Brooklyn Spoke

Just a reminder that I’m co-hosting a Jane’s Ride with Eric McClure of Park Slope Neighbors this Sunday, May 6th at 12:00 noon as part of the Municipal Arts Society’s annual Jane’s Walk program.

How did an eight-foot wide strip of green paint, less than a mile long (which by most accounts transformed Brooklyn’s Prospect Park West from a three-lane, speeding-plagued arterial into a traffic-calmed neighborhood street appreciably safer for biking, walking and driving) become the front line in the global battle over bike lanes? How is Grand Army Plaza, one-time home of the Death-o-Meter and written off for decades as an inhospitable and impenetrable “traffic peril,” being transformed into Brooklyn’s pedestrian- and bike-friendly town square? Pump up your tires, strap on your helmet and join us for a family-friendly exploration of two of Brooklyn’s most startling public-space transformations.

There are a ton of other great Brooklyn walks on Saturday and Sunday and they’re all free.

Here’s one of the pedestrian islands on PPW as of Thursday evening.  As you can see, it’s crying out for a tree and some flowers.

Last April I reported that Brooklyn was in the midst of a “Bike Shop Boom,” with the Bicycle Habitat empire crossing the Hudson from Soho to Park Slope.  Well, it’s one year later and bikes are booming yet again, with two new shops that have opened within weeks of each other.

Bike Smith, located at Smith and Bergen, opened at the end of March.  Pretty much every cyclist coming through Boerum Hill on their way to the Manhattan Bridge passes them each morning and I can only hope they have early morning hours for the occasional pre-work adjustment.

BikeBlogNYC reported about a shop on Fulton Street between Classon and Franklin, Bicycle Roots, which had a soft opening yesterday.  The website describes it as “the new woman owned full-service bike shop.”  I don’t know if that’s a first for the borough, but it’s certainly a positive development.

As biking booms in Brooklyn, bike shops are booming along with it, and those are just two recent additions.  Include 718 Cyclery’s move into bigger digs on 3rd Avenue and Union Street, Greenpoint’s Silk Road Cycles, and Red Lantern Bicycles in Fort Greene and you have to wonder how long this will keep up.  Bike share is bound to have a positive impact on the bottom line as more people find themselves in the market for helmets and other accessories and possibly make the jump from sharing bikes to owning them.

If there are any new shops I’m missing please let me know in the comments.

Via the Prospect Heights Patch:

A 41-year-old man was arrested and charged with leaving the scene of an accident after a cop saw him hit a 2-year-old girl who was being taken across Bergen Street at Vanderbilt Avenue, while their light was green. The driver kept going, but the police officer followed him and pulled him over two blocks away. The girl’s face was bruised. The accident took place at 1:23 p.m. on Saturday April 27, according to a police report.

The good news is that it wasn’t much, much worse, but as a parent of a child who’s only now slightly taller than some car bumpers, I can’t imagine how terrifying this must have been for parent and daughter.  I don’t know if this was left out of Patch’s report, but I hope the driver will also be charged with failure to yield and failure to exercise due care.

See you this weekend at the New Amsterdam Bicycle Show.  As a reminder, you can check out my conversation with DOT’s Jon Orcutt on Sunday at noon.  It’s too late to purchase tickets online, but you’ll be able to buy them at the door.

Copenhagen’s Andreas Rohl, speaking to Canada’s National Post:

“I like to say we have no cyclists in Copenhagen,” Mr. Rohl, manager of the City of Copenhagen’s bicycle program, told about 200 people at the Ontario Bike Summit at the Hyatt Regency on King Street West on Tuesday. “We have citizens who use bikes to get from A to B.”

Such non-confrontational lexicon could help lower the temperature of road battles in Toronto, he suggested, where “cyclists” often duke it out with “motorists.”

Following last week’s community board meeting on Plaza Street, at which one angry motorist simultaneously compared the DOT to hippies and Nazis, this San Francisco Examiner caught my attention.

There is an audience out there — mostly older, mostly cranky — that loves to marinate in the notion that drivers in The City are victimized by political correctness run amok.

This idea of two-wheeled liberalism is an attitude that is pandered to by the likes of curmudgeonly columnists at San Francisco newspapers. Consider this quote from a recent column on a proposal to fund Muni by slightly increasing parking fines. “OK, I get it,” the columnist wrote. “Cars are evil. And I drive a car so I must be punished. It’s the law.”

Transportation policy and budget priorities are complex, especially in tough times. It is easy to sit back and paint in broad strokes about issues, but that does nothing to truly advance the conversations that need to be happening.

The editorial goes on to say “it does no one any good to sit back and fan the flames by using hyperbole and half-truths.”  That may be true, but as The Brooklyn Paper has learned, it does generate page views.

The whole piece, on the subject of the rare instance of a cyclist killing a pedestrian, is worth a read.

Photo via Paul Steely White.

DOT crews installing the new pedestrian islands on Prospect Park West have unearthed the old streetcar lines that used to run along the boulevard.  You may remember that tracks were also unearthed at Union and PPW when DOT began constructing pedestrian and cycling improvements to Grand Army Plaza last year.

It’s just another reminder that change is quite literally built into the history of our city’s streets.

From Transportation Alternatives Deputy Director Noah Budnick, via The Bicycle Story.

…the thing I love about riding is that when I ride, I ride because that’s how I want to travel. I ride for the pure enjoyment of bicycling. I don’t ride because I feel like I have to prove anything or because I’m a “cyclist” and I have no other choice. Or because bicycles are superior to other forms of travel and I can’t use any sort of less healthy, less environmental, less city-friendly way of getting around. Other times, I take the subway for the pure enjoyment of taking the train (i.e. reading or listening to my walkman). I take the bus because I want to take the bus or I walk because that’s how I want to get from A to B. I’ve even been known to take a taxicab from time to time.

As an advocate, I’ve come to appreciate the necessity of having multiple of ways of getting around everyday, especially in a city. If you want to live in a healthy city, then we all need access to transportation choices (transportation alternatives, if you will). It’s like your diet: everyone knows that a healthy diet includes a mix of grains, fruits, and vegetables; you can also throw in some meat and diary, a little fat and sugar from time to time. It’s a mix, that’s my point. People are healthy, streets are healthy, neighborhoods are healthy, and cities are healthy when choices are available. People will pick them if they offer competitive advantages; we like variety.

Amen, brother.  When I ride it’s because it makes the most sense for me at that particular moment for that particular trip.  The politics of bicycle advocacy come long after one discovers the joy of bicycling.