Brooklyn Spoke

Louise Hainline isn’t even pretending that she and her fellow neighbors are “for better bike lanes” anymore.  In an article in the Daily News by Erin Durkin, the Brooklyn College dean flat out takes credit for the two-way protected bike lane on Plaza Street being scrapped during the recent Grand Army Plaza redesign.

“If we had not done what we’ve been doing with the bike lanes, they probably would have moved ahead,” said Louise Hainline, president of Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes.

Is Louise Hainline going rogue?  I can’t imagine that Linda Gross or any PR professional sanctioning that kind of talking point if you’re trying to convince people that the only bike lane you are against is the one in your front yard.  Then again, when even the Brooklyn Paper says it has had enough and when your personal emails reveal that you think a reputable local journalist is “acting like a middle school newspaper reporter,” maybe it’s just not worth it keep up the façade anymore.  I’d really love a reporter to ask Hainline which on-street, protected bike lane she actually supports.  My guess is she wouldn’t be able to answer.

The more we hear from Louise Hainline the more arrogant she sounds.*  At least Iris Weinshall and Chuck Schumer have so far had the good sense not to make any comments on the subject of bike lanes.

The article, in which I am also quoted, serves up another example of the kind of bike lane Hainline thinks is better: one in which drivers can double park.

“Cars now have trouble getting by when someone is dropping off or picking up, and it would have been impossible (with a two-way lane).”

Isn’t it interesting that the inverse of this is never a concern for those who cynically hang their opposition bike lanes on unfounded claims about safety?  That is, no one ever says, “Bikes have trouble getting by when a driver is dropping off or picking up, and it is very dangerous (without a two-way lane).”  Of course, it’s very telling that such avid motorists never follow up with the obvious solution to this problem: dedicated loading zones.  The issue is that such a solution would mean losing one or two parking spaces every couple of blocks, and because the benefits to the many do not outweigh the privilege of the few in the warped agenda of groups such as NBBL, it is never proposed.  The radical pro-car-lane lobby would never allow it.

*Jim, this is simply my personal opinion and not a statement of fact.

Something funny happens when a bike lane goes from a proposal to reality: the hysteria surrounding it tends to change.  From Memphis, Tennessee comes this encouraging story of local business owners supporting a bike lane they once opposed.  The bike lane is in the very early stages and is still being striped, but even the owner of a small mailing company is beginning to change his tune:

No, Weber doesn’t foresee cycling customers bringing large packages for him to ship from his shop at 1910 Madison.

But the 54-year-old can envision more customers biking in with thumb drives to print documents, or to rent time on his computers.

More broadly, Weber can see a day when Madison Avenue is so much more appealing that it draws more customers for every business, from restaurants to professional offices.

This from a man who earlier this year warned that dedicated bike lanes might put him out of business.

Weber has the right idea and the fact that he owns a mailing company speaks volumes about the need to change or die.  He could continue to focus on 20th century needs, like stamps and cardboard boxes, and watch his business wither away, or he can start shifting his business to compete in an electronic age.  A city, too, can stick with the status quo, using old models of what “worked” in the past, or it can adapt and get out ahead of the curve.

New York City has long been a haven for artists, educators, business people, fashion designers, writers, musicians, actors, techies, and countless others whose very jobs are synonymous with innovation and brave new ideas.  Change is part of the DNA of every New Yorker, and you can see it in every immigrant community, with the creep of gentrification, with every new skyscraper, and even in a new storefront that used to be a different new storefront not too long ago.

That’s why it’s simultaneously distressing and funny to see how confused and hysterical the old guard can be when it comes to something as basic as a bike lane.  The city that never sleeps has never been afraid of change.  Why should it be afraid of thermoplastic?

I’m quoted in an article in Sunday’s Times about overcrowded bike storage in buildings across New York.  I also happen to know some of the other people who lend their voices to a discussion about some of the most sought-after real estate in New York: a place to park one’s bike.

Liz Patek, a professional dancer, said most of the bikes stored in her large rental building on the Upper West Side sat idle through much of the year.

“Of the 80 or so bikes I count between the two rooms,” she said in an e-mail, “at least 75 percent go unused all year round. There are four commuters (including myself) that make use of the rooms and who commute daily.”

New and recently renovated buildings may have brighter spaces, wall-mounted hooks and vertical racks, but that does not mean there are no tensions.

“Everybody who is an owner feels entitled to a space, whether they use the bike or not,” said Chris Benfante, 50, a cyclist whose condo building in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, has two bicycle rooms on the eighth floor. “We get complaints — usually from the people who use their bikes the most.”

As a real estate agent who sells units in his building, the Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower, now called 1 Hanson Place, Mr. Benfante recognizes the rooms’ broad popularity.

“I tell people as they’re moving in, I show them the bike storage room,” he said, “and they inevitably ask if they’re guaranteed a space. I have to tell them no.”

Last month, the building posted signs asking residents who had stopped using their bikes to voluntarily clear them out; it also installed new racks. Both measures, Mr. Benfante said, helped with the crowding that had often forced him and his regularly riding neighbors to haul their bicycles into their apartments. “It was kind of frustrating,” he said.

Doug Gordon, a 37-year-old television producer who commutes by bike to SoHo, said he had the same problem in his Gowanus, Brooklyn, rental.

“If I happened to have a night where I stay at work late,” he said, “there will definitely be times where it will be easier for me to bring it up to the apartment.”

I’ve lived in our current apartment for about a year and a half and in that time have noticed some bikes not move from their position in our building’s garage once, their tires deflated and their frames coated with dust.  The super tells me that some bikes have been abandoned by previous tenants, but that the building’s management is afraid of doing anything about it, lest someone return to claim a bike and report it stolen.  The regular commuters in my building often arrive home only to find no place to park, or a spot buried so deep within the thicket of bikes that locking it up and removing it the next day would mean risking major damage to one’s bike or person.

Management is listening, however.  While they may not want to remove any bikes they are planning to install more bike parking in a couple of car parking spots they’ve been unable to rent.

It’s a nice piece, and my only quibble with is is the use of the term “avid cyclist” anyone who bikes to work and for general transportation.  Reporters never describe drivers who use their cars for every trip to and from the office or the grocery store as “avid motorists,” do they?

Dan MacLeod at the Brooklyn Paper reports on Senator Chuck Schumer’s continued reticence when it comes to the bike lane that runs across the street from his apartment building.  I don’t know if the phrasing of this sentence was deliberate, but it sure is a zinger:

The avid bicyclist [is] in the unenviable position of being married to former city Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall, who is one of the biggest foes of the world’s most controversial bike lane.

MacLeod bumped into Schumer at the Staten Island Democratic Party dinner earlier this week, and writes that when he asked about the bike lane, “the senator’s usual eloquence again hit a oratorical pothole.”

“I haven’t been commenting on that,” Schumer said.

MacLeod writes that he wasn’t able to question Schumer any further, but asked an aide about his biking habits.  The response sounds like a new version of a familiar refrain.

An aide offered only that Schumer “bikes all over the city.”

“But does he use a bike lane?” this reporter asked.

The aide just laughed.

If Chuck uses bike lanes to get all over the city, but not the one on PPW, that’s a shame.  It’s the best bike lane in New York.

Fifth Avenue and President Street, Park Slope.

I’ll be on a lighter posting schedule this week, due to some big deadlines at work.  If you have any event listings or news you’d like to share, contact me or find me on Twitter and I’ll post what I can.

I’ve actually been so busy that this site’s one-year anniversary came and went two days ago without me even remembering it.  More later, but many thanks to my readers and to all of the amazing advocates and great thinkers I’ve met in the course of the last year.  It’s been a great ride so far.

Spotted in the window of the new condos going up on the corner of St. Johns Place and 5th Avenue.  I’m starting to notice that bike storage, which in this condo is listed as a separate amenity from private storage, is becoming an increasingly common marketing tool in Brooklyn real estate these days.  If cyclists are an indicator species for a healthy city, then ads like this are their own indicators.

A sight as rare as baby pigeons: NYPD officers on bikes.  Spotted outside of my office on the corner of 6th Avenue and Spring Street.

I wonder what would happen if one of them was run over by a flatbed truck.  Somehow I doubt the NYPD would tell the officer’s family, “There’s no criminality. That’s why they call it an accident.”

Curbed has a short interview with Urbanized director Gary Hustwit.

Curbed: I have to ask, what’s your bike lane stance?

Hustwit: I’m a bicycle rider in Manhattan. And as someone who’s just toured the country, we in New York have the best biking infrastructure of any I’ve seen in the US. Portland has a bigger percentage of riders but we have better bike lanes for sure. I totally believe in the concept of invitation, that the city has to build lanes to get people to use them. But it’s not something that happens overnight – it took 30 years to build that kind of ridership in Copenhagen. It’s about giving people options, especially people who don’t have the money to even pay for public transportation. Also, why have we subsidized the automobile industry for so long?

Whenever someone tells me that New York isn’t Copenhagen, my standard response is, “Not too long ago, Copenhagen wasn’t Copenhagen.”  Change happens slowly, but eventually there’s a moment where it will feel as if it happened all at once.  You know we’ll have made progress when, 30 years from now, someone fighting a bike lane elsewhere in the country tells a reporter, “This isn’t New York.”