A well-placed vest can deter a parking ticket. (Photo via the Daily News)
Over the last few years, a handful of politicians and livable streets advocates have tried to pressure the NYPD into cracking down on parking placard abuse. Too often do people believe they can illegally by flashing some official-looking document. Whether those documents are legit or homemade, the drivers often should not be using the placards in such a manner, and pedestrians and those looking for legal parking spots lose out.
Today, the Daily News reports that MTA employees have gotten in on the act by placing their vests in their car windshields in order to signal to parking enforcers. Of course, it takes two to tango, and the parking enforcement agents shouldn’t allow a simple vest to deter them from writing up an illegally parked car. That hasn’t, however, stopped too many enforcement agents from turning a blind eye. Joe Kemp has more:
Just because you work for the government doesn’t mean you get to park for free, but try telling that to one Queens neighborhood.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority employees that use their orange safety vests to dodge parking fees in municipal lots have long aggravated motorists fighting for a space on a busy Astoria block. And the bright-colored apparel, which bear the MTA logo, on the dashboards of parked vehicles help avoid hefty fines from traffic agents, locals said.
But the free ride may soon be over. A city councilman is calling for the city to start ticketing the illegally parked cars. “The city is taking placards away from people who legitimately need them,” said Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria). “While their agents are overlooking orange vests in the windshield, which is completely unfair.”
It is at least somewhat comforting to see a politician speaking out against this practice, but Vallone is hardly being pro-pedestrian. He just wants those who have legitimate placards to have a place to use them. In my opinion, the city should rescind every placard and begin reissuing them with far more stringent criteria, but that’s neither here nor there right now.
For its part, the MTA said this practice of using vests for parking should be stopped. “We do not condone this practice of using the vests as a parking placard,” Deirdre Parker, a Transit spokesperson, said to the News. “Anyone who does this should be ticketed like anyone else who violates the law.”
9 comments
Give the MTA workers a break. You can at least give them a break on parking. It is not like many of them are living the high life here. I see no problem with it and highly doubt that is the crux of the problem.
Er, April Fool’s Day was yesterday.
Why should MTA workers get a break? What makes MTA workers different from all other members of society that they, to the exclusion of everyone else, should get a break?
And why should the break be on parking rather than on something else (e.g., income taxes, or housing costs, or food)? Why penalize MTA workers who choose not to own cars (or to park their cars legally)? And there are good reasons that most parking restrictions are in place; those reasons apply even when the illegally parked car belongs to an MTA worker.
Finally, parking regulations are a legislative issue. The NYPD is sworn to uphold the law. Regardless of what you think might be the appropriate policy, MTA workers do not currently have a legal exemption from parking regulations, and members of the NYPD have no right to act as though they do.
It’s not only MTA. I’ve seen a meter maid not give a ticket at an expired meter because there was a card from the precinct that stated the person was from the Youth Dares Program which I believe is a volunteer program for private citizens. Lifeguards illegally park by placing their T shirt on the dashboard. Police use their placards to illegally park at the gym. Churchgoers illegally park with a paper sign that they are attending services. Years ago there was an article that meter maids would illegally park by placing an M and M wrapper on their windshield to signal other meter maids. Add to this illegal use of handicapped placards and incidents like Jerry Seinfield’s Chauffeur using a placard that he worked for a drug enforcement agency (retired police officer).
Nothing happens to these people, but it means lost revenue to the City which has to be made up by higher meter rates and fines for everyone else. This has to stop. Simple way to do this. Pass a law that anything unauthorized left on the dashboard should be considered attempted bribery of a law enforcement official and should be ticketed.
Why don’t they just ticket the car? At the very worst, the placard is genuine and the ticket would be thrown out in court.
It’s nothing a few tow trucks won’t fix.
Where I work in Brooklyn – near Kings County Hospital, Sanitation workers park their cars on the sidewalks, put a placard in the window and block the sidewalks for thousands of commuters headed to the subway. These are never ticketed or challenged as far as I can tell. I am a civil servant and I bike or subway to work every day – why do they get preferential treatment?
I strongly agree. Their is this one car that parks in front of a church that reads no parking anytime everyday and all they have is a reflective vest with the letter NYPD on and they won’t ticket it. Now I know that officers have placards why not use that. It only means to me is that they are impersonating a cop and getting away with it while cars doing delivers are getting ticketed.
I receive a summons thinking I was legally parked after after asking a cab driver who was parked at the same location
It was Sunday “ he said I waited on line for store to open the minute I left my car he wrote me and didn’t enforce the law on all of the other vehicles that were parked illegally at same location that is blatant bias and illegal!