The price of a horse carriage ride in New York City could rise by $20 – to $54 for a half hour – if a proposed law is passed by City Council. It’s the latest issue to confront the contentious industry, where controversy often focuses on animal rights. The new legislation would further regulate standards for the treatment of carriage horses in addition to providing the first price hike in two decades.
To many subway clerks across the city, Michael Ring is a familiar face – but not because he’s a frequent rider.
The Park Slope dad and marathon runner hardly rides the train at all these days. Ring, 46, descends underground to hunt for MetroCards.
Commuters reportedly are expected to leave more than $53 million on expired MetroCards in 2009. Over the past year, Ring boasts he’s picked up more than $900 in MetroCards that were either lost or discarded. The hobby – or compulsion, as some see it – started about a decade ago when MetroCards began replacing tokens.
A 19-time marathon runner, Ring’s latest training routes take him in and out of subway stations. On a good day, he not only gets in his stair training, but also his daily dose of MetroCard hunting.
Before heading out on one such adventure, Ring described his unique strategy for finding cards citywide:
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Combining cards, he said, is the easiest way to make a quick buck from commuters’ MetroCard castoffs. As long as the clerks are cooperative, it’s an easy procedure Ring said:
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But the highest value MetroCards aren’t typically found in the subways. The further Ring travels from the city’s subway and bus stops, the better the odds for scoring a high-value find, he notes:
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Supermarkets, movie theaters and tourist attractions are just some of the places Ring has stuck MetroCard gold – once finding a $47 card.
But karma works both ways, said Ring, who doesn’t hesitate to give a MetroCard swipe to a straphanger in need. He will even return the occasional monthly card he finds back to the TA, so the original owner can be refunded.
Ring loves the sport of MetroCard speculating. Still, the hobby isn’t always appropriate, he concedes. Ring resists what has become second nature to him when he has his 9-year-old twins in tow:
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When Ring isn’t scouring the city for lost treasure, the licensed sightseeing guide volunteers at the office of tourism at Brooklyn Borough Hall. He also works part-time training local teachers to use computer software. But until he gets back to working five days a week, Ring says he’ll keep picking up MetroCards.
“Right now I have too many MetroCards,” said Ring, whose current collection is worth close to $300. “But eventually, I’ll start using them up.”
The parking picture in New York can be as crowded and confusing as Times Square on a matinee day.
With the City Council demanding five-minute grace periods at meters, Mayor Bloomberg calling for everything from high-tech parking gadgets to a ticket amnesty program to sensitivity training for traffic agents, and drivers crying out for relief amid the holiday gridlock, the NYCity News Service examined at the state of parking in the city.
Unlike parking spaces, stories aren’t hard to come by:
•Amnesty Plan Tackles Fine Mess: Mayor Bloomberg wants to raise millions with an amnesty program to forgive parking summonses penalties. But not everybody is ready to write a check.
•Citations With a Smile: Courtesy classes could be on tap for city traffic agents. But ticket writers say it’s motorists who need a lesson in manners.
•Tech Spurs (Parking) Space Race: Imagine getting a text message before your parking meter expires – and then plunking in a few virtual quarters remotely from a cell phone. The technology is out there – but will New York get it anytime soon?
•Merchants Sour on Lollipop Meters: Shopkeepers along Brooklyn’s Myrtle Avenue want the old-school “lollipop meters” to be replaced with Muni Meters so more vehicles can fit on the strip.
Gary Frisch isn’t exactly an outlaw, but he doesn’t want the New York City Department of Finance reading this.
In October 2008, as the 43-year-old South Shore, N.J. resident participated in the Breast Cancer Awareness Walk in Central Park, he was slapped with a $120 parking ticket for blocking a bus zone. Frisch still hasn’t paid the fine – nor does he intend to.
“I was there for a good cause,” said Frisch, a public relations consultant. “If I can get away with not paying, I will. I don’t think they can put a lien on my house or anything.”
Ticket Toll: 30,000 a Day
Parking has long been a problem in the city, where some 30,000 tickets are given out each day. Now Mayor Bloomberg, who made his name as an efficient manager in the business world, wants to create an amnesty program to encourage drivers with outstanding tickets to pay up – to the tune of $700 million.
Other amnesty efforts report success. The town of Brookhaven on Long Island launched an amnesty program in February to close a budget gap of $1 million. So did Albany and Chicago, which raised $7 million dollars in just 10 weeks, after launching an amnesty last December that gave drivers a 50 percent discount on late tickets.
“We consider the campaign to have been a success,” said Ed Walsh, a Chicago Department of Finance spokesman. “Web payments went up 240 percent during the amnesty and a total of 135,000 tickets were paid, significantly higher than was usual for that time frame.”
Funds Needed
In San Francisco, violators who can’t afford to pay their parking tickets can enroll in Project 20, where they work off their fines at community organizations.
In New York, $700 million worth of parking tickets remain unpaid, according to the city Comptroller’s Office. The money that could pay for 7,000 new police officers, says the mayor, or for some social service programs that have been cut in the past year because of budget woes.
Lawrence Berezin, CEO of New York Parking Tickets, a company that helps individuals and companies resolve outstanding tickets, backs an amnesty program.
“It’s a no-brainer,” Berezin said. “Nothing is working so far. Let people stop forward and do the right thing.”
Reluctance to Pay
The number of parking citations has grown in recent years, from 9.5 million in 2005 to 10.6 million this year, according to the city Department of Finance. Even as more tickets are being handed out, less violators are paying them. The implications for violators can be severe – a bench warrant could be issued.
And amnesty or no amnesty, the decision whether to pay often comes down to more than money. When Frisch, received a warning notice in the mail a few months ago, he didn’t even bother opening it. He just ripped up the envelope.
Will he pay if his late fees are forgiven?
“Not a chance,” Frisch said.
