“Some New Yorkers”

Louise Hainline emerges from the rubble of NBBL HQ to provide some quotes to the Times about Transportation Alternatives’ influence on the Department of Transportation:

Some New Yorkers continue to bristle at this close relationship. “T. A. has contributed to the demonization of cars,” said Louise Hainline, a resident of Park Slope, Brooklyn, whose group, Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes, publicly tangled with Transportation Alternatives and the city over the 2010 installation of a bike lane on Prospect Park West. “They’ve been very effective, but I don’t think our city is better for it.”

Hainline long ago gave up the pretense of being for better bike lanes.  In fact, with this quote there’s now no indication that she’s for better anything, except perhaps better double parking.

If you’re actually for better bike lanes–as well as pedestrian plazas, curb extensions, crosswalk countdown clocks, and other results of TA’s advocacy and DOT’s progressive, safety-minded agenda–you have very good reason to take comfort in the fact that Hainline was chosen to represent the opinions of a paltry “some New Yorkers.”  Every dire prediction she made about bike lane in front of her home has so far failed to materialize in the over two years since its installation.

Louise Hainline is to the war on cars as Bill Kristol is to the war on Iraq: there’s simply no amount of wrong she can be to get the media to stop quoting her.