Three City Council members are pushing a bill that would permit double parking under certain circumstances. Parking tickets have boomed citywide during the Bloomberg administration, and Councilman Vincent Gentile of Bay Ridge says "common sense has gone out the window in terms of the [ticket] agents." In 2008, 64-year-old Leo Magnotta suffered a heart attack while arguing with traffic cops as they wrote him a ticket for double-parking in the Bronx. (He had been waiting in the car for his wife outside a Subway sandwich shop.)
Gentile, who represents the parking nightmare neighborhood of Bay Ridge tells the Post some of his constituents have been slapped with the $115 double-parking fine "for simply stopping by a doctor's office to drop off a spouse before circling the block for a legal spot." His bill would permit double parking for the sole purpose of picking up and dropping off passengers, or in order to wait for a parked car to move so that the driver can move into a parallel parking spot. Gentile floated a similar bill five years ago, but it died on the vine.
Asked about the bill yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg told reporters, "We don't have a gotcha mentality. We try to enforce the law." And a spokesperson issued this statement: "We can't comment, since we haven't seen the bill, but our approach has been to reduce double parking by reducing the amount of time New Yorkers have to spend alternate-side parking their cars, as we've done already in parts of Brooklyn and The Bronx." Last year Bloomberg vetoed a bill giving five-minute grace periods at expired parking meters, but the City Council overrode the veto.
