We Ride the Lanes
This is my daughter, cookie in her mouth and milk at the ready, telling me to go after seeing everyone start today’s We Ride the Lanes bike ride. Park Slope Patch estimated the attendance at about 750 people.
If you took any pictures, please add them to the Prospect Park West Bike lane Flickr group.
Full wrap up in this post.
“We Ride the Lanes” Sunday at 10:30
Join hundreds of kids and families Sunday for We Ride the Lanes. Gather at 10:30 AM at Grand Army Plaza for the 11 AM start. There will be free T-shirts at the beginning and free cupcakes at the end! What’s not to like?
You don’t have to ride or have kids to participate. Lots of people of all ages will walk along the sidewalk celebrating safe streets.
The weather is looking like it will cooperate, so I’ll see you there!
(Kids) Parade of Cyclers
It won’t be quite as big as the Grand Parade of Cyclers mentioned in this June 21, 1891 New York Times article, but you can be sure that Sunday’s We Ride the Lanes kids and family bike ride will be a lot of fun and a great kick-off to spring.
I’ll be there with my wife and daughter and we’ll be handing out free buttons. Can’t wait to see my fellow knights and ladies of the wheel! Please say hello.
Downfall – Bike Lane Edition
At the risk of invoking Godwin’s law, is this video all that far off from editorial board meetings at the Post?
It was created by someone in Vancouver, but change the street names to Grand Street, Broadway or Prospect Park West and it could just as well be New York. Via Copenhagenize.
Contact CB1 for a Safer Greenpoint Avenue Bridge
- A bike lane to nowhere.
As a major truck route, Greenpoint Avenue is a dangerous street for cyclists. But it’s still an attractive route for many of them since it’s a major connector between Greenpoint, Brooklyn and Sunnyside, Queens. Greenpoint Avenue does a bit of a bait-and-switch with cyclists, as Streetsblog reported last July.
Heading toward Queens, the Greenpoint Avenue bike lane ends abruptly at the bridge, throwing cyclists into mixed traffic where the road widens from two lanes to four. The confusing intersection on the Queens side of the bridge, where Greenpoint Avenue meets Van Dam Street and Review Avenue, is one of the locations most prone to crashes that cause severe injuries in the entire borough.
The DOT has long considered changes to make it safer for cyclists and drivers by narrowing the bridge’s four auto lanes to two and adding six-foot wide bike lanes with a nine foot buffer on either side of the bridge. Of course, that plan has been met with push back, and according to the Brooklyn Paper, the city is reconsidering its plans. Why? Because of some squeaky wheels:
City officials will reconsider plans to extend a bike lane over the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge after residents and local business owners said that the truck route is too dangerous.
“It’s a dangerous commercial strip,” said Tony Argento, whose Broadway Stages production studio business is nearby. “I’m there five, six, seven times a day. I rarely see bicycle on that lane.”
There’s a lot of classic bike lane backlash in these two short paragraphs. A street that is currently “too dangerous” is probably the perfect place for some traffic calming. That’s pretty much the textbook reason for it. The fact that it’s a commercial strip shouldn’t matter, as even cyclists prefer to take the shortest route over the most scenic.
Community Board 1 is planning meetings with residents and business owners to discuss the changes, and if we’ve learned anything from recent traffic calming discussions, it only takes a few loud voices to make the most noise. They’re not accepting emails on the subject, but you can send a fax to them at 718-389-0098. (If you don’t know what a fax is, just look for that giant corded phone in the corner of your office.) Make sure to sign your letter. An old fashioned letter would also work. Send it to:
Community Board #1 Brooklyn
435 Graham Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11211
We Ride the Lanes – Sunday, April 10, 11 am
If you come this Sunday and take pictures, please join the Prospect Park West Flickr group and add yours! My family will be riding up from 4th Avenue. Contact me if you’d like to bike-pool.
Who Uses Bike Lanes?
In my fantasy version of how this whole bike lane saga ends Iris Weinshall, Norman Steisel and Louise Hainline have to meet kids like the little boy, above, and explain to him why he shouldn’t be able to bike to soccer practice in a class I, protected bike lane. As tears well up in the boy’s eyes, they all realize the error of their ways and drop their lawsuit. Then Marty Markowitz takes them all out for pizza, Jim Walden founds an all pro bono law firm, and Chuck Schumer reigns in Wall Street.
Since none of that is going to happen, I suggest you check out this beautiful set of pictures from the thirty minutes photographer Dmitry Gudkov spent on Prospect Park West on Sunday to see the reality of the Prospect Park West Bike lane. The kids and families you’ll see in Dmitry’s pictures are the people who’ll bear the brunt of the Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes lawsuit if it succeeds.
I took a few pictures of my own, and while they’re less artful than Dmitry’s, they hopefully show why this bike lane and others like it are necessary.
Because I have both a daughter and a seat for her on the back of my bike, I’m partial to pictures of parents who have the same setup:
If you’re able to take your kid northbound on a southbound street without having to do it on the sidewalk — thanks to a two-way bike lane — then I’d say the street is pretty darn safe:
This dad was so cool with his kid riding in the bike lane that he was able to ride ahead of him, not worried about his son getting rear ended by a car that couldn’t see him. The kid even slowed down for a pedestrian, pictured, but the guy waved him through.
There’s a growing group of these pictures at Flickr. Please join and add your pictures.
Here’s part of the statement the PR firm working for Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes put out in response to the Jim Brennan poll:
Jim Walden, pro bono attorney (from the law firm Gibson Dunn and Crutcher) for plaintiffs Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes and Seniors for Safety (who are suing the DOT and its Commissioner re: the Prospect Park West bike lane) said, “Pedestrians feel less safe crossing Prospect Park West, as this poll decisively shows. But DOT’s own data tell the same story, and the numbers don’t lie: people feel less safe because they are less safe. In the end, safety is not a popularity contest.
Walden’s pretty crafty, isn’t he? He says the poll “decisively shows” that people feel less safe but that that “safety is not a popularity contest.” Walden has used this reasoning before. Here’s what he said on the Brian Lehrer Show on March 23rd on the subject of the Brad Lander survey:
They keep trumpeting this study, as if safety was a popularity contest. What they don’t talk about, and it mystifies me how they would do this – there are significant number of people who responded who said they felt less safe. Now clearly the majority of the people felt more safe but it was more than 30 percent. I wonder if he conducted the survey again, and if he conducted the survey in person, and not over the internet so people could pad the numbers, and if he conducted it with senior citizens who access the park and disabled people who access the park what those numbers would say.
You got that? If the majority of people in a survey feel the bike lane is working, then safety is not a popularity contest. But if that survey could somehow be redone to show that the majority of people feel that it is not working, then safety is a popularity contest.
The Brennan poll — which skewed heavily to drivers and people with landlines — still shows that 48% of local residents support the bike lane and that 25% want a few changes. Only 32 percent want to remove the bike lane entirely. But like so much of the NBBL strategy, Walden seems to love grasping onto the one piece of data he thinks makes his clients’ case. Here’s the part of the survey which Walden categorizes as a decisive showing:
Regarding the impact of the bike lane on pedestrian safety, 33% of all respondents feel less safe crossing Prospect Park West, while 22% feel more safe.
But if you look at the other pieces of the poll, the picture changes a bit:
48% said it was a change for the better, and 32% said it was a change for the worse. 20% had no opinion. 37% felt strongly it was a change for the better, and 26% felt strongly it was a change for the worse.
In other words, 33% of respondents feel less safe, but 48% say it’s a change for the better. Brennan’s poll starts to get a little less decisive, no?
As Tom Vanderbilt writes, “Perception of safety and actual safety in traffic are not always the same.” People just aren’t used to this bike lane yet, so the fact that they actually are safer now than then ever have been may take some time to filter through the community. Let’s see the polling on this in a year or two. By then everyone, even the grownups, will have learned how to look both ways before crossing the street.
The good news about street improvements is that they benefit you no matter how you feel. While the new PPW may seem strange and mysterious, you’re safer crossing two lanes of traffic, not three. You’re safer with cars going 30 miles per hour, not 40. You’re safer now that cyclists take to the bike lane and not the sidewalk. But give Jim Walden credit for being right about something and earning all the money NBBL is paying him in the process. When it comes to safety, the numbers don’t lie: since the bike lane went in the NYPD hasn’t reported a single pedestrian injury.
With the facts working against them, a weak showing at the last CB6 meeting, and a second poll showing their neighbors support for the bike lane, NBBL’s ship is sinking. All they have left is a life boat that’s going to cost taxpayers a lot of money: a lawsuit.
I’ll have more on this later, but there’s yet another poll showing the broad community support for the Prospect Park West bike lane. What’s notable about this poll is that people favored the bike lane by a 3-2 margin, even though 66% of the poll respondents said they own or frequently use a car. Only 49% of the households in Assembly Member Jim Brennan’s district have cars.
Also worth noting is that 83% of the people polled were reached on landlines and just 17% on cellphones. Landline-dominated polls tend to skew older. In fact, if landline polls decided elections, John McCain would be president right now.
This poll of 500 people had a margin of error of +/- 4.5 points. The Lander/Levin survey, which showed similar, if not greater levels of support for the bike lane had over 3,000 respondents.
Here’s a great stat:
52% of the residents in 11215 feel the bike lane is a change for the better.
9 PPW and 14 PPW are in the 11215 zip code.
Chuck Schumer and the Prospect Park West Bike Lane*
This was the biggest week for Chuck Schumer bike lane news since it was first revealed that the senator was working behind the scenes to have the Prospect Park West bike lane removed. If I’m missing anything notable, please leave a link in the comments.
Winners & Losers, City Hall News, 4/1/11:
First he said too little. Then he said too much. Asked about a certain Prospect Park bike lane, New York’s chatty senior senator refused to say a word about it. A legal challenge to the controversial lane from a group that includes his wife, former city transportation commissioner Iris Weinshall, just may have had something to do with Schumer’s uncharacteristic reticence.
Schumer Won’t Weigh in on Brooklyn Bike Lane, NBC New York, 3/29/11:
Schumer himself lives on Prospect Park West. And, according to the Times, the groups that have filed the lawsuit have close ties to Iris Weinshall, Schumer’s wife and the city’s transportation commissioner until 2007.
Chuck Schumer Mysteriously Quiet About Bike Lane His Wife Hates, Daily Intel, 3/28/11:
Schumer’s wife, former New York City transportation commissioner Iris Weinshall, is a prominent supporter of Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes, a group suing the city to have the bike lane removed.
Isn’t it Interesting that Schumer Won’t Comment on Bike Lanes? Gothamist, 3/28/11:
Schumer, who has never shown any reticence on other hot topics ranging from abortion to Afghanistan, is apparently too scared to dip his oar into the turbulent waters of the bike lane whirlpool. Which is interesting, because his wife, former NYC DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall, has been one of the most forceful opponents of the PPW bike lane. The group she co-founded, Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes, even held at least one meeting at the Schumers’ residence.
For Schumer, A Bike Lane Too Close to Comment, New York Times, 3/27/11:
Mr. Schumer’s position is especially curious because the lane became the focus of a lawsuit this month, and the groups that filed the suit have close ties to Iris Weinshall, Mr. Schumer’s wife and the city’s transportation commissioner until 2007.
As I’ve mentioned before, Chuck Schumer’s wife doesn’t just have “close ties” to the groups that are suing to have the bike lane removed, she’s also a member.
*Please look for my children’s book of the same title in bookstores in 2016.
Brooklyn Spoke 
