By Nathan Duke
Bayside residents said they were fed up with costly parking tickets after continuously getting slips for leaving their cars in unmarked spaces, which they contend are not illegal.
Residents said traffic agents have repeatedly placed $165 tickets on vehicles parked on 212th Street between 42nd and 43rd avenues in Bayside.
Bayside’s Jack Oshier, who has not received any tickets but knows several people who have, said most of the tickets were issued at sites where there were no signs indicating that drivers should not park on the street. He said several other tickets have been given to drivers on the grounds they were blocking pedestrian ramps.
But Susan Seinfeld, district manager of Community Board 11, said the spaces were areas where apartment buildings had cemented over a curb, not ramps.
“There’s nothing to indicate you can’t park there,” Oshier said. “And there’s no curb at all. It’s not a ramp, but people are getting ticketed.”
He said ticketed drivers have been told to send in a note defending themselves to Bayside’s 111th Precinct.
Blanco Bravo, who recently moved to Bayside from Whitestone, said she was legally parked in front of a building on 43rd Avenue near 210th Street when she received her ticket.
“It’s not fair because it’s a legal spot,” she said. “There’s no sign or yellow line there, but the ticket says I was blocking a pedestrian ramp. I went back to take pictures this week and there were other cars parked there.”
Seinfeld said she has brought the parking ticket situation to the attention of the precinct.
“They told me they were going to find the officer who has been giving the tickets and tell him that these are not pedestrian ramps,” she said.
A spokesman for the precinct said he had only seen one summons from parking in the spaces and that the complainant should not have been ticketed. The precinct had not heard from anyone else who had been ticketed, he said.
But Oshier said he has counted more than 10 parking spaces similar to the one at which Bravo was ticketed within several blocks. He said three more cars were ticketed last weekend, prompting him to place a sign on car windows parked in the spots which reads, “Do not pay this ticket. This is a legal parking space as per the 111th Precinct. It is not a handicapped ramp or crosswalk. Challenge this ticket and it should be dismissed.”
Reach reporter Nathan Duke by e−mail at nduke@timesledger.com or by phone at 718−229−0300, Ext. 156.
