Good afternoon. My name is Neel Scott. I am the Campaign Coordinator for Transportation Alternatives, NYC’s advocates for pedestrians and cyclists. With 5000 members, Transportation Alternatives is the largest local pedestrian advocacy organization in the United States.

As such, Transportation Alternatives receives numerous complaints about vendor boxes clogging NYC streets, especially in such over-saturated areas as the Upper East Side, Upper West Side and Downtown Brooklyn. These newspaper vendor boxes clutter sidewalks, inhibit crosswalk access and block ADA (Americans with Disability) ramps. Safe and free-flowing sidewalks are critical to New York’s economic health and quality of life. Many sidewalks are already too narrow to accommodate the heavy volumes of foot traffic that travel them each day, and the proliferation of vendor boxes on NYC streets and corners has only added to and compounded these problems.

Transportation Alternatives supports strengthening the authority of the Department of Transportation Local Law 23 of 2002, which regulates the placement and maintenance of vendor boxes on the sidewalks of New York City. Local Law 23 does not adequately empower the Department of Transportation to regulate vendor boxes where pedestrian safety and mobility are concerned. The problem is not the Department of Transportation’s enforcement of it - which has been commendable - but the ponderousness of the reporting and enforcement clauses of the law in its present incarnation. Currently, if DOT finds that a newspaper vendor box is not in compliance with Local Law 23, it must first notify the vendor box owner to correct the problem. Then, if the condition is not corrected, DOT can serve a Notice of Violation on the owner. Notices of Violation then go to the Environmental Control Board (ECB), an administrative tribunal that holds hearings and adjudicates various "quality of life" infractions of the City's laws and rules.

This is an overly slow and unwieldy process that administratively and bureaucratically burdens the DOT. For pedestrians, it means that offending vendor boxes might not be off NYC streets for months or even years. This is why many New Yorkers continue to express frustration with the number and concentration of newspaper vendor boxes on NYC streets, and why the law does not seem to have noticeably reduced these vendor boxes. Local Law 23 needs to be amended so that the Department of Transportation can serve a Notice of Violation to an owner immediately, and remove offending newspaper vendor boxes at its discretion.

Transportation Alternatives urges the City Council’s continued steady support for Local Law 23 of 2002. The assertion by publishing and news organizations that the regulation of the use of public sidewalks curtails free speech is simply not true. The law gives the public the power to regulate what is clearly in the public domain – public sidewalk access and freedom of movement. The City must make the most efficient, equitable use of the scarce sidewalk space that it has, and work to increase space for pedestrians.

However, Transportation Alternatives also strongly urges the City Council to amend the law to streamline the reporting and enforcement process in order to make enforcement of the law more immediate and effective. This will make the Department of Transportation’s job much easier, will help to reduce the proliferation of newspaper vendor boxes on NYC streets, and will rationalize already scarce space for NYC pedestrians.

Thank you.