The people who live on Pike Street near East Broadway are not waiting for the city to conduct its investigation of the chaos occurring outside their apartments. We have been covering their fight to have a parking permit for the private charter company revoked (See here and here). They have appeared before Community Board 3 three times in the past month. CB3 has voted to stand behind the residents, while at the same time pushing for a broader solution to the unregulated Chinatown bus problem in Downtown Manhattan.
The next step is for the city’s Department of Transportation to send investigators to Pike Street to observe what’s happening. But the residents have been doing quite a lot of observing on their own. They have now posted several videos to their new YouTube channel documenting the chaos unfolding day and night out their windows. The permit allows the buses to load and unload only – not to park in front of the apartments indefinitely. The city does not allow bus company employees to loiter on the sidewalks, pitching cheap tickets to people walking by. But the videos, sent to us by resident Albert Chan, make it clear “Coach USA” and “Eastern Travel” are doing a lot more than “loading and unloading:”
