Food Truck Crack-Down Begins?
Less than 24 hours after City Council Members Jessica Lappin and Karen Koslowitz introduced a new bill designed to crack down on food trucks in New York City, we spotted this cop writing up a ticket for the falafel truck that started camping out on the corner of Front and Main Streets in Dumbo a…
Less than 24 hours after City Council Members Jessica Lappin and Karen Koslowitz introduced a new bill designed to crack down on food trucks in New York City, we spotted this cop writing up a ticket for the falafel truck that started camping out on the corner of Front and Main Streets in Dumbo a few weeks ago. Under the new bill, the DOH can revoke the vending permit of any truck that gets three parking tickets within a 12-month period. Lappin told the blog Midtown Lunch: “The piece of it that gets under my skin is the feeding of the meter. These are public streets and nobody has the right to use them exclusively. People were willing to look the other way, until it was being abused. It’s against the law but clearly the penalty [parking tickets] is not severe enough to make people obey the law.” Not surprisingly, food truck vendors are up in arms. “Revoking [a permit] at 3 per year sounds like a Stalinist sabotage of the industry,” said the man behind the popular Wafels & Dinges truck; he says he gets an average of three per month.
Food Trucks Could Face Ban for Too Many Parking Tickets [WSJ]
NYC Council to Introduce First Anti-Food Truck Law [Midtown Lunch]
New Bill Could Be Big Trouble for Food Trucks [Gothamist]
I don’t know the fee structures. Yes, they are probably not logical, like many things in this city.
you think they are the only people who feed the meters? Look at Atlantic Avenue half of the spaces are taken by the merchants feeding the meters for themselves….and yes its illegal.
FinanceGuy — That’s fine and all… and I’m actually fine with things that might reduce the use of cars in the city, even my own car! But the “market-clearing price” will be crazy high. It will price most people in the city out of the market altogether. It would not serve the “casual parker.”
I think the point of this whole thing is a double-standard. Folks feed the meter because they don’t want to pay $500+ a month for a parking spot… and most of them get away with it, so there is no incentive to change their routine. I think the food trucks are just an obvious example, but on the same block as the food truck there are probably 5 more cars that have no intention of moving.
Now, if the enforcement actually took place consistently… you would find your “market-clearing price” plummet. Probably to somewhere around where they are now.
Dave – my question is are the fees paid by a truck and a sidewalk vendor comparable?? Sidewalk vendors pay for a specific location, and the cost of that franchise fee varies based on how lucrative the spot is (prime midtown locations cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per year). BOTH side vendors and truck vendors have to pay DOH license fees, but that’s very different. If trucks are not charged franchise fees (because they are supposed to be mobile), they are potentially paying far less than sidewalk vendors (even with meters and tickets factored in).
I don’t know the answer (which I why I keep asking the question).
The simple solution would be to use free market pricing. The City should price parking meters at the market-clearing price: keep raising them until there is always an empty spot within a block or so, but not so high that there are more than a few.
That way the spots go to those who want or need them the most, and the rest of us take our bikes or the subway.
Without the artificial subsidy of low rent parking spaces, the shortages would disappear. There would be no need to stop people from feeding the meter. Drivers wouldn’t need to circle endlessly looking for parking, so traffic and pollution would drop. And the fees could go to provide better mass transit, further improving the traffic situation.
If the vendors are really performing a useful service, they will be have no problem making a living even paying the market cost of the parking spot. If not, then they are just seeking to arbitrage a state subsidy into private profits.
Dave, if that is the source of the problem, I volunteer for Lappin. Koslowitz, not so much, as Borat would say.
@ WBer – Thanks for clearing up the parking confusion I have.
Seems like we have too many laws and regulations around parking and these city council members can better serve the city by working on updating parking regulations and pushing for consistent enforment.
what’s even more ridiculous about this is that its not directed at the carts, just the trucks (that would be political suicide, of course). Cart’s don’t take a parking space, you say, but nine times out of ten the guy who operates the cart is parked right there, taking up a space all day, feeding the meter, so he can run his cart. So, you can drop the “using a public resource” argument if you haven’t already. This is political muscle, pure and simple, and as cynical as it gets.
They do pay a license fee. On top of that are the parking fees which the sidewalk guys don’t pay.
HOWEVER, the sidewalk guys get to park their truck that pulls their food cart nect to it on the street all day!!!!!!!
Double standard.
This has not been thought out properly. Typical.