Gone Ridin’
I’m taking the family on vacation and am signing off from blogging for the next two weeks. Many thanks to everyone for reading. See you back here in June.
Bike Your Dog to Work Day
Bike to Work Day 2012
Photo via Gorilla Coffee
Just a reminder that if you want to join the Bike to Work Day festivities, we’ll be meeting at Gorilla Coffee at 8 AM Friday. Get there early and enjoy some coffee and pastries and to socialize with your fellow bike commuters old and new. I hear there may be some discounts for cyclists to celebrate the new 5th Avenue bike parking.
And if you live near Ditmas Park, there’s a ride leaving from Cortelyou and Argyle at 7:30 AM.
The weather is looking great, so please come!
If You Build It, They Will Park
Photo via Gorilla Coffee
This morning, on-street bike parking was installed on 5th Avenue and Park Place, right in front of Gorilla Coffee. It’s only the third bike corral in the city and even though it was only completed within the last hour or so of this posting, it’s already seeing some action as shown in the photo above.
I’m leading a Bike to Work Day ride from this exact spot tomorrow at 8 AM, so come and check it out. Hopefully you’ll be able to get a parking space!
Below are some photos I took of the installation this morning.
Two planters (seen on the truck prior to installation) will protect the bikes and racks from cars.
Bikes on the sidewalk (mine is on the right) will soon be parked on the street, leaving more room for pedestrians.
A Capital Idea
As everyone knows by now, DC’s Capital Bikeshare system has been a resounding success, and Greater Greater Washington has been watching the silly questions about how Citi Bike will work with some amusement. In a post titled “Remember when a few people opposed bikeshare?” David Alpert writes:
It’s been fascinating to watch some of the coverage and debates over bike sharing in New York. In so many ways, it mirrors what happened in DC. At first, many people didn’t understand it or opposed it. Once it opened, fears faded away.
DC saw some contentious public meetings about whether stations belonged in certain neighborhoods. That’s all long gone. Now, when an ANC takes up bike sharing, it’s usually either to push for more stations or debate whether a station belongs in one spot or across the street.
Speaking from experience, Alpert writes, “The system will open, and residents will realize that bike sharing is nothing like their worst fears. Neighbors will clamor for stations.”
It seems to not be in some New Yorkers’ natures to look to other cities for examples of how things work or to simply sit back and say, “We’ll see.” Gothamist’s posts on Citi Bike have been especially cringeworthy, such as they expose a fundamental immaturity in the way our local media occasionally approaches new and innovative ideas related to shared streets. But taking into consideration how many Gothamist readers are also likely Citi Bike members, I’m sure the writers over there will figure it out. As writer Kriston Capps tweeted, “It’s going to be so annoying when everyone comes around on #bikenyc and NYers are all so proud they invented bikeshare.”
Conversation, not Controversy
The Brooklyn Heights Blog calls out the Brooklyn Eagle for fomenting a bike share nontroversy:
This Brooklyn Daily Eagle story has the headline, “Brooklyn Bridge Park at odds with Heights over bike stations.” It implies some sort of Park-Heights conflict that doesn’t exist. The story quotes Nancy Webster of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy as welcoming a bike station near Atlantic Avenue and Furman Street, which is not on a residential street in Brooklyn Heights. It then notes that the Brooklyn Heights Association has expressed some concern over bike stations on residential streets in the Heights. This in no way conflicts with the BBPC’s desire for a station near the Park’s entrance, so the BBPC and the BHA are not “at odds.”
The Eagle has now written two stories trying to stir things up and is likely to write up a third, a recap of last night’s CB2 meeting. While the meeting was far from a love-in, it was not the NIMBY fest one might have expected. Unlike some of the main characters in the PPW fight, who didn’t want to see bike lanes anywhere unless they were inside the park and hidden by trees, most of the people who spoke last night were in favor of bike share, even if some disagreed on the precise placement of specific stations. Even a few of the people who didn’t want stations right in front of their homes admitted to having used bike share in other cities and said that they looked forward to it coming to Brooklyn.
The DOT is traveling to each community board and listening to what people have to say in order to take these concerns into consideration and tweak the system map as the launch date approaches. There is no controversy, only conversation, and anyone who reports otherwise or amplifies a few cranky voices is not being honest. Many thanks to the Brooklyn Heights Blog for telling it like it is.
Brooklyn CB2 Bike Share Meeting Tonight
Community Board 2, which covers Downtown, Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and Boerum Hill, will discuss the placement of Citi Bike stations tonight at 6 PM. (The bike share discussion is the second item on the agenda, so don’t worry if you can’t get there right on time.)
It will be held at:
Founders Hall (auditorium)
St. Francis College
180 Remsen Street (between Clinton and Court)
There’s a bubbling little bit of opposition to the location of some stations — or most stations, if the quotes from Judy Stanton, executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association, in this Brooklyn Eagle story are accurate — and it behooves rational, safety-minded people to attend tonight’s meeting.
Park N’ Ride
Following Smith Street and the East Village, Park Slope will soon get on-street bike parking. Leslie Albrecht of DNAinfo reports:
[Gorilla Coffee owner Darlene] Scherer said she jumped at the chance when the Department of Transportation approached her about installing the bike parking. Right now cyclists make do with two small U-shaped bike racks on the sidewalk. The racks quickly fill up, forcing bike riders to chain bikes to a nearby fence, Scherer said.
“It will be really nice to have proper parking,” Scherer said, adding that Gorilla Coffee has sponsored the Brooklyn Velo Force bike team in the past. “The neighborhood definitely has a lot of bikers — it’s definitely something that goes hand in hand with our store.”
The new bicycle parking will replace one on-street vehicle parking spot, but drivers won’t be losing any ground to cyclists, officials said. The city is converting a no-parking zone across the street into a new car parking spot.
“On that block there will be no net loss of parking,” said Community Board 6 transportation committee member Doug Gordon.
I emphasized all of the instances of the term “bike parking,” because I think it’s an important distinction. Bike racks belong on the sidewalk or in school yards and parks. But if bikes are a legitimate form of transportation, they belong in parking spaces. I’m really glad that Leslie chose this language in her piece; in different hands the story might have been pitted as another fake battle in the non-existent war between motorists and cyclists.
Note that two of the three on-street bike parking locations in the city are in front of coffee shops. Coffee and bikes are a natural fit, so if you’re an advocate looking to get more bike parking in your neighborhood, I highly recommend approaching your local java joint. Gorilla Coffee will largely be responsible for taking care of the planters and sweeping up the trash, since the bike parking spots can’t be accessed by street cleaners and plows.
Many thanks to Darlene at Gorilla Coffee, Eric McClure of Park Slope Neighbors, and Irene LoRe of the 5th Avenue BID, for their support of this plan. The full DOT presentation with details about the design is now online. [PDF]
Jane’s Ride 2012
Enjoy this short video of the Jane’s Ride I co-hosted with Eric McClure two Sundays ago. Many thanks to Gildas Boclé for putting it together.
Helmets for Tornado Safety
Since a horrific outbreak of tornadoes killed more than 250 people last year in Alabama, safety advocates have been on a crusade.
At a recent minor league baseball game in Birmingham, advocates handed out dozens of free bicycle helmets. But they weren’t for play. They’re to be used during tornadoes. Experts say several adults and children who wore helmets during last year’s storms were saved because of them.
Event organizer Renee Crook says when people choose to live in weather-prone areas, they need to be ready. “Preparedness is what we’re preaching. Preparedness. It’s all about being prepared. Our motto or our slogan is, ‘Don’t be scared. Be prepared. Make a helmet part of your safety plan.’ “
Just don’t tell Mikael Colville-Andersen.
Brooklyn Spoke 