All the Rage
Via The Brooklyn Paper: “Linda Setlech was so worked up over state Sen. Marty Golden’s proposal to shut down traffic six Friday nights this summer for a pedestrian mall, that she was actually shaking with rage.” Imagine getting that angry over a plan to allow pedestrians access to the street for a grand total of about 18 hours over a month and a half! You’d think it involved bulldozing homes and businesses.
Setlech also got very upset over the Ground Zero “mosque”:
This picture of Setlech appears in many stories on the May 2010 community board meeting regarding the downtown Manhattan Islamic cultural center:
One day, when my daughter comes to visit me in the floating city of New Chicago, she’ll pull up these images on her iPhone 26, show them to me, and ask why the true problems of the early 21st century barely merited the kind of passion people devoted to pedestrian plazas, cultural centers, and foreign-flavored turkey recipes. I’ll remove my CO2-filtering face mask, take a sip of Brawndo, clear my throat, and reply sadly, “I don’t know, sweetheart. I really don’t know.”
Some of My Best Friends are Bike Lanes
In April, the New York Times quoted New York City Council Member Dominic Recchia after he successfully stopped an on-street bike lane from being painted on Bay Ridge Parkway:
“I’m not against bike lanes,” he said. “I believe there’s a place for them. But when we place them, we have to have input from the community boards, from people in the community.”
Streetsblog noted that there are few east-west bike routes in Recchia’s district and suggested that “if he really believes there’s a place for bike lanes, he should say where and make his case.”
Until he does that, Recchia can’t have it both ways. He can’t claim he’s not against bike lanes as long as his only public statement on the issue is to crow about killing a plan for the only east-west bike lane in the area. He can’t say there’s a place for bike lanes without even hinting at where that might be.
Even though he’s been named a “full-fledged captain of the bikelash,” Recchia is in good company when it comes to this doublespeak. In no particular order, here’s a small collection of quotes from politicians and community leaders who all know one thing: if you want to be against bike lanes, you have to let everyone know you’re for bike lanes.
Eric Ulrich, New York City Council Member:
“I’m not against cycling. I think it’s environmentally friendly. But they share the roads with drivers and pedestrians and they have a responsibility to follow the same laws.”
Tony Juliano, president and chairperson of the Greenwich Village-Chelsea Chamber of Commerce:
“We’re not opposed to bicycle lanes — however, not the way they’ve been implemented in this city,” he said.
Jim Walden, the pro bono attorney for Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes, describing his clients.
“This is consistent with DOT’s decision to enlist an individual (the ‘Blogger’) to wage a viral campaign against critics of the PPW configuration, many of whom support bike lanes generally, including on Prospect Park West.”
Former Deputy Mayor and Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes member Norman Steisel:
“We’re not opposed to bike lanes. We’re opposed to this one and the way it was done.”
Jaguar-driving New Yorker writer John Cassidy:
“I don’t have anything against bikes. As a student, I lived in the middle of Oxford, where cycling is the predominant mode of transport, and I cycled everywhere.”
Marty Markowitz in his State of the Borough Address earlier this year:
“I hope you understand that I am not against bicycles. I’m not even against bike lanes. I’ve supported their creation around Brooklyn, including 9th street near Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Greenway that runs from Greenpoint to Sunset Park.”
Leslie Lewis, president of Brooklyn’s 84th Precinct Community Council:
I’m not anti-bike, but I follow police statistics: About 90 percent of the bicyclists killed in this city died, in part, because they were not following the rules of the road.
Po-ling Ng, quoted on the subject of the Grand Street bike lane:
“We are not against bike lanes,” said Po-ling Ng, the director of Project Open Door Senior Citizens Center of the Chinese-American Planning Council Inc. She was accompanied by a dozen senior residents. “There are a lot of senior citizens, public schools and day cares in this area and children get hurt.”
Sean Sweeney, director of the SoHo Alliance:
“I’m not against bike lanes per se — just the way D.O.T. handles them.”
Sweeney’s quote may be the bike lane hating quote par excellence, one that artfully encompasses all other irrational bike backlash sentiment into a concise, thirteen-word statement. He isn’t opposed to bike lanes at all – he’s merely opposed to the way the agency that is charged with studying and installing them studies and installs them.
If you have other examples, please leave them in the comments below.
UPDATE 3/15/16:
Here’s Marty Markowitz, back to tell you how much he loves bike lanes, so long as they’re nowhere near his home:
Outside the courtroom, Markowitz told us that there’s no inconsistency between the work his office does using bike infrastructure as a selling pointfor tourists and his opposition to an amenity his old neighborhood has largely embraced.
“I don’t oppose all bike lanes, just this particular one,” he explained, describing his position on the bike lanes on Kent Avenue and the West Side Highway: “Love love love it.”
3/25/16:
Janet Street-Porter, The Independent, “Cyclists and their powerful backers are destroying London for the rest of us.”
There’s a modern assumption that cycling is fantastic, that we should all want to do it, that people who cycle are the salt of the earth, closer to God or a higher power. I don’t doubt that cycling (in the countryside, away from fumes) is a great way to keep fit. I do it myself sometimes.
4/7/16:
Stu Bykovsky, Philadelphia Daily News, “Bike Lane ‘Upgrade’ Coming.”
“We don’t object to bike lanes,” Broh said, “it’s the protected bike lanes we have concerns about.”
Me too.
5/11/16:
Queens Times-Ledger, “Mayor overrides CB 4 to allow bike lanes in Queens Blvd. plan.”
“A lot of you think I don’t like bikes, but I do,” Walker said. “But I don’t think Queens Boulevard is necessarily the place for a bike lane. Put it on Woodside Avenue or Grand Avenue. This is not a park, this is a very heavily traveled vehicular roadway.”
5/16/16:
Marilyn Katz, Chicago Tribune: “Make bicyclists accountable to the same rules as motorists.”
I understand the city’s love affair with bikes — lowering the cost of transportation for many and polishing Chicago’s image as a place where hipsters and hippies alike can find community. I greet the annual Bike the Drive event with pleasure and greatly enjoyed watching the nude bicycle ride in Lakeview last Saturday. But I also have empathy for motorists for whom a drive down Clybourn Avenue or Elston Avenue now takes twice as long as former two-lane arterial streets have been reduced to one to accommodate bike lanes and where traffic is fraught as cyclists weave in and out for advantage.
Police Squad!
A 1903 picture of a bicycle police squad, via to the Museum of the City of New York. Maybe they were about to begin their own version of Operation Safe Cycle in order to ticket uncultivated and degenerate wheelwomen wearing short skirts.
The Real Age Discrimination
From the Tri-State Transportation Campaign’s report, “Older Pedestrians at Risk,” comes this startling information about seniors and pedestrian safety:
People aged 60 years and older comprise 46% of Brooklyn’s 150 pedestrians killed in the three years from 2007 through 2009, though they make up only 16.3% of the population. Those 75 years and older account for only 5.6% of the total population, but 18% of pedestrian fatalities.
At 5.52, the pedestrian fatality rate for Brooklyn residents aged 60 and older was 4.48 times that of residents younger than 60. For those aged 75 years plus, the fatality rate (6.25) was 5.07 times that of their younger neighbors.
I anxiously await the joint statement from the Gray Panthers and Seniors for Safety on the inherent age discrimination designed into Brooklyn streets.
Chuck Schumer Cares About Safe Streets…
In a letter to NYSDOT Commissioner Joan McDonald and Federal Highway Administrator Victor Mendez, Schumer said NYSDOT should work with local officials and FHWA staff to create a safety strategy focused on “safety for pedestrians and downtown walkability for small businesses and Smithtown merchants.” He highlighted the width of the road (40 feet, with four lanes of traffic) as one of the key factors leading to dangerous driving, as well as utility poles that reduce visibility and traffic lanes which he said are too narrow.
Emphasis mine. The road in question, Smithtown’s Main Street, is an undeniable death trap, with three pedestrian fatalities since 2010. In May, a nine-year-old girl was seriously injured when she was struck by a car there.
“It’s long past time for the road to be redesigned, no question,” Schumer said. “It shouldn’t take another tragic loss for this road to be fixed.”
You’d think Schumer would be able to hold PPW up as a shining example of what can be accomplished before a tragedy strikes. If only the street didn’t run right in front of his apartment building.
A Response to Eric Ulrich
Melissa Rosales is the former Queens Community Board 9 member who, via Twitter, expressed her concern to Council Member Eric Ulrich about his comments regarding the “nightmare” of bike lanes. Ulrich responded with an ungracious “#getalife” and later doubled down on his dismissal of her concerns by claiming that he had been the subject of vulgar tweets and harassment. Rosales sent me this response:
I am offended by the suggestion that I have been harassing Councilman Ulrich. But most of all, I am disheartened, that when voicing an issue to a local councilman, someone who is supposed to help you find solutions to problems, I was not only dismissed, but insulted.
The issue in our community regarding traffic safety has tragically and unfortunately arisen on too many occasions this past year. The tragic passing of an 81-year-old woman crossing Woodhaven Blvd on a walk signal and more recently the tragedy on 103rd avenue, involving a 53 year-old-grandmother (who happens be my parents’ age). I mentioned in my tweet that traffic calming measures, which at times may include bike lanes, improved crosswalks, and more, have been proven to slow traffic by narrowing lanes and reducing excessive speed. I suggested they should be considered dreams, not nightmares, as Councilman Ulrich had tweeted just days earlier. Though the recent tragedy cannot be undone, I believe further incidents can be avoided with these types of traffic calming measures. Even at the specific intersection in question, residents in the following ABC Newscast are begging for changes beyond the ineffective stop signs that currently exist.
The statistics of how these infrastructures can save lives is unmistakable and they have even been mentioned in a memo from Deputy Mayor, Howard Wolfson.
This is a safety concern that I fear not only for myself – an active member of the community, but also for my parents – homeowners in the community, and my neighbors & friends; all of whom have lived in the community, went to school in the community, walk in the community, shop in the community, drive in the community, and yes there are some that bike in the community.
I am disappointed that such a matter was flippantly handled by the Councilman, a councilman whom I’ve worked alongside in our community. A councilman who I cheered on when he and other elected officials advocated for engine 294, a councilman whom I’ve shared past beliefs within the benefit of our community. I am also disappointed that someone in his position would choose his words so poorly not once, but numerous times, continuously offending his constituents and his community.
The Real Seniors for Safety
If there’s one part of their spaghetti-on-the-wall strategy that Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes hadn’t fully exploited in the press, it’s the vague claims of ageism. Enter the Park Slope Patch, with this article, “Gray Panthers Call PPW Bike Lane Battle ‘Ageist.'”
“The amount of hateful, snarky, and dismissive ageist remarks that we have seen in the debate about the Prospect Park West bike lane is incredible,” said Jack Kupferman, NYC Network Co-Convenor for the organization…
If you want to prove that there was an “incredible” amount of ageist remarks in the bike lane debate, I’d imagine you’d want to cite more than a handful of comments that mostly appeared on a blog with page view numbers that barely surpass NBBL’s estimates of PPW bike lane ridership. It would kind of be like me claiming there have been an “incredible” amount of lawsuits over the bike lane.
Thankfully, two real seniors for safety, Gene Aronowitz and David Alquist, have logic and reason on their side. Alquist serves up the most intelligent quote on safe streets I’ve read in quite some time, saying that the “previous configuration of Prospect Park West, with three lanes of speeding traffic and no provision for cycling, was inherently ageist by design.” By returning PPW to its previous speedway design, Iris Weinshall, Norman Steisel, Jim Walden, Louise Hainline, and the other members of NBBL would actually do more potential harm to seniors than any blog comment could ever do.
With good weather allowing people to ride in numbers that no one spy camera could possibly count, and with the bike lane a unanimously approved fixture of the neighborhood, most of NBBL’s previous arguments against it simply won’t cut it anymore, not that they ever did. Not used to looking both ways before you cross the street? Just about everyone else is by now.
The Gray Panthers call for “seniors’ right to be heard,” but fails to mention in their statement that the seniors for whom they are speaking will have every right to be heard on June 22nd in Kings Country Supreme Court. Expect to see more negative press of this sort in the coming two weeks.
Community
Sometimes we need to give up some of what we had so that others can have a little more. Now we need to give up some of what we had so that our grandchildren can have anything. There’s a word for that: community.
A really great quote from a really great post from Cap’n Transit.
Dah Shop
Two very industrious guys from Dah Shop were on the Manhattan Side of the Manhattan Bridge this morning, handing out free Gatorade and free patched tubes to riders. Did you see them on your ride today?
I’ve always thought that this would be a great spot for a bike-related kiosk that’s open during the warmer months. Someone could sell the kind of last-minute supplies a rider might need for the final stretch of his or her commute: spare tubes, patch kits, lights, cheap rain gear, snacks, and drinks. Offer some basic bike maintenance and an air pump and you’d have a great amenity for city cyclists. Even something like this would be a great idea.
It would fit in nicely with the city’s existing plans to make this area more inviting. Add some cafe chairs and tables and you’d have a great meeting place for people riding to and from work together.
On June 2nd, New York City Council Member Eric Ulrich tweeted his own “random observ” about bike lanes:
Interestingly, this tweet no longer shows up in his history. He may have felt the need to delete it after this tragic incident happened in his district on June 3rd:
WOMAN STRUCK BY OUT OF CONTROL VAN IN QUEENS
OZONE PARK (WABC) — A grandmother is fighting for her life after two vans collided in Queens. The force of the impact sent one of the vans careening through the intersection and onto the sidewalk.
The victim, a 53-year-old woman, was left sprawled across the pavement, gasping for breath and covered in blood.
Family members say she was waiting on the corner to cross the street, on her way to pick up her grandchildren from school.
The accident happened at 103rd Avenue and 93rd Street in Ozone Park.
Ulrich’s office is at 101st Avenue and 93rd Street.
The next day, a Queens resident and former Community Board 10 9 member tweeted this @ reply to Council Member Ulrich, expressing her concern about his priorities:
I can think of about a million possible responses to this if you’re as inclined to dislike bikes, bike racks, and traffic calming as Ulrich appears to be. One possibility is to ignore the tweet, which I’m sure is a tactic favored by most politicians. Another would be to respond with something disarming: “Thanks for your concern. My condolences to the woman’s family.” Perhaps the council member could have told @hangingbyastrap that he respectfully disagrees and that no one knows how this tragedy could have been prevented.
Instead, Ulrich sent this tweet:
Classy.
Brooklyn Spoke 