Intro 501 is a bill in the NYC Council, that if passed, would permit people to report the obstruction of a bike or bus lane by a vehicle, creating a new $175 ticket for that offense. However, it would only permit reporting vehicles that are within 2640 feet of a school. Below is a map of where that covers.
Click this link for an interactive map that lets you zoom in1.
The bill has changed since I last mapped its coverage at the end of the 2022, in three major ways.
#1 Covers more area (👍👍)
The previous version of the bill limited its impact to a radius of 1320 feet from a school, giving a total of 258km2 (or 99 square miles), about 32% of NYC’s landmass.
The current bill covers 527km2 (or 203 square miles), about two-thirds of NYC’s landmass. That’s a large increase, and makes it far more likely that any given bike or bus lane in the city would be covered by this bill. However, note that the rollout of this law would be in geographic stages, only expanding to the whole city in the third year after the bill’s passing.
#2 No bounty (👎)
The previous version of the bill rewarded successful reporters with a quarter of the ticket’s value (~$43), providing an incentive for people beyond merely the unblocking of a bike/bus lane.
Bounties aren’t foreign to NYC’s reporting programs - take the idling complaints system, for instance. The removal of the bounty from the bill will likely reduce usage of this reporting program, though not as much as…
#3 More requirements of reporters (👎👎)
The current version of the bill now requires reporters to (1) have gone through a digital training course and (2) provide evidence of a NY state ID or a NYC ID.
Again, this is an unfortunate change that reduces the number of potential reporters. If a lane obstruction complaint is valid, does it matter if the reporter has the correct ID?
This particular offense should be prime for a quick, smooth reporting flow. Even more so than the idling complaints system, which requires video, as one can imagine that a picture or two would suffice for a lane obstruction complaint.
A good step forward
Regardless of the changes I disagree with, making it possible at all for people to report the obstruction of bike/bus lanes is great! Currently, there’s very little pain for drivers that repeatedly block those lanes, and so they keep doing so.
If this initial form of the program is executed well and gets used, hopefully further improvements can be made, from loosening restrictions on reporters to incorporating it as part of the 311 app.
Here’s the github repo for the code that generates this map.