Public Employee Press

Changing signs for safer streets
Local 1455 contracting IN saves million$

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

In another DC 37 contracting-in victory that preserves civil service jobs and saves taxpayers millions of dollars, members of New York City Traffic Employees in Local 1455 are installing new traffic regulation and parking signs in a Dept. of Transportation citywide conversion project.

"We are working under the leadership of Commissioner Polly Trottenberg in the project replacing confusing parking regulation signs and cutting signage clutter with clearer, simpler street signs," said Local President Mike DeMarco.

Two years ago the local's Traffic Device Maintainers took on the project, which could have been contracted out and began producing silkscreen plates and pressing tens of thousands of traffic signs.

TDM crews hit the streets block by block, removing old signs and posts and installing new ones throughout the five boroughs.

By mid-June, they had removed over 54,000 old traffic and parking signs, including a jumble of School Crossing and advance School Crossing, Speed Bump, Yield to Pedestrians, Curb Your Dog, No Standing and No Honking signs as well as outdated Snow Route and Snow Emergency signs, various parking regulations and illegally hung signs. They also safely removed more than 8,600 no-longer-needed drive rails that hold up signs.

"The old signs are gone and the new ones are up with clearer information on parking days and times. Regulation signs are more visible," said DeMarco. The local's hardworking corps of 60 TDMs is busily completing this citywide project to meet DOT's schedule.

Local 1455 also represents about 120 City Parking Equipment Service Workers, who haul in over $81 million a year in coin. They are busy adapting to new digital collection technology as DOT replaces the 4,800 Parkeon DG muni-meters, which first went into use in the mid-1990s, with streamlined, solar-powered Strada models.

DG meters have built-in coin columns that release the change into canisters, which the workers secure, collect and load onto armored trucks. The new Stradas have front-loading coin boxes.

Local 1455 defeated the Bloomberg administration's attempt to contract out the multi-borough muni-meter project and members have installed some 13,000 muni-meters to replace the city's 70,000 single-space parking meters.

Former Mayor Bloomberg's assault on municipal employees also included a plan to lease the city's public parking spaces to a private firm. But a campaign launched by DC 37 and Local 1455 with help from AFSCME, DC 37's parent union, stopped the mayor and spared New York City drivers the misguided and costly municipal parking sell-off debacles that hit motorists and taxpayers in Chicago and Los Angeles.

"This latest signage project is another example of how in-sourcing by unionized city employees protects New Yorkers with better safety and traffic regulation signs and protects their pocketbooks from greedy private contractors," DeMarco said.