From the Daily News:Motorists parked along busy Bell Blvd. - one of the area's main commercial drags - often play a heart-pounding game of chicken with oncoming traffic in their mad dash to cross the busy street to avoid getting parking tickets.
And those are the lucky ones, who managed to find a spot.
Many drivers said they grow so exasperated circling the same strip for a space that they give up and head to Long Island.
Add to that the agita of rushing to put muni-meter slips on dashboards, lest a vigilant traffic agent slap you with a ticket while you're in between.
Parking is particularly problematic there because Bayside has no subway stations - only a Long Island Rail Road stop. Many residents rely on their cars to get around.
The situation got worse for businesses when the city switched from two-hour parking meters to one-hour muni-meters on Bell Blvd., locals said.
13 comments:
i don't believe the bit about people going to LI. Bells an awesome place with nice restaurants etc. If I want to eat at Applebee's or some other god awful place I'll keep LI in mind. I'm on bell all the time and I've always found FREE parking a few blocks away. (thats driving in a straight line, no circling) are people so damn lazy and fat that they cant park a few blocks away and walk their keisters to wherever the heck they r going? And not for nothing if the city offered any other parking terms one of two things would happen people headed to Manhattan would park their cars on bell and take the LIRR from Bayside or merchants would use the parking for their own cars. Sorry but the merchant parking his car outside his store all day doesn't generate any sales taxes. If the spaces turn over then there will be more sales.
People parking around residential areas and in front of people's houses cause a new parking problems.
I don't know which Bell Blvd. you've been visiting but it must have been at 5 AM because there is NO free parking in that neighborhood. Stop name calling, Anonymous #1. Not everyone looking for convenient parking on Bell is lazy or fat. The parking is horrendous, down to 20 minutes for $.25. There are some great restaurants on Bell, agreed. But I don't go there every Saturday night because there are other restaurants in other neighborhoods with better parking. Bell Blvd. is just a cash cow for Mayor Moneybags, plain and simple, along with the rest of Queens.
I wrote a position paper on this last year during my Council race:
http://www.beharfornewyork.com/more-police-presence-less-phony-tickets.html
I've been complaining about this for a long time! I've gotten several phony parking tickets and there's virtually no recourse. I've had a couple of tickets thrown but the most of the time the administrative law judges don't even listen to you. Last year a ticket agent gave my brother a ticket on Bell Blvd for "double parking" while he was backing in to a spot! He fought it and lost, appealed it and lost...its a joke! In addition, a few years ago Officer Victor Daniels of the 111th precinct gave me a ticket for talking on a cell phone even though I was wearing a blue tooth headset. He confused my satellite radio remote for a phone. I showed him that he was mistaken but he didn't care. He handed me the ticket with the headset still on my ear! I fought the ticket in the Whitestone DMV in front of a administrative law judge who actually fell asleep during my hearing! I then appealed it to Albany to no success....the cards are stacked against us because the game is rigged!
This is just another example of the Mayor and the City trying to balance the budget on the back of the middle class!
The only time I can consistently find parking around bell is on 41st Ave next in the lot after 10 Pm on any day except Friday nights. I have even blogged myself about how difficult parking can be in the day time.
Don't double park while waiting for a spot, or you'll get a summons in the mail!!!!
@Par King: my brother wasn't even double parked!! He was in his truck giving the person in the spot a second to get out! The cowardly traffic agent didn't even hand him the ticket! He just scanned his registration and kept walking!
This crap is killing business on Bell Blvd. You shouldn't get a $115 ticket every time you want to have dinner at Press 195 or Bourbon Street!
Parking meters were first established in Oklahoma City in 1935 to stop people from parking downtown all day. They were designed to help small businesses. The Mayor and the City see them as a way to balance the budget. Meanwhile, it's destroying our local shopping areas!
Send all those traffic agents to College Point to give tickets to all those illegally parked trucks.
I agree about sending them to College Point for those illegally parked trucks...and the school buses running and polluting the air!
These traffic cops are all over whitestone now more then there is in cp
@Steve Behar
Why didn't the administrative judge dismiss your brother's case under "personal service". I thought drivers are entitled to this if one is sitting at the wheel.
My brother mailed his ticket in and plead not guilty. He simply received a letter saying he was found guilty. There is simply no oversight of the traffic agents nor the administrative judges.
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