New York’s street sweepers should have cameras to ticket car owners who flout the city’s alternate-side parking rules, Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch said this week.
The sanitation department’s street sweepers can each remove 1,500 pounds of road garbage a day, Tisch said at a Citizens Budget Commission event on Tuesday. But she said the sweepers “can’t do their jobs as well as they should” because so many cars block their paths.
Tisch said she wants the state vehicle traffic law, which governs the use of cameras for traffic enforcement and fines, to be amended to allow street sweepers to be equipped with cameras that automatically issue tickets to cars that violate alternate-side parking rules.
The cameras would be similar to ones on MTA buses that catch drivers blocking bus lanes.
“This year, I want Albany to pass legislation that will give the Department of Sanitation the authority to put automatic ticketing systems on our street sweepers and do exactly what the MTA has done,” Tisch said. “We really need these cars to move for alternate-side parking.”
There’s no current proposal in Albany to allow the cameras, and the Senate and Assembly aren’t scheduled to return to session until January. A state bill to allow street sweeper cameras was last introduced in 2011 and has since languished in committee.
New Yorkers have honed strategies to avoid alternate-side parking tickets since the policy was introduced in 1950, such as elaborate double-parking dances or waiting in their cars for hours to dodge traffic agents and snag open spots after the street sweepers clear their block.
Andrew Walker, who runs a shuttle service with a large Sprinter van, says he has racked up plenty of tickets across the city for not following alternate-side parking rules. He feared the cameras would ruthlessly enforce the policy.
“I just hope if … somebody’s waiting in their car, I hope they give them the opportunity to move out of the way,” Walker said of the…
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