Results tagged “parkingmeter”

Earlier this week, the City Council passed a bill to add a five-minute grace period for drivers in certain no parking zones, such as alternate side parking regulations and expired Muni-Meters. Amid debate about the bill's worthiness, Mayor Bloomberg vowed to veto the legislation, saying "The five-minute grace period is only going to lead to chaos and enormous increases in the number of contested tickets, and in argument. Whose watch are you going to use?" Well, based on one Daily News reporter's experience, maybe it doesn't matter at all!

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?

Since February the DOT has been busy changing parking meters from 25 cents for 30 minutes to just 20 minutes for a quarter. It's the first such change on low-rate meters since 1995, and the Bloomberg administration expects it to yield an additional $16.8 million. All 17,842 meters in Queens have been changed, and the process is underway in The Bronx, to be followed by Brooklyn, Staten Island, and finally upper Manhattan in June. Of course, drivers and retailers are hopping mad about this, and the Post is savoring the populist fury. Queens florist Mathew Xenakis declares, "It's bad timing, it's a bad economy, and we're trying to survive." Brooklyn mechanic John Zarro opines, "Everybody is broke—the city should take away some meters to give people a break." And likely mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner sees a dark conspiracy at play, "In Queens, people woke up one morning and found that parking meters increased in the cover of night." But Ian Dutton of Manhattan's Community Board 2 posits that higher parking meter rates are good for business, because "the more cars we get to turn over, the more we get shoppers running quick errands into the stores."

Maurice Mizrahi was storing 87 stolen parking meters in the basement of his mother's Flatbush home when she ratted him out to police. Mizrahi has been arrested seven times this year for stealing meters. Neighbors describe him as a drug addict who hasn't showered in months. He has been spotted shaking meters around the neighborhood to find ones with the most change, at which point he is able to spin them away from their base and carry them home in a shopping cart. For the NYPD to remove the 87 meters from Mizrahi's mother's basement required 15 men and took 2-1/2 hours. Police are searching for Mizrahi who they say made off with $6000 in quarters.

The Department of Transportation announced a plan to test charging higher parking meter rates at high-demand times--the parking meter version of congestion pricing, as it were--in Manhattan and Brooklyn this fall.