Illegally Parked Truckers On Bay Parkway Not Taking The Hint

For months, multiple media outlets have run stories regarding illegally parked trucks on Bay Parkway near McDonald Avenue.

NY1, this site, the Home Reporter, Boro Park Scoop, and now CNG have not only brought attention to the trucks themselves, but also to the lack of consistent traffic enforcement in the area.

The CNG story quotes Washington Cemetery employees who say the trucks are disturbing funerals and causing its maintenance staff, who should be more concerned with the inside of the cemetery, to spend the bulk of their time picking up urine-filled bottles and discarded furniture outside of its gates.

This is how it normally goes – NY 1 will air a segment on the trucks, the police will come in to tow and ticket a few, and within a week or two most of the offenders will have returned.

Hey, the management at these trucking companies aren’t stupid. They know it’s less expensive to pay a fine every once in a while than to rent off-street parking.

The only way this problem will be fixed is to have daily ticketing and towing. Only then will it begin to stop being cost effective to break the law.

Traveling on the F train this morning, I counted at least eight large tractor trailers from my own limited vantage point. Obviously, illegally parked truck drivers aren’t getting the message that residential zoned streets aren’t commercial parking lots.

There is no reason for the city not to have traffic enforcement agents out every morning to ticket. In fact, every day it leaves the trucks alone, it’s missing out on valuable revenue. To show that it has begun to take the problem seriously, NYPD was recently quoted saying that it had issued 42 summonses so far his year. It should easily be able to issue that many in a week.

It’s imperative that local and hyperlocal media continue to document this blatant contempt for both the law and area residents until we see real results. In order to accomplish this, journalists – as well as the general public – must keep the pressure on law enforcement, elected officials, and the trucking companies themselves.