I don't get it. Why is driving a van deserving of a ticket.

Speaking of telling the truth...are you rich yet?

I don't know about NY but in Chicago commercial vehicles are not allowed on boulevards. I always just assumed it was weight restrictions or the city trying to keep semis off lake shore drive. I found this online...........

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The rationale behind the rules took some digging and, frankly, is a bit elusive. My City Hall sources had a tough time accounting for how this all came to be and, it seems, they don’t get this question very often. One person even called my request “WBEZ’s latest trivial pursuit question.” Perhaps, but we’re assuming that Jef isn’t the only Chicago truck owner who’s anxious about driving the Drive.

Regardless, the best account I could get is a historical one, and it comes from the top source on Chicago maps: Dennis McClendon, who produced maps for the Encyclopedia of Chicago. And get this: He even drew the original CTA system map.

Anyway, McClendon says the truck issue likely gets down to a mentality, one which dates back to the late 1800s when Lake Shore drive was first planned.

“It was to be a pleasure drive,” McClendon explains. “It was not to be a traffic carrying arterial, it was a way to enjoy the park in your carriage or your brougham.” (A brougham being a light carriage that was drawn by a single horse.)

“I think it was Thursday afternoons were set aside for fast driving,” McClendon says. “So the young men who lived on the Gold Coast nearby would bring their fastest trotting horses and their lightweight broughams and race each other.”

By the 1930s, McClendon says, this parkway grew into the Outer Drive and Inner Drive we know today. The idea was to allow more traffic on Lake Shore Drive but this whole concept of a “pleasure drive” stuck, meaning the proscription against commercial vehicles (pickup trucks included) is really just a holdover, one that’s consistent with a bias that kept commercial or “working” life separate from upper-crust residential life.

Consider, he says, that fancy apartment buildings once had separate entrances for residents and tradesmen.

“You wouldn’t want a scruffy workman carrying his tool box through the front door, just as ‘Miss High Nose’ was coming out with her poodle,” McClendon says.

Sigh. All you guys know how to do is make every thread on this site political? I don't care that you winked. That doesn't make you less of an ass for derailing the thread.

Still like this for the fancy apartment buildings in this town. This is why we don't do high-rise work anymore. A massive time suck waiting for the service elevator with a bunch of Chuys.

I would suggest you leave a leash and dog bowl in the car or van in plain sight.
Fight it if it comes to it. "I use this vehicle to transport my dog(s) and dont' want to tear up my other vehicle."

I can kind of understand not wanting a semi to roll down a nice, quiet residential area - if there are a ton of trucks going through, but banning a cargo van? Idiotic.

It may not have been due to the cage but due to not meeting the other requirements. In NY a passenger vehicle, that isn't a 2-seater, HAS rear seats and HAS rear windows on the side. You'll see a lot of vans with those little round windows in the back just to meet this rule.


It has more to do with the roads and the way NY defines what is and isn't commercial.

We have the oldest parkway in the country, it was built before eminent domain so the road is like half of an awesome WRX course, the speed limit is 40, it curves it goes up and down grade it does all those things at once while also having low bridges AND lanes where two Esclades side by side would be ripping off side view mirrors.

Add all those things together and if you have a van which already isn't the most nimble loaded in the back with a weird weight distribution you get an accident.