That’s NOT a bus!
MTA boss targets biz vehicles blocking lanes
First order of business for the MTA’s new transit chief: Crack down on doofus drivers who block bus lanes.
Interim NYC Transit President Sarah Feinberg kicked off her tenure on Monday by sending letters to executives at 18 companies whose vehicles have racked up dozens of tickets for illegally sitting in bus lanes across the city.
The companies include corporate giants like Verizon, which leads the pack with 235 bus lane violations between Oct. 7 and Feb. 14, and FedEx, which is second on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s scofflaw scorecard with 155 violations over the same period.
“The disregard of the city’s bus lane restrictions adversely impacts city bus riders and the MTA’s efforts to better serve them,” Feinberg wrote in a joint letter with NYC Transit’s acting head of buses Craig Cipriano to the group of repeat violators. “Please be aware that we intend to keep the riding public informed on a monthly basis of the worst offenders of the bus lane restrictions.”
The MTA in October activated cameras on buses that automatically ticket drivers that sit in bus lanes for more than five minutes. The fines, which start at $50 for a vehicle’s first violation and top out at $250 for its fifth, are now being issued on the M15 route on Manhattan’s East Side, the B44 in Brooklyn and the M14 along the new 14th St. busway. Tickets for bus-blockers on Brooklyn’s B46 bus route will begin being issued April 19.
The city’s Department of Transportation also tickets drivers who block bus lanes, but major delivery companies like FedEx and UPS are a part of the city’s “Stipulated Fine Program” which lets some businesses pay a pre-set rate for parking tickets in exchange for not challenging the fines in court.
Tickets issued through the MTA’s automated bus camera program are exempt from the city’s agreement with shipping companies — a caveat that Feinberg and Cipriano pointed out in their letters.
MTA statistics provided to the Daily News show the MTA issued 10,441 bus lane violations through its camera program from Oct. 7 through Feb. 14 — 37% of which were given to commercial vehicles.
The letters were Feinberg’s first public act as interim NYC Transit president. She takes over more than two weeks after the agency’s exchief Andy Byford officially resigned.