New York City car owners who fail to comply with the alternate-side parking rules and cooperate with the city’s street cleaning efforts will not only face a $65 fine but also have a large and hard-to-remove bright green warning sticker placed on their car windows.
The City Council of New York recently passed a new law authorizing the Department of Sanitation (DSNY) and the Department of Transportation (DOT) to directly affix large bright green stickers on the windows of vehicles that are not moved on time during alternate-side parking.
The sticker prominently reads: “This vehicle has violated street cleaning regulations. Therefore, this street cannot be properly cleaned.”
In fact, this enforcement method, known as “Shame Stickers,” is not new. It was a common sight on the streets of New York from the late 1980s to 2012. However, in 2012, the City Council received numerous complaints from car owners stating that the stickers “took days to scrape off, or even permanently damaged car windows,” leading to a complete ban on the use of such stickers.
After 14 years, this tough measure has been officially revived with the push from Council Member Gale Brewer and others. On Tuesday, Brewer personally went to the Upper West Side and gleefully placed a green sticker on a violating vehicle’s window.
The Department of Sanitation confirmed that enforcement personnel had already placed the first batch of stickers on West 90th Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West early Wednesday morning.
Despite the labels being nicknamed “Shame Stickers” by the public and on social media, the Department of Transportation stated in a release that the purpose of the measure is “not to shame vehicle owners but to encourage compliance in moving vehicles.”
Gregory Anderson, the Commissioner of the Department of Sanitation, revealed startling statistics during a hearing in May: up to 500,000 cars in New York City violate alternate-side parking rules every week, resulting in over 3,000 miles of streets not getting cleaned.
“The current cost of violation ($65 fine) along with the low risk of getting caught makes it more cost-effective for many drivers to pay the fine than to spend time moving their vehicles or renting underground parking,” Anderson pointed out. “To change this culture of dirty streets, we must increase the cost of violations.”
Anderson is also pushing for state legislation to install cameras on street sweeping vehicles to automatically report and penalize vehicles that obstruct cleaning routes.
Council Member Gale Brewer praised this new law as “a practical and common-sense measure to help keep our streets clean.” However, there is no official confirmation yet on whether these new version “green stickers” will be easier to remove than the pre-2012 versions. If the adhesive residue remains stubborn, New York car owners may need to start carrying a scraper and adhesive remover with them in the future.