Jackson Heights Life

From today's New York Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/queens/2008/06/14/2008-06-14_jackson_heights_angry_as_citys_parking_t.html

"Jackson Heights Angry As City's Parking Ticket Capital" by BY NICHOLAS HIRSHON, JEFF WILKINS and RICH SCHAPIRO

A trip to Jackson Heights, Queens, will get you some great food, a colorful trinket - and likely, a parking ticket.

The neighborhood, along with adjacent East Elmhurst, is the parking ticket capital of New York, according to new numbers obtained by the Daily News.

"It's horrible out here," fumed Tony Fasano, 46, as he unloaded his Pepsi truck outside a restaurant on Broadway in Jackson Heights. "You get anywhere from four to five tickets a day."

Cops and traffic agents have doled out a stunning 20,848 parking tickets in the 115th Precinct in Queens so far this year - the most of any precinct in the city.

Jackson Heights isn't the only place where an astronomical number of parking tickets were handed out since January by the city's roughly 2,800 traffic agents.

In the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Flatbush and Midland, the 70th Precinct issued 20,612 parking tickets between Jan. 1 and June 8.

Darren Mollo, a Flatbush-based chiropractor, said he's gotten seven tickets in six months.

"I'll be treating a patient, I'll see the cops coming and stick my head out the window to say, 'Give me a sec, and I'll put a quarter in,'" Mollo said. "They don't care. They write the ticket anyway."

The situation is not much better in midtown Manhattan.

Traffic agents and officers from the Midtown South precinct have so far handed out 17,879 tickets, compared with the 5,458 tickets issued by 7th Precinct officers on the lower East Side.

Mark Rodriguez, 31, who manages Tasty Catering, a restaurant on Madison Ave. near 31st St., said he received three tickets last week, two in a day.

"They literally wait in front of the car, so if it's 1:59 and the receipt says 2, [the cop] gives me the ticket one second after 2," he added. "It's a disaster."

Despite the burden on some neighborhoods, the total number of tickets written in the city this year, 672,149, is down 13% compared with last year.

But the numbers could start to rise. Another 200 traffic agents started work last week.

rschapiro@nydailynews.com

The traffic congestion in JH has made life unconfortable in recent years. It has been the basis for the Traffic Department's plan to change the traffic pattern. Making 37th Avenue one way would reguire increased traffic on the side streets and 35th and 34th Avenues. Traffic ticket are a way to prevent this horrible plan from becoming a fact.

Also, we need to understand the danger that the illegal parking - especially double parking. The pedestrians needed to jut out to see oncoming traffic only to jump back to be safe. Two way trraffic often faught over right of way with accidents as a common result.

Residents should cheer the Traffic department and their agents. We need respect for the laws and for the neighborhood.

Go Francis :rockon:

Double-parking on Northern Blvd should be a misdemeanor.  Traffic backs up for miles.

It can take 20 minutes to drive from the BQE off-ramp to 86th street (which is about 20 blocks) just because some shitheads double-parked in front of the cholados place on 83rd street.

The only traffic enforcement reforms I'm interested in are: increased enforcement, more severe penalties.

Well, I think your choice of words and attack is thoughtless and tasteless. I not only live in Jackson Height but am also a small merchant on 37th Avenue. Personal attacks are no necessary to any discussion.

I guess it hit a nerve with you! You were the one who took it as a personal attack. Very interesting, and perhaps somewhat telling. I simply made a personal statement of my own feelings and observations.

While I realize that deliveries need to be made to many of us, there needs to be a plan and regulations to organize them. The double parking of cars and trucks - sometimes on both sides of the street as the same time - causes terrible dangerous situations for both vehicles and pedestrians.

Sure. But isn't it about time that the damned City recognizes that personal vehicles and delivery trucks are not the same and should NOT be treated the same?

Something you may not have thought of is the ease of transporation / parking into and throught this area and it's effect on customers for merchants (like myself). I have had many customers/patients complain that this area is too crowded and dangerous for driving and walking. This hurts business also.

Please, gimme a break! If you couldn't get deliveries of merchandise to sell how the hell can you stay in business. Okay, which comes first, the merchandise to sell or the customers to sell it to?

We need to work things out so everyone is happy, prosperous and safe. Let's work together instead of just attacking from the sidelines.

Except the poor bastards who make their livings trying to deliver goods to businesses? If you know how to resolve the situation to make everyone happy, prosperous and safe, then share it with us.

And since you already accused me of being in your face, how can you now insinuate that I am on the sidelines? The sidelines of what? This decent family of local business owners that I described? Or the truck driver whose income has also probably been cut? Or the local property owner who has an unrented retail property sitting there empty? Or the local resident's who are now forced to shop at a chain store for everything including their Coke products because the City of New York figured out yet another way to gain income off of poorly written code, from the poor schmucks who are simply trying to earn a living in this morally bankrupt town?

Except the poor bastards who make their livings trying to deliver goods to businesses? If you know how to resolve the situation to make everyone happy, prosperous and safe, then share it with us.

You mean poor bastards like FedEx and UPS?

You mean poor bastards like FedEx and UPS?

Yeah, I guess I mean even FedEx and UPS. Would NYC be NYC without their services? What would a City, the size of NYC, do without FedEx and UPS? Have you EVER seen a USPS truck get a ticket? They double park in exactly the same manner as does the private delivery options, but they don't get tickets.

Just think about this for a second: If FedEx and UPS didn't get ticketed in NYC, they could probably reduce OUR costs to use THEIR services by the 20% of their profit margins that are now dedicated to paying those fines. That would roll back their prices to us to around the mid-1980s when the now $12.95 overnight letter costs only $10.50.

The focus of the ticket blitz  is not on how people do or do not make a living.  It's penalizing people who simply do the wrong thing. People who cause the potential for a hazardous condition.

Now you are making my point for me. The ticket blitzes of this City are indiscriminate in who gets ultimately penalized. Truck delivery people should not be the target of these freaking blitzes. Privately owned passenger cars are the real problem. And I will never understand the concept of fining people for the potential of their actions rather than for their actual dangerous actions.

There are a myriad of reasons why small mom and pop stores go out of business.  The advent of Costco, Home Depot,  Target, Bed Bath and Beyond have  affected such closures more so than parking.

In the example I gave, this small business had already survived the large box stores and found that their personal service was more important to their customer base.

I agree, there needs to be some sort of regulation which allows businesses to have deliveries in a way which is not intrusive to the community at large.

Or what? Go the way of Main Street in Flushing or Steinway Street in Astoria? If a retail business has no merchandise to sell they cease being a retail business and become yet another empty retail location.

Driving is a privilege.

Really? For whom? The able bodied? Those who live in major metropolitan areas filled with shops of all descriptions that can satisfy all of the needs of it's people? If I were to consider it a privilege, it would be one dedicated for the rich, sorta like polo, or it wouldn't be so expensive to participate in the sport. Right now, driving, implying ownership of a car, is so cost prohibitive that it is purely for the wealthier residents of our communities or for those whose cars are their only alternative ways of getting around.

Let me share a little incident with y'all.

One day, last week, while parking my car in front of my house after a doctor's appointment, I was approached by an on foot uniformed representative of the DOT ticket patrol! (Even I am pleased with myself that I didn't say the asshole who walks my block while talking on his cellphone, drinking his Starbucks (iced) coffee with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, while scanning registration stickers and printing out tickets at the exact minute that start the Street Cleaning Alternate Parking rules!) And mind you, I am in a 4-day-a-week zone, even though we rarely get to see a street cleaner more than once every 2 weeks, if that. Anyway, he growls at me and tells me to move my car. I remove my official NYC Handicapped Parking Permit from my dashboard and I show it to him. He tsks and walks on. Right across from where I live is an NYFD ambulance depot and all those EMTs park on the sidewalk all day and night. Not a single one of their cars has ever been ticketed. Yet as the 3rd shift bus driver and the 3rd shift ER nurse are running out of my building to discover that have been ticketed at 11:30:15 AM and 11:30:56 AM, respectively. Sure, they deserved the tickets; they were (albeit by mere seconds) parked illegally, but exactly what do the residents of my block have to do to stop this sidewalk parking that is being ignored, and thereby condoned for years.

Free the trucks to make their deliveries, and get the damned cars off the sidewalks!

I think there might be a solution to what we are all talking about here: MORE LOADING ZONES and SCHEDULED DELIVERY TIMES. We obviously need trucks to deliver merchandise to stores in the area. However, we do not have enough loading zones to accomodate truck traffic. And what's worse is that many trucks delivery at the same time (frequently morning and evening rush hour).

A key to relieving traffic congestion in the area is to have loading zones in front of the commercial establishments that require regular truck deliveries. In addition to these zones, merchants should arrange a schedule of deliveries so that trucks do NOT double park or block the crosswalk.

In congested areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn, this approach is common-place. In Jackson Heights, with our increased commercial activity and population over the past decade -- we need to incorporate this strategy.