The Mile Square City is once again eating the Big Apple's lunch.
Hoboken will this week start using cameras to ticket drivers who block bike lanes, bus lanes, and loading zones in its downtown core in the hopes of improving safety and bus service, officials said.
Officials in the Home of Sinatra are yet again showing the Big Apple how it's done, using an automated enforcement system along eight blocks of commercial Washington Street to ticket scofflaws. The program starts on Oct. 1.
"We’re hoping that it reshapes the center of the city in a way that advances our public safety objectives," Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla told Streetsblog in an interview. "There’s no parking that’s being taken away, we’re just asking motorists not to park in a bus lane, for example."
The cameras are installed from Observer Highway near Hoboken Terminal to Eighth Street.
Fines will be the same as if an enforcement officer issues them, with $63 for blocking a bus stop, $55 for a loading zone violation, and $150 for parking in a bike lane, according to Bhalla's office.
The program, which city officials dub CLEAR (Camera-based License plate Enforcement for Access and Response times), has proven successful at tackling illegal parking in other cities, from Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, to New York City's own Mayor Adams's second home in Fort Lee. Double-parking dropped by a whopping 95 percent in the Steel City, and by 43 percent in Fort Lee, according to data by the contractor behind the tech, Automotus.
Dire need
Washington Street is in dire need of better enforcement, both data and our own visit shows.
The cameras found that bike lanes were blocked an average of four-and-a-half hours a day at each block they monitored, according to the mayor's office. There were 68 daily double parking violations per day at each location and 158 bus stops blocked.
There are loading zones at corners on each block, which businesses can use from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., but more than half the time, they were blocked by a scofflaw.
The dangerous conditions deter many cyclists from riding on what is essentially the city's prime thoroughfare, said one local advocate.
"The reality is that myself and pretty much any cyclist that I talk to, we avoid Washington Street," said Andrew Wilson, executive director of Bike Hoboken. "It’s chaotic, the bike lanes are essentially unusable."
Streetsblog found cars in the bike lanes on almost every block of the corridor, forcing cyclists to weave into dangerous car traffic.
There were loading zones up at corners, but sometimes they were already occupied, so other drivers making deliveries took over the bike lane.
There has been the predictable pushback by business owners along Washington over delivery access, and one bar manager said she worried about being able to get their goods.
"I’ve already heard from the drivers that it was difficult already," said Pam L., a manager at Louise and Jerry's. "How are they supposed to make that all happen?"
The tavern operator acknowledged that the bike lanes have "always" been blocked, but said the city should also extend loading zone hours.
"It’s always been a thing," she said of the area's double parking.
Mayor Bhalla said City Hall is in "active discussions" with the business community, including about prolonging the loading zone times, after assessing how the initiative goes.
Wilson said anger from some business owners stems from them being able to skirt the law at the expense of street safety.
"Let’s be real: they were being able to illegally park for deliveries and things and that, and now they’re not going to be able to get away with illegally parking," he said. “I think that in the long run, I think changes like this area going to make that part of Washington Street a more welcoming place to spend time."
NYC take note
The automated enforcement program once again shows how a city can take parking policy seriously.
On this side of the Hudson, bike lanes are blocked routinely, and efforts to increase ticketing have faced obstacles of their own.
An effort to allow New Yorkers to report blocked bike lanes and get a 25-percent cut of the $175 ticket failed to pass in the Council, even after lawmakers watered it down to remove the bounty.
Hoboken has also banned parking at corners, a street safety design known as daylighting, deploying low-cost barriers like plastic sticks and paint. The effort has saved lives: Hoboken has not logged a traffic fatality since 2017.
The New York City Council has a bill to mandate universal daylighting in the Big Apple too, but the Adams administration and its Department of Transportation have actively campaigned against those efforts. State law already bars parking in the last spot of every intersection ... but that same state allowed the city to exempt itself, which it has done in order to retain parking at the expense of safety.
