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NYC sanitation supervisors keep speeding on the job, data shows
By
Liam Quigley
Published Nov 11, 2026 at 6:30 a.m. ET
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Liam Quigley / Gothamist
By
Liam Quigley
Published Nov 11, 2026 at 6:30 a.m. ET
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New York City sanitation department supervisors who oversee trash collection and issue tickets have a need for speed, an analysis of ticketing data shows.
A Gothamist review of thousands of license plates belonging to the sanitation department shows 763 SUVs and passenger vehicles assigned to supervisors and other non-trash collection staff have racked up at least 2,375 speed camera tickets since 2023. Those employees drive cars and are tasked with making sure trucks collect trash on schedule. Supervisors also issue tickets to home and business owners who don’t comply with city regulations for putting out their garbage.
Transportation activists say the hasty driving demonstrates the need to accelerate a rollout of devices in city-owned vehicles that limit how fast the cars can go, something Mayor Zohran Mamdani has championed.
Sanitation officials said the agency requires employees to pay back fines from automated camera tickets out of their own pockets, or face disciplinary action. Sanitation employees have paid back nearly $199,000 in fines they got while driving department vehicles since 2023, according to city data.
The agency employs around 10,000 people, but fewer than 1,700 of them are supervisors, superintendents or enforcement agents.
Alexa Sledge, a spokesperson for the street safety advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, said the department’s supervisors need to slow down on the job.
“There’s no world in New York City where the kind of vehicles that we're relying on to serve and protect New Yorkers should also be traveling recklessly around the five boroughs,” spokesperson Alexa Sledge said.
Sledge said the city should put speed limiters on the vehicles and change how streets are designed to make it untenable for drivers to do so in the first place.
“By far the most effective thing that New York City can do is ensure that no city vehicles have the ability to speed, [that] they all have speed limiters, and then designing the kinds of streets and intersections that make it very, very difficult and unappealing to speed,” she said.
Roughly 77% of the sanitation department’s garbage trucks have not received a single speeding ticket since 2023, city data shows.
The large vehicles have at times been a source of traffic deaths. Last month, a 30-year-old woman was killed in Brooklyn when she was run over by a DSNY garbage truck driver. The investigation into that crash is ongoing. Police arrested the sanitation worker and issued him a desk appearance ticket, prosecutors said.
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new york city
public safety
sanitation
transportation
Liam Quigley
Liam Quigley is a reporter covering parks & sanitation for Gothamist and WNYC. Got a tip? Email [email protected]
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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