Cars Ticketed For Parking In Unfinished Bayside Bike Lane: Locals

BAYSIDE, QUEENS -- In the 19 years Marina Stamoulis-Galanis has lived along East Hampton Boulevard, she can't remember having any issues parking her car on the street in front of her home. That changed, though, when she awoke to find a parking ticket for $115 strapped to the windshield of her car.

Stamped on the front of the ticket was a violation notice for parking in a bike lane she didn't even know the Bayside neighborhood yet had, Stamoulis-Galanis told Patch. She was among scores of Bayside homeowners along East Hampton Boulevard surprised by a pricey ticket Friday morning for parking, as they had always done, in the street along the curb which, unbeknownst to them, recently began functioning as a bike lane.

"I was angry," Stamoulis-Galanis said. "We got no notification of these bike lanes. We weren't asked not to put our cars there - Nothing."

The tickets also outraged Giacomo Giacolone and his wife, Kristi, who first posted about the incident after watching home security surveillance footage of her own car get ticketed.

"We were never notified," Giacomo Giacolone told Patch. "They didn't even ask us if we minded having these bike lanes, and now all of the sudden we're getting tickets and we don't know what to do."

Both Kristi Giacolone and Stamoulis-Galanis said that while they did know the DOT had begun making changes to the boulevard's bike lanes - moving them from a lane outside street parking to directly along the curb - they were told the bike lanes would not go into effect until the neighborhood was notified.

"The changes were made about a month ago, but no homeowners received any notification that this would be going on," Stamoulis-Galanis said. "We got nothing in the mail, no flyers, no signs or anything."

The revamped bike lane along East Hampton Boulevard is the latest of the DOT's three part plan to add bike lanes and other safety improvements from Northern Boulevard to Springfield Boulevard. In East Hampton Boulevard redesign, slated to be complete this spring, the bike lanes that ran along the road's left side would be moved from a lane outside street parking to one directly lining the curb. Cars would instead park in floating spaces along the new bike lanes.

A DOT spokesperson said all ticketing questions should be directed at the NYPD, and offered the following statement on the East Hampton Boulevard bike lane:

"To enhance safety, DOT is currently installing markings on East Hampton Boulevard and additional streets along the edge of Alley Pond Park. The design allows for parking to be maintained in a “floating” lane. This treatment helps calm traffic and make the street safer for all users. It also adds a buffer that protects bicyclists using the bike lane."

Giacolone said officers ticketed all the neighbors on his side of the street with cars parked in the road, none of whom seemed to know about the newly enforced bike lanes.

"On my block alone there's got to be 10 houses," he said. "If you're changing the street in front of somebody's house, you should notify that neighborhood."

Giacolone said he didn't like the idea of the new bike lanes in the first place, and was afraid parking around them would leave his car vulnerable on the narrow roadway. He's since begun parking on the other side of the neighborhood street with no bike lines, while his wife, Kristi, pars her car in their driveway.

"I'm not going to jeopardize getting into an accident by parking in the street," he said.

He is also among several homeowners along the street wondering whether the lack of parking will affect their property value.

"Now that we're expected to park in the street, we don't know if that means the property value is going to go down," Giacolone said.

Stamoulis-Galanis said her neighbors across the street, whose parking isn't directly affected by the bike lane, are still worried about how the change will impact their plans to sell their house. While she shares similar concerns about the bike lanes, she said her main problem lies in not being informed the bike lane regulations would go into effect and the ticket she got because of it.

"At least if they would have told us, I would have known this was my doing," Stamoulis-Galanis said of the $115 ticket she's now stuck with.

Lead photo via Marina Stamoulis-Galanis. Caption: Marina Stamoulis-Galanis continues to park her car in an unfinished bike lane along the curb outside her home after being handed a $115 ticket for doing so.