Originally Posted by
livedarklions
Are you claiming that there aren't similar issues of practicality for operating trucks in that area? I don't live in the area, so I'd totally defer to your sense of what's going on, but my understanding is that truck drivers regularly break laws concerning parking their vehicles in lanes, driving on restricted streets, and taking the blush at intersections. Also, if NYC is like any other city in the US, I'm sure there are roads where you could take a radar gun and find that there are almost no drivers obeying the speed limits. If NYPD chose to speed trap those places, that would be a fish in a barrel situation as well. Speed traps are, however, harder than stepping in front of a bicycle--hence the "low hanging fruit" analogy.
Some oddities of the NYPD.
1) The cops with the speed guns are almost always the highway patrol officers. They have 5 precincts in the city mostly divided between the 5 boroughs and as such they typically and almost always are patrolling the highways, not local streets where the trucks are committing the most violations. The beat cops don't do speed traps usually unless theres a specific crackdown (cyclists doing more than 15mph in Central Park was the famous example). Thus local enforcement for speeding has to be set up and with highway officers taken off their normal duties.
As note that in the past 2 years, and with the feud between the state Governor and the NYC Mayor, the NY State Police have for the first times, been assigning large numbers of state patrol officers at NYC bridge and tunnel exit/entrances. Seems they - and not the NYC Highway Cops, have the new fangled car mounted cameras that give an instant scan and readout of license plates. They catch a LOT of vehicles and drivers that are stolen vehicles, owe money for violations, are driving unlicensed, etc.... and the state figured out there's a LOT of money to be made in NYC, so now we have state boys in the city. Not a bad thing but as always, they are after the money and not interested in patrolling area's where a lot of moving violations take place in area's where a lot of delivery trucks operate.
2) Parking violations are given out by the Parking Violations Bureau. It's rare to hear of or see a beat cop giving a parking ticket. The Parking Enforcement officers are almost always in high traffic area's with shopping, where they can write the most tickets in the shortest time, or they patrol the alternate side streets to give tickets there. They almost NEVER write tickets for bike lane violations as that means they would actually have to be patrolling the streets with these lanes and watching for violators and again, they can write a lot more tickets in area's were parking is a problem and where people double park, etc.... So for parking tickets it's a case of where can the city generate the most income, not make life better for a miniscule commuting group like cyclists.