When it comes to parking spaces, the hardest part is giving one up.
Just ask the city, which is refusing to let drivers park in spaces taken for its controversial, near-dead plan to add “dollar vans” to bus routes killed by the MTA.
Even though vans no longer — and hardly ever did — rumble along the discontinued B23 route, the Taxi and Limousine Commission hasn’t officially killed the program, so 11 “No Parking from 6 am to 10 pm” signs are still up, and still enforceable.
The city won’t say why.
“Plans for those locations have yet to be determined,” said spokesman Allan Fromberg.
A spokesman for the Department of Transportation, which is responsible for all city traffic signs, said it is discussing the future use of the locations, but “as with anything, when the signs are up, the regulations remain.”
Taxi Commissioner David Yassky said recently that van service along the route — initiated just a month ago — has been abandoned because of low ridership — the same reason the MTA gave for axing the B23, which once connected Kensington to Borough Park.
Former B23 riders were perplexed by the signs, particularly since they never even saw the vans.
“The city should take them down,” said Kensington resident Rabbi Aaron Schenker. “They should put the bus signs up and bring the buses back.”
He said living without the B23 — or a viable alternative — is difficult, particularly for the elderly or disabled. “But the city doesn’t care what the people think about them,” he charged. “People are suffering here.”
Van service on the B39, which at one time took commuters from Williamsburg to Manhattan, is also kaput, leaving the former B71 route as the only route in Brooklyn where van service survives — and it is on life support.
— Gary Buiso
