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It's barely been a week since New York started allowing people to go online and report vehicles blocking bike lanes, and the city has already logged more than 200 of these annoying and dangerous violations.
As predicted on CityLab, there now exists a map of illegal parking in bike lanes. Based on tips to New York's 311 app and website, the city-produced map shows alleged lane violations occurring mostly in Manhattan and Brooklyn with a decent smattering in Queens. Red dots indicate situations where the police "responded to the complaint and took action to fix the condition," according to NYC Open Data. Blue ones denote where police decided "action was not necessary," where the offending vehicle had skedaddled before cops arrived, and complaints with insufficient info from tipsters.
Drivers block bike lanes because city blocks do not have designated unloading zones.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:22AM
Having driven delivery trucks in NYC - yes, it's illegal, and you can be ticketed if you choose the wrong illegal parking spot. But it does seem to be an accepted practice. The cops expect to see trucks blocking streets and alley, despite the law. Trucker mostly expect to be left alone. And, the public expects those trucks to be there - it's a daily occurrence after all.
And yes, tickets are part of the cost of doing business. It's all accounted for, and written off in one fashion or another.
But, you don't want to be the truck driver who blatantly and wrecklessly blocks something like a hospital entrance. Or a police station, or God forbid, the local donut shop. You'll probably be beaten senseless before you are tossed into the back of a car or van and arrive at the jail house with a broken neck.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:20AM
Short of rebuilding the cities I don't see how this can be avoided.
The rage here is that it is a corporation doing it.
When it was Joe's Dray and Delivery, and it was horse drawn, they parked in the lane and loaded and unloaded for the same amount of time. This has been the practice since before there were cars.
Lets just make a it illegal to deliver packages at all in NYC over the Holidays and see how long the residents take burn down City Hall and hoist JNCF up a flag pole.
Soon the trucks will be gone and you will complain about raining packages from drones.
Hey JNCF, how does your food get to a store near you?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:07AM
Hey JNCF, how does your food get to a store near you?
Bad example. I can't think of a single food store, big or small, that I've seen stocking goods from a UPS truck parked in the center turn lane. It isn't really convenient for large deliveries, and food stores generally have enough parking for their delivery trucks. The whole petrol-powered-truck food delivery system is dystopian, but it doesn't really relate to flagrant disregard for parking violations by neer-do-well delivery corporations. If you're trying to prove that I'm hypocritical in my petty internet ragings, you should just ask if I have ever used UPS.
SPOILERS: I'm hypocritical in my petty internet ragings.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:04PM
Funny - our local grocer occupies the north end of the block in town. He also owns the building adjacent, to the south. His groceries are deliverd by tractor trailer. When a shorter rig delivers, it backs in to the rear of the building, from the east. When the truck is straightened out, it blocks one lane of that back street. When a longer rig delivers (about half the time, it seems) then one and a half lanes are blocked. Smaller cars can get by alright, a full shized pickup has to drive onto the sidewalk to get around. Nobody cares, around here. It's been that way for generations, and no one expects things to change.
I don't know how long the family has been running the grocery, but it's at least a hundred years. I was shown a photo of that street from about 1905 or so, and there was the building, with the family name painted across the building.
That's life in Small Town, America.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 16 2016, @01:00PM
We don't have to do anything that drastic. We already have lots of preexisting potential loading/unloading zones. They're called fire hydrants. Almost none of them are used on a daily basis for fire suppression; they do, however, take up that space on a daily basis, 24 hrs/day. Meter them in 5- or 10 minute increments, linked with a driver's smartphone, such that if the hydrants are needed for fire suppression the driver is alerted and given 3 minutes to move; the alerts can be sent out for hydrants adjacent to locations where fires are reported automatically, so that they're clear by the time the fire trucks arrive.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:36PM
I thought it was all dunkin donuts now:
http://www.boston.com/businessupdates/2013/04/19/cops-request-dunkin-donuts-stays-open/a981LXWXrfuZAAgnIM1YjL/story.html [boston.com]