Today City Council will vote to make the injudicious Stipulated Fine Program official city law.

Intro 637, by Council Members Yassky, Weprin and Felder, will cement the Department of Finance's unfair practice of deeply discounting parking violation fines for commercial fleet operators that agree to waive their rights to contest parking tickets.

The Stipulated Fine Program reduces or eliminates fines for parking violations. Parking violations "on sale" under the program include blocking a fire hydrant, parking in a traffic lane, parking on the sidewalk, blocking a crosswalk, parking in a bike lane and double parking.

The Stipulated Fine Program also undermines NYPD enforcement and subverts attempts to fix New York City's already dysfunctional curbside regulations.

"Instead of fixing New York City's broken parking policies, this bill locks them into place," protested Paul Steely White of Transportation Alternatives.

City Council and City Hall should redress the root causes of widespread parking violations, which include New York City's underpriced curbside parking, lack of adequate delivery zones and rampant placard parking abuse. The Council and the Bloomberg Administration must adopt curbside parking policies that help delivery trucks abide by--not skirt--parking law.

To improve parking compliance, Transportation Alternatives encourages City agencies to follow model curbside parking programs in cities such as the District of Columbia, London and San Francisco that reduce parking violations with smart curbside management. These cities use carefully calibrated curbside pricing rates to reduce parking violations and parking "cruising" that comprises as much as 45% of traffic on some NYC streets.

"Parking laws exist for very good reasons," adds White. "Without them, we would have more traffic congestion and all of its attendant pollution. In allowing large companies to evade accountability while ignoring the root causes of the problem, the City Council and City Hall are subverting efforts to green our streets."

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