Pave Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot
Of all the absurd proposals to come from bike lane critics, this one from Alan Singer might take the cake. Blogging at the Huffington Post, the Hofstra University history professor writes:
If there was some kind of public plan for the park, bike use, and car travel, rather than just pitting people against each other over crowded space, we would all be better off. If Bloomberg and his DOT want to reduce traffic congestion in the neighborhoods surrounding Prospect Park and raise revenue for maintaining the park at the same time, they could build parking garages in the park so drivers would not circulate endlessly looking for spaces and people could leave their cars behind more easily and take the subway to work.
You read that right: “Build parking garages in the park.” Come on, Singer, why stop there? Whenever I have used Prospect Park, at least two or three times a week, I am one of the few people in it. For most of December, January, and February, I was the only one. Just pave the whole thing over and be done with it. The environmental devastation would be more than offset by all of the people who would drive, park their cars, and then take the subway to work! If you don’t stop to think about it too much, it makes total sense.
Read the whole thing. It’s satire worthy of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. Only it’s not satire.
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Unfortunately bike lanes won’t cure the rogue x-gaming arrogant attitude of cyclists.
I had a villainous brother, a cycle-tyrant, mean-spirited mechanical engineer who took great pride in cutting through red lights, jumping curbs, challenging traffic, zipping through busy intersections and screaming bloody murder at any sibling (or offspring) unwilling, (or intimidated enough), to follow.
This same daft daredevil was also a driving-with-dick motor-headed maniac who regularly wrecked Volkswagens with similar scary behavior behind the wheel while harboring fascistic hate against senior citizens, slow drivers & canids.
Cycling in the city if left utterly unregulated as it is, promotes not a sane form of transportation but a sick, antisocial, sociopathic sidewalk/crosswalk terrorism.
Any law-abiding pedestrian nearly runned-offt by sidewalk-swiping bicycle delivery drones can concur that no number of bike lanes will cure the free-radical damage of sick cyclists bunny-hopping over all pedestrian etiquette & rules of the road.
As for those cycle-jerks who whine about double-parked geriatrics in your gentrified outer-burros, dare you to come uptown where merengue-pumping Ferraris park on the sidewalks (Ga ‘head complain to Tony Montana , make my day & say hello to my little frieng!)
You’re all a bunch of soft suburbanites and know nothing of the real NYC.
Fact is, the city is made for pedestrians. The industry of NYC is retail, retail is realized by walkers, not drivers nor bikers.
Walkers are the ones who finance sales tax, property tax, high-end revenue & the rhythm of the streets that you all flock here for.
If this city cares only about money any more, then make way for the hoards of wandering I-pad-plugged pedestrians, those tweeter-twatting NYU dizzy debutantes shopping for shoes, whose family-money finances the landlords that run this show.
Advice to all of you who insist on leveraging legwork with wheels: Obey traffic laws, stop at all red lights, & stay off the friggin’ sidewalk– or get an umbrella in your spokes & thumbtacks in your path.
Walkers of the world unite!