTA weeks ago to present her office with a plan to address the problem, but got no response.
Then Nurse perfectly summed up the inherent inequality that occurs when unequal enforcement lets some workers wreak havoc on neighborhoods, and then get in their cars to drive home somewhere else.
"I certainly don’t believe it’s happening in your neighborhood, or on your block or on any of the blocks of the people who work for MTA, that three weeks of litter is caked up under cars," Nurse told the MTA representative, Arturo Espinosa.
"That’s not acceptable where you live, correct?"
"No, it is not. I agree," he responded.
"So then why is it acceptable for people in East New York?" she added, with a bit of righteous anger.
Espinosa couldn’t even muster a real response, telling Nurse, “I will come back to you as soon as possible.”
Intimidation
Broadway Junction is in the midst of a huge public works project that will completely reimagine the station and the surrounding area.
The city's contracted non-profit developer, the Economic Development Corporation, has $400 million from the MTA to revamp the station, add new elevators, add ADA accessible escalators, and improve the public realm.
Because of this project, and the nearby bus depot, there is an influx of MTA workers driving into the area, even though it is a transit hub.
It's not just placard abuse, Nurse said, but that even when MTA employees park legally, they don’t move their cars for street cleaning, creating a buildup of trash and diminishing the quality of life for East New York residents.
Nurse said that when she personally reaches out to DSNY, the enforcement agents tasked with ticketing cars during street cleaning report intimidation from MTA employees.
“I think it’s really shameful that when DSNY does try to enforce and get these streets clean that MTA workers go to the sanitation garage and try to bully sanitation workers for issuing tickets,” said Nurse.
There is a real problem with alternate-side parking compliance in the area, but DSNY could not confirm any intimidation.
"We have not seen cases of ‘intimidation,’ although, of course, many people who receive summonses for failure to move their cars make rude comments,” said DSNY spokesman Joshua Goodman. “There is an easy way to avoid an summons: move your car so that the street sweeper can get to the curb. We thank the Council member for her advocacy here, and are working with her office and the MTA on ensuring compliance so that residents of this neighborhood can have the clean streets they deserve.”
Eyes on the street
Broadway Junction is one of the city’s largest transit hubs — the confluence of five subway lines, six bus routes, and the Long Island Railroad station at East New York. It’s a 15-minute ride from Downtown Brooklyn, Jamaica, or Williamsburg, and a 20-minute ride to Midtown. Residents of six neighborhoods surround and use the station: Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brownsville, Bushwick, Cypress Hills, East New York, and Ocean Hill. Yet employees of the MTA still choose to drive personal vehicles to work at the station or the nearby bus depot each day.
The area between Broadway Junction and Alabama Avenue is filled with parked cars, both legally and illegally, some cars display an NYPD Transit Bureau District 33, the precinct inside Broadway Junction, placard, with varying expiration dates, some have fake-looking "emergency" MTA placards, and most use neon orange MTA "theft vests" to signal they work for the agency.
This scofflaw with the NYPD placard has 24 (!) school zone speed-camera violations.
And it only gets worse as you walk on Fulton Street towards Alabama Avenue. On Williams Place, which connects Fulton Street and Atlantic Avenue, there is technically no parking any time, but every inch of the curb and sidewalk is taken up by MTA or NYPD personal cars, most displaying MTA theft vest in the windshield.
And continuing on Fulton the problem continues, with garbage building up in the areas where cars sit, some even have bird poop covered windshields, signaling longer term storage.
The MTA didn’t provide an answer to when it would get back to Nurse nor did it address the allegations of intimidation, but the agency told Streetsblog it does not condone illegal parking.
“The MTA has no tolerance for MTA employees or contractors abusing neighborhood parking regulations. Anyone who is caught doing so faces fines or towing by the NYPD. MTA managers will continue to advise all employees that they are to follow all parking regulations,” spokesperson David Steckel said.
