Parking Placards

We missed these when they were first released in late March, but DOT has come out with its preliminary recommendations for improving bus service in downtown Jamaica [PDF]. The plan calls for adding roughly a mile and a half of new bus lanes and beefing up an equal amount of existing lanes. It would also redesign two intersections and create new pedestrian space.

With the release of Transportation Alternatives' new report on parking placard abuse and the introduction of City Council Member Daniel Garodnick's bill to add scannable bar codes to official placards, the push is on again to curb the flagrant exploitation of parking privileges. Despite the substantial reduction in official placards by the Bloomberg administration in 2008, vehicles sporting both official and fake placards continue to illegally obstruct sidewalks and clog streets wherever government employees work in large numbers.

What happens when you put a police station, a courthouse, and borough hall in one place? Utter lawlessness.

At this point, it's hardly news that the length of the Henry Street bike lane was filled with parked cars yesterday (see here and here). Being a Sunday, it was par for the course, though still infuriating, that churchgoers were taking advantage of an informal agreement with the police to snatch that lane away from cyclists and give it to parkers during services. Can it get more outrageous than the status quo? Yes it can.

City Council Member Dan Garodnick has introduced a bill that could cut down on the abuse of fraudulent parking placards. The bill would require that city-issued placards be equipped with bar codes that traffic enforcement agents can scan to verify. If enacted, it should cut down on one form of placard abuse: the use of bogus laminated pieces of paper to park illegally with impunity.

A few weeks ago we ran an update on the Henry Street bike lane in Brooklyn Heights, where members of the First Presbyterian Church illegally park on Sundays and police look the other way. The era of NYPD-sanctioned bike lane blocking had supposedly come to an end this summer, right before primary day, when local Assembly member Joan Millman said she'd told the 84th Precinct to start enforcing the law. But afterward, the lane-blocking resumed, and Millman explained to Community Board 2 that she'd brokered a "compromise" that allowed churchgoers to keep on parking in the bike lane during services.

For only $250, the ability to willfully disregard the parking laws of New York City can be yours. With barely a fuss, at least two different police organizations will sell you an illegitimate parking placard, with all its attendant perks. These placards aren't official and carry zero legal protections. Even so, if you display one on your dashboard you get a free pass to park almost wherever you want, when you want.

The pending trial of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has thrown lower Manhattan into a tizzy, for good reasons. Foremost, of course, is the dread of revisiting the horrors of that day, mingled with fears of new attacks linked to the trial. But there are also concerns that the NYPD's aggressive countermeasures will impede movement, worsen traffic and suffocate the economy of the area, pockets of which never recovered fully from police-ordered street closures and other 9/11 aftershocks. These concerns could be assuaged by a tough, zero tolerance stance on parking placard abuse by government employees.

We got a tip yesterday about an errant driver hogging a curbside spot in a residential area: