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.”