Saturday, April 20, 2013

Increased fines proposed for curb painting

From the NY Times:

It is an urban pastime borne out of scarcity, ingenuity and an abiding faith that no one is paying attention.

There is an obstacle: New Yorkers cannot always retain their favored parking spaces.

And there is a solution: Paint the curb or street, as a private citizen, to discourage others from parking. The maneuver is illegal, but often worth the risk as residents wager that enforcement agents and fellow drivers never catch on.

But with the practice spreading in recent years, according to 311 complaints, the city’s Transportation Department has proposed a sizable deterrent: quintupling the fine for “street defacement” to $250, from $50 — where it has stood for more than 20 years.

The department said complaints had doubled, to more than 1,300 annually, in the last five years, often prompted by a curb painted yellow or a resident or business scrawling “No Parking” on the street or sidewalk.

4 comments:

Alen said...

i like how some owners paint the extra long yellow no parking zones around drive ways and fire hydrants. almost got me until i googled the law on my iphone and parked my car.

driveways the law is not to block the drive way. ignore the yellow lines that go 20 feet past the end of the drive way

Anonymous said...

If they can quintuple the fines for this, what can't they do the same for putting up those illegal, trashy, butt ugly, corrugated cash for _________ signs (you know, for selling junk cars, houses, unused diabetic test strips, a spare kidney, your first born child, gold you have lying around, etc.) .

Seems passing some regulations is easy-peasy. Why is it so hard for others?

Anonymous said...

Wouldn't you have to catch the person in the act of defacing? Just because it is in front of someones house does not mean that person committed the infraction.

Anonymous said...

Remember when the transit authority painted the bus stop curbs and the FDNY painted the curbs next to the hydrants? Why isn't this done anymore?