Council attempts to curb placard abuse

From AM-NY:

City Council members Wednesday introduced a bill that would require barcodes on all parking placards in an effort to crackdown on rampant abuse.

Nearly a quarter of permits placed on vehicle dashboards are fake, according to a report released yesterday by the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives. And more than half of the permits surveyed were either being used illegally or were forged.

Using a barcode on the 118,000 placards issued to authorized city workers would help police quickly identify bogus documents, Councilman Daniel Garodnick (D-Manhattan) told colleagues Wednesday during a transportation committee hearing.

Susan Petito, Assistant Commissioner of Intergovernmental Affairs for the NYPD, disagreed.

“A good photocopy will replicate the barcode and so that would come up as a valid permit,” Petito said, without offering an alternative solution to the problem.

The NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau unit has written 30,000 summonses for illegal placard parking since 2008, she noted.