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You Can Report Cars Parked In The Bike Lane To 311 Now
By
David Colon
Published Nov 2, 2016
Modified Nov 2, 2016
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Gothamist
By
David Colon
Published Nov 2, 2016
Modified Nov 2, 2016
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Time was, the only (legal) recourse cyclists had to deal with cars parked in the bike lane was angrily shaking your head, putting a sticker on the car's bumper or perhaps shouting at the driver (though that comes with its own set of problems). Then cyclists got a user-generated map of bike lane offenders, though it wasn't officially sanctioned. Now though, you can finally report people who park in the bike lane to the government. While I'm ordinarily anti-snitching, this is great news.
311's website, and the newest version of the 311 app, has an option for "Blocking bike lane" under the "Illegal parking" menu, allowing you to give the location and license number of any car you come across that's parked in the bike lane. There's no option to send a picture along with your complaint, though there's nothing stopping you from also snapping a picture and sending it to the map of shame.
Of course, as Streetsblog points out, it will still be up to the NYPD to enforce the law and actually ticket people for parking in bike lanes, and they don't exactly have the best track record on that. On the other hand, maybe this is the first step towards a future where we can report cars parked in bike lanes and have 311 send drones with big hooks to remove them.
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bike lane blockers
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David Colon
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