Commuter vans have taken the place of bus lines that no longer exist, but some Queens representatives believe that many are on a road to nowhere.
With a main drive of cracking down on illegal commuter vans, Councilmember Elizabeth Crowley introduced a new bill on Friday, July 30, requiring the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) to train police officers to identify unlicensed vans.
“This is first and foremost a public safety issue,” said Crowley. “Illegal and unlicensed commuter vans are operating off the radar of the TLC and NYPD; they’re not being inspected for safety and they’re not being held accountable.”
The bill will also create guidelines summarizing the laws that drivers have to abide by and the kinds of violations they will face if they operate illegally.
Councilmembers Karen Koslowitz and Dan Halloran, who joined Crowley in supporting this bill, said that it is up to the Council to make sure commuter vans are up to safety standards.
“Commuter vans provide a needed service and we in the Council need to make sure that they are safe, legal and reliable,” said Koslowitz.
Crowley said that hundreds of illegal commuter vans work the same routes as their licensed counterparts, but have no permits, no insurance and greatly outnumber the roughly 300 licensed van drivers.
The NYPD is authorized to penalize illegal commuter vans, but traffic officers are not trained to distinguish which are legal and which are illegal. With the new bill, Crowley hopes to remedy this shortfall and put illegal drivers permanently in park.
“If illegal commuter vans want to continue to operate in this city, they have to abide by the law or else face the consequences,” she said. “This new bill will strengthen the laws against illegal commuter vans and enforce licensed, accountable and safer van services.”
The commuter van industry has become an alternative to a public transportation system in neighborhoods that have seen bus and subway cuts.
A new string of MTA service cuts, which went into effect on June 27, highlights the need for more stringent commuter van standards, according to I. Daneek Miller, Amalgamated Transportation Union (ATU) Local No. 1056 president.
“They operate outside the law,” said Miller. “They are unsafe and unregulated. Tax-paying commuters are entitled to the essential services provided by the transit authority.”
