{"id":230460,"date":"2025-09-16T04:23:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T04:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/230460\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T04:23:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T04:23:16","slug":"mta-employees-personal-cars-create-dirty-hazardous-environment-in-east-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/230460\/","title":{"rendered":"MTA Employees’ Personal Cars Create Dirty, Hazardous Environment In East New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

The placard class is at it again. <\/p>\n

In East New York, MTA workers are parking on the sidewalk and not move their cars for street cleaning, forcing neighborhood residents to live in filth and walk into traffic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Council Member Sandy Nurse (D-East New York) slammed a representative for the MTA during a land-use hearing last week, testifying that for more than three years she has been asking the agency to rein in its employee personal vehicle parking around the Broadway Junction and Alabama Avenue train stations and keep the area \u2014 which is under MTA jurisdiction \u2014 clean with no lasting results.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like pulling my hair out. The only time any cleaning happens is if I beg Sanitation to do it,\u201d Nurse said at the Sept. 9 hearing. \u201cYou have an obligation to this community. I am not asking for a favor, I am asking you all to do your jobs and I am asking you to comply with the law.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She even brought photos. <\/p>\n

\"\"Council Member Nurse brought props to shame the MTA into moving their cars. Screenshot City Council stream<\/p>\n

“This is weeks’ worth of caked-up litter, shit all on the sidewalks that we constantly ask about. Sanitation can’t get a broom on here because MTA worker cars are always there,” she said. She also testified that she asked the MTA weeks ago to present her office with a plan to address the problem, but got no response.<\/p>\n

Then Nurse perfectly summed up the inherent inequality that occurs when unequal enforcement lets some workers wreak havoc on neighborhoods, and then get in their cars to drive home somewhere else.<\/p>\n

“I certainly don\u2019t believe it\u2019s happening in your neighborhood, or on your block or on any of the blocks of the people who work for MTA, that three weeks of litter is caked up under cars,” Nurse told the MTA representative, Arturo Espinosa.<\/p>\n

“That\u2019s not acceptable where you live, correct?”\u00a0<\/p>\n

“No, it is not. I agree,” he responded.<\/p>\n

“So then why is it acceptable for people in East New York?” she added, with a bit of righteous anger. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Espinosa couldn\u2019t even muster a real response, telling Nurse, \u201cI will come back to you as soon as possible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Intimidation<\/p>\n

Broadway Junction is in the midst of a huge public works project<\/a> that will completely reimagine the station and the surrounding area.<\/p>\n

The city’s contracted non-profit developer, the Economic Development Corporation, has $400 million from the MTA to revamp the station, add new elevators, add ADA accessible escalators, and improve the public realm.<\/p>\n

Because of this project, and the nearby bus depot, there is an influx of MTA workers driving into the area, even though it is a transit hub. <\/p>\n

It’s not just placard abuse, Nurse said, but that even when MTA employees park legally, they don\u2019t move their cars for street cleaning, creating a buildup of trash and diminishing the quality of life for East New York residents.<\/p>\n

Nurse said that when she personally reaches out to DSNY, the enforcement agents tasked with ticketing cars during street cleaning report intimidation from MTA employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s really shameful that when DSNY does try to enforce and get these streets clean that MTA workers go to the sanitation garage and try to bully sanitation workers for issuing tickets,\u201d said Nurse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is a real problem with alternate-side parking compliance in the area, but DSNY could not confirm any intimidation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We have not seen cases of \u2018intimidation,\u2019 although, of course, many people who receive summonses for failure to move their cars make rude comments,\u201d said DSNY spokesman Joshua Goodman. \u201cThere is an easy way to avoid an summons: move your car so that the street sweeper can get to the curb. We thank the Council member for her advocacy here, and are working with her office and the MTA on ensuring compliance so that residents of this neighborhood can have the clean streets they deserve.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eyes on the street\"\"Cars parked on the street and sidewalk cause a buildup of garbage on Fulton Street near Broadway Junction, and this MTA scofflaw<\/a> already has six speed-camera violations and one red-light violation this year!Photo: Sophia Lebowitz<\/p>\n

Broadway Junction is one of the city\u2019s largest transit hubs \u2014 the confluence of five subway lines, six bus routes, and the Long Island Railroad station at East New York.\u00a0It\u2019s a 15-minute ride from Downtown Brooklyn, Jamaica, or Williamsburg, and a 20-minute ride to Midtown. Residents of six neighborhoods surround and use the station: Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brownsville, Bushwick, Cypress Hills, East New York, and Ocean Hill. Yet employees of the MTA still choose to drive personal vehicles to work at the station or the nearby bus depot each day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The area between Broadway Junction and Alabama Avenue is filled with parked cars, both legally and illegally, some cars display an NYPD Transit Bureau District 33, the precinct inside Broadway Junction, placard, with varying expiration dates, some have fake-looking “emergency” MTA placards, and most use neon orange MTA “theft vests” to signal they work for the agency.<\/p>\n

This scofflaw with the NYPD placard has 24 (!) school zone speed-camera violations.<\/p>\n

\"\"NYPD placard car parked on the sidewalk near Broadway Junction.Photo: Sophia Lebowitz\"\"A closer view of the placard. Photo: Sophia Lebowitz<\/p>\n

And it only gets worse as you walk on Fulton Street towards Alabama Avenue. On Williams Place, which connects Fulton Street and Atlantic Avenue, there is technically no parking any time, but every inch of the curb and sidewalk is taken up by MTA or NYPD personal cars, most displaying MTA theft vest in the windshield.<\/p>\n

\"\"A sea of illegally parked placard-clad personal cars. Photo: Sophia Lebowitz\"\"A theft vest in the windshield. Photo: Sophia Lebowitz<\/p>\n

And continuing on Fulton the problem continues, with garbage building up in the areas where cars sit, some even have bird poop covered windshields, signaling longer term storage. <\/p>\n

\"\"This driver uses a theft vest to signal they work for the MTA. Photo: Sophia Lebowitz\"\"Trash buildup from cars not moving for street cleaning.Photo: Sophia Lebowitz<\/p>\n

The MTA didn\u2019t provide an answer to when it would get back to Nurse nor did it address the allegations of intimidation, but the agency told Streetsblog it does not condone illegal parking.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe MTA has no tolerance for MTA employees or contractors abusing neighborhood parking regulations. Anyone who is caught doing so faces fines or towing by the NYPD. MTA managers will continue to advise all employees that they are to follow all parking regulations,\u201d spokesperson David Steckel said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The placard class is at it again. In East New York, MTA workers are parking on the sidewalk…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":230461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-230460","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115212075098756835","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}