First Class Bike Lanes

I bumped into Clarence from Streetfilms while he was shooting this interview with Gary Toth on Prospect Park West on a particularly sunny, beautiful day.  (If that makes us part of the “radical” biking cabal, so be it.)  The bike lane was filled with commuters, kids riding home from school with their parents, and lots of other people using Prospect Park West to get where they were going.  Car traffic was moving smoothly.  It was amazing and a great sign of what’s in store come spring.

This video’s release before Thursday’s CB6 meeting is perfect.  With the NBBL lawsuit filed and their continued calls for a Class 2 bike lane, which is really just two lines of paint on the street, this video is a great demonstration of why separated bike lanes are so important, not only to cyclists but to pedestrians, drivers, and everyone who lives in and visits a neighborhood.  NBBL complains in their lawsuit that these types of bike lanes never existed in New York before the DOT installed them on PPW and Kent Avenue, but so what?  Since when is New York shy about innovation?

Toth points out in this video that change takes some getting used to, but that if we allow history and the lessons of other cultures to be our guides, then the future may not seem as scary and that we may even look back on these changes as visionary.  A lot of the things we now take for granted were once new themselves, and met much of the same skepticism and, in some cases, opposition.  Who knows?  Perhaps there once existed a group called Neighbors For Better Car Lanes.