Yeshiva Aide gets Ticket at Phantom Stop

Moshe Zenwirth has been waiting since June for a bus that hasn’t come – and likely never will.

The Borough Park yeshiva administrator was slapped with a $115 ticket after he parked at a “bus stop” on 51st St. – even though the closest bus route is one block north.

Since the June 13 fine was issued, Zenwirth, 34, has appealed the decision, but has been stymied by two city administrative law judges, most recently in October.

“It upset me more the unfairness, the negligence, the stupidity than the money itself,” said Zenwirth.

“How did it go through two separate judges and nobody even bothered to look to see that there wasn’t even a bus that went by.”

The trouble began after Zenwirth, who works at Bnos Zion of Bobov on 14th Ave., parked his car on 51st St. to be closer to school for a meeting scheduled that night.

When Zenwirth returned to his Honda minivan sometime after 11 p.m., he spotted the ticket tucked under his windshield, but initially believed it had been issued earlier that day.

A transit spokesman said 51st St. has never contained a bus stop or bus-stop signage and the closest bus route is a block north on 50th St., according to Metropolitan Transportation Authority maps.

But an NYPD spokesman insisted the address on the ticket was written in error – which, if true, would result in its dismissal under Finance Department regulations, a Finance spokesman said.

“After a preliminary investigation it was determined that the vehicle was parked illegally in a bus stop [on] 50th St.,” said the spokesman, contradicting the address written on the ticket. It appears to be [written in error by the agent].“

”I was not parked on 50th St., I was parked on 51st St.,“ insisted Zenwirth. ”There’s no truth to that.“

As a result of Zenwirth’s faulty fine, Councilman Simcha Felder (D-Borough Park) said he would hold Council hearings to determine who is responsible for auditing the decisions made by administrative judges, many of whom are paid an hourly wage and work as lawyers.

”What this proves to the average New York citizen is that the person issuing these tickets doesn’t know what he or she is doing,“ said Felder. ”And for a lot of these people, there’s no reason to even fight the ticket because clearly nobody’s even reading the appeals.”