Pearl Miles just wrote me that she has not had complaints on Dollar Vans in a few years. As District Manager at the Community Board, she's the single person to whom such complaints might be properly addressed. Complaints are not reaching their intended targets. Bottom line, if you have not engaged the Community Board on this issue, you have not filed your grievance. It is, as the saying goes, just pissing in the wind.
I encourage everyone to write a note to:
bk09@cb.nyc.gov
If you want even MORE impact, call the office: 718-778-9279. Phone calls are so rare these days, especially from a certain demographic, that they register in a different, I would say more potent, manner.
Please note that if you don't do so, your complaint is not being heard. Listservs and blogs, even 311, will not result in a change.
If you see a Dollar Van blatantly break the law, and can get its license plate, that would be a HUGE help too. There seem to be 1000s of the things, but in fact it's the same 100 or so running back and forth. Get rid of the worst 25% and you'd likely see a huge change.
5 comments:
Wonderful! Thank you for the contact info. I was going to write yesterday that I almost got hit by one Monday morning at the Parkside/Flatbush stop light...but who hasn't?! I may have seem the same van do so again this morning (same color, and looked like the same make/model). Do we give license plate numbers? I will report starting now. As long as there are no repercussions to the van drivers, we are giving the message to them that we as pedestrians and fellow drivers accept the responsibility to watch out for (and get out of the way of) the vans, and not vice versa.
Get rid of the worst but not all the vans entirely. I've taken a dollar van twice now in 4 years with my son and both times it was when we had literally no other options. One time it was after a snowstorm and there was no train, and all the buses were too full. Another time I didn't have my MTA card on me and we just needed to go 6 blocks up Flatbush to the corner of our street but my son was exhausted. The people inside the van both times were friendly and helpful in lifting my son on and off. A lot of the riders are women and they're trying to get to jobs or their families. The difference between taking the bus or train and hopping a dollar van can be 30 minutes. Or more if it's a weekend and buses and trains are scarce. Let's try to avoid an elitist viewpoint where we look at the vans as merely an inconvenience because WE ourselves don't need them. But of course bad drivers of all types should be busted. NYPD/the city never wants to bust car drivers and that situation is insane. It's creating a dangerous, lawless culture on the roads.
Q,
Thank you for the contact information. I will call to report my incident with one this morning-corner of Winthrop and Flatbush.
The yellow striped center median has now become a dollar van express lane (until they meet an oncoming left turner head on - then it becomes a game of chicken to see who gets trough first)
Why wouldn't you contact the TLC? The people who are commissioned with regulating these things? Call them and they will do something, in my experience.
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