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On Monday the City Council passed a bill that would give motorists a five minute grace period on parking tickets issued at Muni-Meters or when a vehicle is in violation of alternate side parking regulations. Mayor Bloomberg has vowed to veto it, but the Council approved it 47 to 2, and they only need a two-thirds vote to override a veto, meaning the law could very well take effect in 90 days. Will "chaos" reign, as Bloomberg predicts, or will motorists receive a welcome relief from "parking enforcement officers hiding behind the bushes, waiting for the meter to run out," as one parking commissioner in White Plains puts it?
Critics say the grace period will only inflame the already heated arguments between traffic agents and car owners, but the bill’s sponsor, Councilman Simcha Felder of Brooklyn, tells the Times, "They’re issuing tickets now and no one is confused about the time, right? If they say it’s 9:01 and a taxpayer says it’s 8:59, the taxpayer is still getting the ticket, so whatever you do now you’ll continue doing." And one traffic agent, who gave an anonymous quote to the Times, believes the grace period "will make people more happy" and "will make my job easier."
White Plains and Miami have had grace periods for years, and there used to be an informal grace period when traffic enforcement was controlled by the DOT. When the NYPD took over, traffic agents were instruct to ticket immediately, and a recent study found that many agents issued tickets at the exact moment the time expires. Bloomberg has thirty days to veto the bill, but Bay Ridge Councilman Vincent Gentile tells the Brooklyn Eagle, "We’re confident that we have enough votes to override his veto."
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As long as it doesn't apply to meters then fine. It's OK to not ticket a street cleaning zone until 1:05 instead of exactly at 1:00. Watches are sometimes wrong after all.
I once got a ticket for a no standing zone that started at 8AM -- except the time written on the ticket was 7:59 AM! Needless to say that was dismissed.
barring muni-meters, i don't see why we need a law for this. just tell ray kelly to relax.
but when it comes to a sign that says "don't have your car parked here at 10am," and you're still there at 10am, deal with it. or go up there with a red sharpie and change it to 10:05 if you really can't handle getting there 5 minutes earlier.
funny how the people who complain about this most tend to keep their cars in areas where public transportation is more than reasonably accessible. in my experience, outer-borough parking enforcement is relatively lax, granted you're not pushing it.
The street-cleaning trucks don't even come 'til half an our after the start time anyway. hh
Bloomie is way off on this. As it is now, people barely have a chance to walk to the muni meter and back before the pricks are writing out a ticket.
Unfortunately, government at all levels now see its citizens much the same way a vampire sees a bare throat.
47>2 It looks like Bloomie is not reading the populace that well. But then again he never did.
His philosophy of governing "It's either my way or the highway." appears to be waning. And to think we have four more years to suffer his egotism.
Five minutes is a very reasonable margin for error taking into account fast or slow watches etc. Heaven forbid the city should take the opportunity to foster some good will with the people they supposedly represent. The mandarins at City Hall and in Albany must wake up every day and think: ok, how can we make more decent, productive citizens pissed off and leave?
the wristwatch margin-of-error argument is such a non-starter. we all have relatively synchronized cell phones these days, and you would expect new yorkers to complain that the city isn't running "on time enough" in most cases.
i guess that's picking and choosing your battles for you.
Then make a law that traffic enforcement agents can only write tickets based on well-synchronized timepieces. "Relatively" synchronized doesn't do you a lot of good when your car is towed at 3:59 but the agent's watch says 4:02.
The agents don't use the time on their watches. Those handheld ticket machines that print the tickets have clocks, synchronized when they're plugged in to charge between shifts.
Synchronized with an accurate clock? If so that's great. Now let's get the cops and other enforcement folks to use those machines all synched to the same accurate clock and we'll be golden.
Synchronized with an accurate clock? If so that's great.
Yes, they're automatically synchronized to an atomic clock when they're plugged in to recharge.
I had my car ticketed AND towed within two minutes of the no parking time. They had the entire block towed within 5 mins, I was there 8 mins later. My ticket literally said 4:02pm. Give people a break already...
I hope you fought that. Radar guns have a margin of error and so should clocks.
Why would a radar gun matter? To see how fast he was parked?
On a related note, all the alternate side parking tickets I got were within 5 minutes of it taking effect.
The point is that machines can have a margin of error, genius. That concept is already enforced for radar guns so why not a traffic cop's watch? Comprende?
Even with the grace period, you would've been towed, so what's your point?
You break the law, you suffer the consequences.
i'm fine with this grace period so long as it doesn't apply to non-Muni meters. 'The chaos' he's referring to are the unwinnable arguments between ticketers and ticketees over typical meters running out.
Screw that. Get there a couple of minutes early, there's your grace period. And alternate side? Give me a break. You know hours, sometimes days, in advance that your car needs to be moved by a certain time. There's no need for you to wait until 7:58 to move your car if it's No Parking at 8:00.
bloomberg is right -- by making this a law and not just asking ticketers to cool it down, all this will do is extend the time when arguments start by 5 minutes. If it's a formal grace period, won't drivers start arguing with ticketers that they still have 2 minutes in their grace period? Then we'll need a grace period for the grace period.
'in my experience, outer-borough parking enforcement is relatively lax.'
hahah. you know not what you speak - I live in a 2 fair zone and have to move car 4 days a week at 8am. If you look you'll notice the wealthy areas have alternate side parking 2 days a week and the less connected areas have it 4 days a week.
Why the Hell would bloomberg have any reason at all to Veto this? We're talking 5mins you old douche-berg?? Oh yeah, he just LOVES new york, riiiiiigh
Why not just tie the fine to the number of minutes past the expiration you are? Maybe $5 for the first 2 minutes, then an additional $10 for the next 2 minutes, then an additional $20 for the next 2, and then the full ticket fee for anything after that.
It would still penalize people for staying too long, but nobody will fight a $5 ticket, and most people probably wouldn't fight a $10 or $15 one either. Less people clogging up traffic court; more revenue for the city; and an actual element of fairness to the whole thing because someone who blatantly disregards the time-limit would pay more than someone who just gets there 3 minutes late.