* COMMUTER VAN DRIVERS SAY RENEGADES SWIPE BIZ

By AUSTIN FENNER

Friday, May 1th 1998, 2:04AM

Competition for van passengers between the Chinatowns in Sunset Park and Manhattan is so fierce that licensed operators say a swarm of speedier illegal minivans has stolen three-fourths of their business.

The licensed 14-passenger commuter van companies say they are being driven out of business by seven-passenger minivan drivers who also ply Eighth Ave.

in the 50s and 60s, the main commercial strip for the Asian community in Sunset Park. Commuter vans are licensed to provide service from Sunset Park to Canal St. in Manhattan.

The minivans usually are licensed by the Taxi and Limousine Commission, but only to answer telephone requests, and not to stop for street hails, the head of the commuter van trade association said.

More than half of commuter vans towed after inspections

by Michaelangelo Conte/The Jersey Journal Tuesday September 23, 2008, 3:02 PM

The Hudson County Prosecutor's Office towed 15 of 27 jitneys pulled over today in West New York, part of a continuing campaign to enforce safety laws that officials concede is having little impact.

"It still seems that there is a lack of compliance here and as far as our office is concerned, we are going to move forward and protect the citizens of Hudson County by conducting more of these stops to enforce the law," said Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Michael Zevits.

Surprise inspections began at about 7 a.m. at 59th Street off Bergenline Avenue.

About 151 safety violation were cited during the inspections, by the state Motor Vehicle Commission Commercial Bus Unit, West New York police, the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office and the Hudson County Sheriff's Office, Zevits said. Police also issued 35 motor vehicle tickets, Zevits said.

Safety violations included bad brakes, cracked frames, fuel leaks and safety equipment violations including bad windows and missing fire extinguishers, Zevits said. Motor vehicle summonses were issued for uninsured vehicles, expired drivers licenses and failure to produce medical cards, Zevits said.

West New York resident Santos Mercedes said he doesn't understand why police pulled him over and inspect his van when he had a good inspection sticker and his paperwork is in order.

"I was just driving on Bergenline around 7:50 a.m. and I was stopped by a policeman and I gave him my license and registration and everything was up to date," Mercedes said. "I had in my bus like 25 passengers and he made me take out all my passengers in the middle of street. They have to go to work. Maybe some of them will lose their jobs."

Mercedes said that in the end, he was allowed to drive away with no citations, adding that last month his van was towed at a cost of $850.

The Prosecutor's Office's Insurance Fraud Unit has conducted more than a dozen surprise inspections of commuter vans in Hudson County over the past two years.

Judge Rejects Most of Law On Commuter Van Licenses - New York Times

By ANTHONY RAMIREZ

Published: March 24, 1999

Backers of the private commuter vans, often called ''dollar vans,'' that serve poor and working-class neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens, won a legal victory last week. If it stands, the decision is certain to sharply increase the number of licensed vans in New York City.

In a decision reached Thursday and made public yesterday, Justice Louis B. York of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan intervened in a six-year-old clash between Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who backs licensing more vans, and the City Council, which does not.

Justice York struck down most of a 1993 law passed by the Council giving it the power to reject van licenses already approved by the Taxi and Limousine Commission, which is part of the Mayor's office.

There are 362 licensed vans in the city, carrying about 40,000 passengers daily. Among those vans are fewer than a dozen licensed vans approved by the City Council, which has rejected nearly all of the applications from the taxi commission. But estimates of the number of illegal vans vary from 1,000 to 5,000, with many operating part time and without regular safety inspections.

The dollar vans, which carry 20 or fewer passengers, first emerged in 1980 when a transit workers' strike disrupted bus service. Since then, the vans have continued in neighborhoods with little bus service. But van ridership has been hurt recently by the introduction of bus and subway discounts with the Metrocard. Proponents hail the vans as examples of free enterprise, but opponents -- notably the transit unions -- fear they may hurt mass transit.

Justice York ruled that the Council's law, known as Local Law 115, violated the constitutional separation of powers by allowing the Council to administer rather than write a law. ''This it cannot do,'' the judge wrote in a ruling on an October 1997 suit filed by the Mayor against the Council. The Mayor's suit followed a February 1997 suit filed by van operators against the City of New York. In that suit, Justice York ruled in favor of the van operators.

Editorial

Chinatown bus chaos

Chinatown's private bus business is booming. That this industry has grown to its current level in a little under 10 years is amazing. The rates are cheap and if one is not too fussy these rides are just the ticket.

Yet, while the busy bus business is good news for Chinatown's economy over all, it also has brought a host of problems that are affecting Chinatown as well as the Lower East Side.

The buses increase traffic, pollution, noise, garbage and even violence, due to the fights that sometimes flare between rival operators in their competition for passengers. Police say it's hard to oversee these problems because the buses are so spread out. And the buses' picking up at the curb at scattered locations means traffic is being impacted in a haphazard, irrational way. Residents, in particular, are feeling the bus invasion's effects.

As The Villager reported last week, the city recently proposed a 30-day pilot program under which all the Chinatown interstate buses would be shunted toward the end of Pike St., with no more than seven dropping off or picking up at any one time. However, neighbors at Knickerbocker Village and the Rutgers Houses opposed the idea and so did Community Board 3.

By Loretta Chao
...
As convenient as the service is for riders however, drivers say the work is extremely difficult and unrewarding. Each driver has to buy, insure, and sign their buses up with a company, which then gets a cut of their daily earnings. Zhou, for example, makes seven round trips everyday during the winter and gets to save less than $100.

"I have worked 365 days for four years now," said Zhou, who lives in Flushing with his wife and 3-year-old daughter. "Just think - I've never taken a vacation, not even for one day. I haven't even had time to get sick.

"It's just unbearably hard. I don't know English. When I go out I feel like I'm mute. Everything I learned in school is useless," he said.

And while customers are plentiful, the increasing number of vans has led to bitter and sometimes violent rivalry over the past six years. Police arrested the drivers involved in a string of murders as part of what they called a "bus war" in January 2003, but investigators said minor offenses like tire slashing and window breaking often went unreported. With some drivers working until 11 o'clock at night, they face other dangers as well.