NYPD Tow Truck Squads To Crack Down On Bus Lane Blockers

NEW YORK — Parking in a bus lane just got riskier. The NYPD has a battalion of tow trucks ready to clear cars from bus lanes as part of an effort to speed up buses in the city, officials said Thursday.

Seven tow teams will be dedicated to clearing bus lanes along the most problematic routes across the five boroughs, Mayor Bill de Blasio said. Drivers who get caught will pay a hefty price — it costs $185 to get a car out of an NYPD tow pound, plus another $115 for the parking violation.

"It may be tough to find a parking spot, but I can tell you where you shouldn’t even think about parking, and that’s in a bus lane," de Blasio, a Democrat, said at a news conference. "Because there will be consequences and it’s not worth it."

The city will assess the towing program as it progresses and may add resources to it if needed, the mayor said.

The crackdown is part of an effort to increase the city's sluggish bus speeds 25 percent by 2020, which de Blasio announced with his State of the City address earlier this month.

Cops have already been busy this year tackling drivers who get in the way of buses, according to Thomas Chan, the NYPD's chief of transportation.

Bus lane and bus stop tows have risen 7 percent since the start of 2019 and moving violations for driving in bus lanes have spiked 612 percent, Chan said.

"These good public servants are coming to get you out of that bus lane if you’re blocking millions of New Yorkers from being able to get where they need to go," de Blasio said as cops stood behind him.

New York City's buses are among the slowest in the nation. They have an overall average speed of 7.4 MPH and crawl at less than 4 MPH in busy commercial districts, the mayor's office said.

While the MTA operates the buses themselves, the city oversees the streets on which they run. Transportation advocates have persistently pressed the de Blasio administration to take bolder action to improve bus speeds.

In addition to the tow-truck dragnet, de Blasio's office said the city now plans to install an average of 10 to 15 miles of bus lanes each year, an increase from the current pace of seven miles a year, and upgrade five miles of existing lanes a year.

And 300 intersections will be outfitted with technology that helps buses get through traffic lights, the mayor's office said. The city also wants to continue expanding Select Bus Service, even though the MTA has reportedly decided to stop adding new routes as a cost-saving measure.

Actually towing cars from bus lanes could create "a real deterrent," said Jon Orcutt, the director of communications and advocacy at TransitCenter. He praised de Blasio's overall plan for speeding up buses as a whole.

"They are the ingredients for a real bus priority network in New York," Orcutt said. "But the bus lanes are only as good as the enforcement."

(Lead image: An NYPD tow truck is seen on Jan. 4, 2018 in New York City. Photo by Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images)