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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: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday November 16 2016, @02:10PM
The question is: what does the city actually want? If they (or their citizens) want prompt deliveries for inexpensive prices, then trucks needs to park close to the delivery address. If the city doesn't want to create zillions of parking places - which will then encourage commuting by car, increase traffic, etc. - then they pretty much have to tolerate delivery vehicles parking illegally.
If you prohibit illegal parking by delivery vehicles (and really enforce it, with high fines for repeat offenders, etc.) AND you refuse to provide legal parking spaces? The result will be a lack of delivery services, or else much higher delivery charges for that area.
Most places seem to choose the first option: tolerate illegal parking. A few places I know legalize this with special permits, which doesn't change the fact that the trucks block bike lanes, driveways, sidewalks, or whatever else...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.