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 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.