BUFFALO, N.Y. — A 2 On Your Side viewer reached out with concerns about vehicles parking in bike lanes throughout the city.
"Recently the city has installed several new bike lanes some of which have removed parking. Naturally many drivers have decided to ignore the new paint. Bike lane parking is an epidemic in the city and the city refuses to do anything about it."
In 2022, the Buffalo Common Council passed a resolution that made it illegal to park in a bike lane. Mayor Byron Brown ultimately signed the resolution into law.
Since law was signed, Councilman David Rivera says his office hasn't received complaints about the issue like it once did.
"I haven't seen those complaints," Rivera said. "I frequent the street every day and I constantly monitor to make sure that nobody's parked in the bike lanes, not only here, but throughout the city of Buffalo."
Even though it's illegal to park in a bike lane, there's no quantifiable data to determine if the problem is widespread.
That's because the citation one is given for parking in a bike lane doesn't actually specify that is what they did.
A spokesperson for the city tells 2 On Your Side that "the city of buffalo's parking department has been enforcing in bike lanes for 'No Standing & No Parking' violations which includes our city's designated bike lanes."
When you look up the data for parking violations in a bike lane on the city's open data website, you won't find the any useful data.
Rivera says the city needs to be tracking these violations specifically.
"There should be a category that way we can track it," Rivera said.
Kevin Heffernan, communications director at GObike Buffalo, as the problem of vehicles parking in bike lanes still persists after the law was passed.
"A lot of people consider it auxiliary parking, which is absolutely not the case," Heffernan said. "We want to remind people that if a cyclist has to dodge your illegally parked vehicle, and they are hit, and you are just as at fault, legally as the car that hit them."
Like Rivera, Heffernan says the city needs to track the number citations that are issued by those violating the bike lane law.
"We hope it's an easy fix," Heffernan said. "We hope that in a few months, we'll go back on open data and see that these tickets have been being handed out."
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