Brooklyn Spoke

Carroll Gardens Patch asks, “Is the Smith St. Bike Lane Being Neglected?”

Cyclists in and around Carroll Gardens, Red Hook and Cobble Hill have raised an eyebrow and public concerns regarding the state of the Smith Street bike lane of late.

The above photo was Tweeted by Seersucker co-owner and Carroll Gardens resident Kerry Diamond in an attempt to call Councilman Brad Lander and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz’s attention to the lane’s dilapidated state.

Councilman Lander responded with the suggestion that anyone with a complaint regarding the lane file it formally through 311 so that the proper authorities will be taken to task.

Smith Street is one of the more heavily trafficked bike routes in Brooklyn.  If I had to bet I’d say that a traffic count would probably show at least a 30% mode share for bikes on Smith during the morning rush.

USA Today discovers a little place called Brooklyn:

…Brooklyn at its best is Sesame Street: integrated playgrounds; small shops on tree-lined streets; artisanal pickles and home-made granola; bike lanes and occasional valet bike parking. Spike-haired, tattooed skateboarders zip past bearded Hassidic Jews in long black coats. Houseboats ply the once-fetid Gowanus Canal.

I just rode by the Gowanus Canal last night.  It is still fetid.

I hate to say I told you so, but here’s what I wrote about the DOT’s “Don’t be a Jerk” campaign in April, 2011:

…the “Don’t Be a Jerk” PSAs use the language of the bike backlash itself, indelibly linking the words “jerk” and “cyclist” together in the minds of people already inclined to think that cyclists are jerks. Plastering the city with billboards with these words may have the unintended effect of reinforcing the commonly held idea that cyclists, unlike motorists, are only as deserving of dedicated infrastructure as their behavior proves them to be.

And here’s what the Daily News editorial board published today:

What’s worse than a bicyclist who willfully disobeys the law? A bicyclist who willfully disobeys the law, gets caught and then whines about it.

Case in point: David Segal of Brooklyn, former communications director for City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, poster boy for obnoxious two-wheeling and perfect target for the city’s “Don’t be a jerk” campaign.

They continue:

Then — here’s the topper — Segal said was he ticketed last weekend for running a red light on Central Park West — “in an area without a street intersection! This is now four tickets for going through red lights in less than a week.” Good, jerk.

Emphasis mine.  I have no commentary on Segal’s “lawlessness” because it’s not the point, nor is it the Daily News editorial board’s point either, which merely uses the rare case of a cyclist getting four tickets at once as an opportunity to attack the Bloomberg administration.  The real point is something that any politician trained at the Frank Luntz school of messaging already knows: never use language you don’t want your opponents to use against you.  (There’s a reason it’s called the Affordable Care Act and not, say, the Everybody Will be Forced to Buy Insurance Act.)

Sixteen months after it debuted, the legacy of DBAJ is not a better class of cyclists or more civilized streets, but a very sharp arrow in the tabloids’ anti-bike quiver.

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.

I’m taking the week off and heading out of town, so there will be no new posts until Monday, August 13th.  Many thanks for reading, for commenting, for sharing tips, and for all of your support.  See you in a week!

I’ve posted before about the gridlock mess that is Varick Street after 3 PM.  The video above was recorded last month and it shows the generally terrible conditions for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists at this intersections.  Add a few goats, rickshaws, and an elephant onto this street and you’ve got yourself a veritable third world country.

Skip to about two minutes in to see a motorcyclist use the sidewalk as a convenient detour.  And please remember it the next time a City Council member goes on and on about bikes on the sidewalk.

The Brooklyn Paper’s Natalie O’Neill reports on the Vigilante Bike Lane on Bergen Street.  Note the quote from a police spokesman, who explains why officers use the bike lane as a parking lane:

“It could be because a prisoner needs to be taken in or a stray dog needs to be transported.”

Compare that to this quote from a police officer in a July 12th Post story about a “pedal protester” planting tacks at the bottom of a hill in Central Park.

“We have more important things to worry about, like people getting shot and squirrels getting run over.”

By now the message is clear: If you transport yourself on two wheels instead of four, the NYPD regards your safety as less important than a squirrel’s or a stray dog’s.

Bike Snob often writes of “The Indignity of Commuting by Bicycle” in New York.  Well, cyclists have nothing on pedestrians.  As a stroller pusher myself, this is an experience with which I’m all too familiar.  I didn’t have my camera handy earlier when a woman in a wheelchair tried to get around this driver.

Progress on the Plaza Street two-way bike lane continues.  As of yesterday’s evening commute there was a fresh coat of green paint that was taped off for drying.  Above, the view looking toward Union Street.

Above, the view from Union Street.  I’ll say this to all the of the Plaza Street residents who opposed a protected bike lane and complained that moving the cars over would have destroyed the historic character of the street: your efforts to stop that from happening have now resulted in an ugly, bright green stripe that will be unavoidably visible from your apartments.  Congratulations.

While this will soon provide cyclists with a legal way to ride to and from bike connections at Grand Army Plaza and Prospect Park West, it’s a little disconcerting that DOT can take a major cycling route offline without providing a safe alternative.  In my short time on Plaza Street yesterday evening I saw many cyclists forced into tights spots with drivers.

It may look like the cyclist above has a bit of room, but that’s only because there were no traffic cones or barrels on the new speed bumps.  It was much tighter a little farther up.  And while I know that this set-up is only temporary, accidents don’t always wait for infrastructure projects to be completed.

The picture above is a striking example of how good infrastructure breeds good behavior and how the sudden elimination of that infrastructure brings the bad behavior right back.  It’s not an excuse for riding on the sidewalk, but it does demonstrate the importance of safe, separated, and short routes for cyclists.

So, what could DOT have done differently?  For starters, it could have used the space left behind by all the relocated cars as a temporary protected bike lane.

I don’t know why DOT couldn’t have put cones and tape on both sides of the bike lane, which would have allowed cyclists to use the space between the curb and the white stripe for now.  Yes, there would have been an issue at Lincoln and Berkeley, but that’s nothing that couldn’t have been fixed by leaving a black patch of pavement at those intersections for a day or two.  (By the way, where does everyone park their cars during roadwork like this?  The fact that these cars can more or less disappear overnight demonstrates that we most certainly have the space, if not the political will, to create safe bike lanes.)

On a very positive note, I noticed that cyclists made up a significant portion of the traffic on Plaza Street during the evening rush.

In the short video above there are six people on bikes–including the kid being transported on the sidewalk–and one person in a car.  It’s may be only twelve seconds of footage, but using the standard multiplier effect of 50:1 means there were a heck of a lot of cyclists.

A happy mom gives the thumbs up as she safely bikes her daughter through the Vigilante Bike Lane (the “VBL”) on Bergen Street on Saturday morning.  I don’t know if the continued existence of the VBL is the work of one Bike Lane Avenger or a collection of concerned citizens, but it works.