The NYPD is bulking up its enforcement against illegal parking in bus lanes, launching a new task force to deter and penalize those slowing down their fellow New Yorkers.
The Police Department, in conjunction with the MTA, launched its new Bus Lane Enforcement Task Force on Dec. 4, with more than 100 officers assigned specifically to write $115 summonses and tow vehicles illegally blocking bus lanes. Since launch day, cops have issued more than 1,200 summonses and towed 149 vehicles violating the law, the department says.
“If you are not a bus, get out of our bus lanes,” said Rich Davey, the head of MTA New York City Transit, on Thursday. “We have over 2 million customers who use buses around New York City every day, and they are being slowed down by double-parked cars, cars parked in bus stops, and cars using bus lanes.”
Drivers’ propensity to park their vehicles in bus lanes is just one reason New York has the slowest buses of any major American city, averaging a pitiful 8.18 miles per hour this year.
Bus lanes are supposed to make buses move faster, and they do: average speeds increase by 10% on routes when dedicated bus lanes are implemented, the MTA says. But that isn’t much help when the bus lane is packed with parked cars, trucks making deliveries, and Ubers dropping off passengers, forcing buses to swerve into general traffic and slowing down riders’ commutes.
There are few places where that’s more apparent than 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan. Bus lanes are situated on the east-west thoroughfare for the M31 and M57 lines, but especially around holiday time, the lane is consistently packed with scofflaw vehicles. That situation helps make the M57 the third slowest bus in the whole city, Davey says, averaging just 4.5 mph. The M31 isn’t much better, clocking a 5.1 mph average speed last month.
“It’s just a disaster,” said Rachel Goodgal, a Midtown resident who regularly commutes across town by bus on 57th Street. “You’re just constantly behind parked trucks. You’re almost never in the bus lane for 80-plus percent of the trip, because there are too many trucks and cars there. And it’s just extremely slow.”
“It’s very frustrating,” Goodgal continued. “Because there is a bus lane, and you would hope that you can move along. But you cannot.”
Early Thursday morning, Davey strolled along 57th Street with a cadre of task force cops and reporters, hunting for scofflaws. Unsurprisingly, it did not take long to find a whole host of them.
Some of the motorists were quick to flee once they saw Davey and the cops approaching, while others, especially those unloading trucks, began pleading to be allowed to finish their deliveries. One refrigerated meat truck driver attempted to simply ignore the scrum approaching him, but yielded under pressure and drove away.
Most of the drivers approached were let off with a warning, which officers on the scene said is standard operating procedure, but some weren’t so lucky.
Davey observed a Coca-Cola truck at the corner of 57th Street and 6th Avenue that was not only parked in the bus lane, but was also blocking a fire hydrant. He said that this particular truck had been seen previously, and was even sporting a “decoy” ticket, which had been issued previously but was placed on the windshield to appear to cops that the truck was already ticketed. Prior to Thursday, the truck had accumulated 9 parking tickets just since September, according to HowsMyDrivingNY.
The soda truck was issued a $115 ticket, as was a nearby cement truck.
Commercial vehicles are allowed to park for a maximum of three hours in the 57th Street bus lane only between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., and all day Sunday.
Police aren’t the only ones who can issue tickets. The MTA has “Automated Bus Lane Enforcement” (ABLE) cameras equipped on 21 bus routes, automatically ticketing any driver the camera catches in a bus lane. Next year, the MTA will activate cameras on 14 additional lines, and the cameras will also be able to ticket cars that are double-parked or blocking a bus stop. By 2027, the MTA hopes 1/3 of its 6,000 buses are camera-equipped.
Emergency vehicles are exempt from ticketing. Asked if a police cruiser parked in a bus lane would be ticketed, the NYPD’s Deputy Chief of the Transportation Bureau Michael Pilecki said it would not be, as a police car may be responding to an emergency even if its lights aren’t on. It’s a different story for Davey’s own employees: he said if an MTA worker is caught parking in a bus lane, “it wouldn’t be a good day for them, let’s put it that way.”
