A Chinatown tipster sent along these remarkable pictures yesterday of what seems to be an effort to cut down on placarded vehicles clogging the neighborhood’s streets:

There are white paper signs posted on lamp poles and parking meters that say "No Permit Area, Tow Away Zone." Lo and behold, there are hardly any cars with placards. The only way that this could have happened is for there to be an internal memo that was circulated as well. (Permit parkers would normally tear the sheets off and park anyway without a memo that they got already.) Please note that the pictures of Mott Street show a LOT of empty metered parking spaces at 11:30 am! That is amazing since those spaces are normally occupied by placard vehicles. This just goes to show that without placard cars in Chinatown there are many more parking spaces for the public and for business deliveries.

Of course, not every placarded parker was obeying the directive, as the second picture shows.

Anyone else see any signs like this in Chinatown or elsewhere?

Related:

• Above the Law: Parking Permit Abuse Study Released
• Street Films: Gridlock Sam on Govt Employee Parking Abuse
• NYPD Parking Abuse Scandal Widens
• The $46 Million Parking Perk