Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Parking Placards

New Study: The Parking Placard On That Car Is Probably Illegal

By Noah Kazis | Apr 27, 2011 | 24 Comments

What happens when you put a police station, a courthouse, and borough hall in one place? Utter lawlessness. In a new report [PDF], Transportation Alternatives looked at the dashboards of the vehicles parked in the civic centers of each borough. In areas just a few blocks wide, hundreds of vehicles were displaying placards boasting of […]

Henry St. Placard Abuser Fends Off NYPD By Mixing Church and State

By Noah Kazis | Apr 18, 2011 | 17 Comments

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 […]

Cuomo to Cut 10 Percent of State Parking Placards

By Noah Kazis | Apr 8, 2011 | 3 Comments

In response to some high-profile abuses of state-issued parking placards and a report by the state’s Inspector General, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced yesterday that he will be reforming the way placards are issued and releasing ten percent fewer total placards. The new state placard regime will be only modestly more strict than before, but creates […]

Garodnick Proposes Bar Code Scanners to Curb Parking Placard Abuse

By Ben Fried | Feb 3, 2011 | 21 Comments

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 […]

Illegal Parking in Brooklyn Heights: Scenes From the Placard Orgy

By Ben Fried | Nov 2, 2010 | 52 Comments

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 […]

Want the Best Deal on Parking? Get Yourself a Police Surgeon Placard

By Noah Kazis | Jun 15, 2010 | 36 Comments

This unofficial placard illegally grants its owner free access to a no-parking zone near Union Square every workday. Photo: Noah Kazis 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 […]

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