Comment by fc417fc802
3 days ago
I'd actually agree that they ought to deliver in the middle of the night but indeed that's just not how the world currently works. Far worse than bike lanes I've regularly seen large box trucks driven up onto particularly wide stretches of sidewalk in areas with skyscrapers. Law enforcement doesn't seem to care, presumably because how else are they supposed to get packages to where they need to be?
NYC used to (or still?) enforced strictly parking violations by delivery companies. But they did it so evenly the companies just considered it a cost of doing business, and raised their rates accordingly. Not violating the law and still being in the business wasn’t an option, so no competitor could undercut the other by following the rules and not paying the fine.
Sounds like a scenario where something other than fines should be applied. Revoke plates fleetwide, tow any delivery trucks caught on the street with a mandatory 72 hour minimum impound time, with no access to the contents of the vehicle. And so on.
I don't think NYC wanted to basically ban the delivery companies like that, then the public would complain, so it was convenient fiction to have them fined and pass on the costs. Again, this is more of a "you can't do that but we don't have an actual solution so do it anyways" situation, not a "we aren't enforcing our rules strictly enough" problem.
If Amazon then started marking packages as delayed with a video of the truck being towed I imagine the voters would quickly "fix" the enforcement "problem" in the delivery companies' favor.