Which Historic Charm? Pt. 4
Here’s a great shot of the historic Hulbert Mansion at 49 Prospect Park West, which is now home to the Poly Prep Lower School. You can make out the overhead cable of the trolley line. The picture was taken in the 1930s. As others have noted, street design is never sacrosanct, but rather it’s something that changes with time and that’s re-evaluated as new technology and challenges become a part of our world.
Neighbors For Better Bike Lanes Files Lawsuit
Finally, the New York Post was right about something as far as bike lanes are concerned.
Transportation Nation is reporting that Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes has filed their lawsuit to have the two-way protected bike lane on Prospect Park West removed. This is deeply disturbing, and if their lawsuit gains any traction it will have a terrible effect on bike lanes from here to the Bronx and back again.
Thankfully, Andrea Bernstein counters the claim from NBBL that the traffic calming project was installed without community input, writing, “It was approved by the local community board before it was installed.” That’s succinct enough for my taste. I do, however, find it very illustrative of this entire “controversy” that this lawsuit was filed just a few days before a giant public hearing on the subject. Instead of waiting their turn to speak, NBBL jumped the line in the biggest possible way, filing this before the community got one more chance to weigh in on the subject.
More info as it comes, but I believe this makes the meeting on Thursday, and your attendance and letters of support to Community Board Six, even more crucial.
Expect a media pile-on on Tuesday, including pieces in the Times and Post and another CBS2 hit job, but you can already see the seeds that have been planted in the coverage so far, even when it’s not specifically about this lawsuit. Today, the Post blasted plans for bike lanes and traffic calming measures in Cobble Hill, and those bike lanes most likely won’t even be separated ones like on PPW, but rather just green paint and stripes, as already exists on a few streets in that neighborhood. Bike lanes will only be as good as the network that connects them all, and if NBBL succeeds on PPW, then nothing is off limits.
Be there on Thursday.
UPDATE: Here’s the expected Marcia Kramer Kramer CBS2 piece. Kramer’s piece offers little insight into the substance of the lawsuit, speaks to no residents who favor the bike lane, and is itself mostly a PR piece for NBBL. It’s interesting to me that NBBL is claiming that the two-way bike lane is dangerous to seniors and others who might be at risk for being hit by a bike, yet Marcia Kramer ends her segment by walking down the middle of it without a scratch.
The Park Slope Patch’s Kristen Brown has a story on the lawsuit. I’m quoted at the end. Louise Hainline is quoted pushing NBBL’s call to move the bike lane into the park, which really means losing the traffic calming benefits of the design. She says that “a park-based route is both safer and more acceptable and more pleasant.” Safer for whom? I’m happy to invite Louise to meet me at Grand Army Plaza at 1 AM any night of the week. She can borrow my bike and take it through the park if she wants, but there’s no way I’d want to go into the park after dark. It’s not pleasant at all.
And here’s the New York Times article on the lawsuit. It’s by Michael Grynbaum, who wrote this weekend’s piece on Sadik-Khan. At least he mentions Chuck Schumer in this one:
The lawsuit, filed by a group with close ties to Iris Weinshall, the city’s transportation commissioner from 2000 to 2007 and the wife of Senator Charles E. Schumer, accuses the Transportation Department of misleading residents about the benefits of the lane, cherry-picking statistics on safety improvements and collaborating with bicycle activists to quash community opposition.
The opponents are being represented pro bono by Jim Walden, a lawyer at the firm Gibson Dunn and a contributor to the 2010 campaign of Mr. Schumer.
If you have news or updates, please leave them in the comments.
Prize Fighter
While everyone was foaming at the mouth over Michael Grynbaum’s Janette Sadik-Khan story in the Times, you might have missed the latest salvo from Post columnist Michael Goodwin on Sunday. This is Goodwin’s second pot-shot at the DOT in about a week, and it’s filled with the typical derisive nicknames and freedom from reality one can expect from the Post.
It’s not just that the Bicycle Zealot is hostile to anything on four wheels. It’s that her determination to chop up streets for her pet cause is wasting millions of dollars, creating congestion and damaging credibility — hers and, increasingly, the mayor’s.
Sadik-Khan has a wide reputation for massaging data and for moving the goalposts on things like traffic speed if results don’t match her promises. A Brooklyn group is fed up and plans to file suit this week, accusing her of peddling false stats on bike use and accidents on Prospect Park West.
So, the best a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist can do is recycle insults from Marty Markowitz. Plus, he repeats the meme that the city’s bike lane infrastructure is costing “millions of dollars,” which probably stirs images of Sadik-Khan burning the ink off of hundred-dollar bills to make green paint. In fact, the entire bike lane network has cost $8.8 million dollars, with 80% of that coming from Washington, meaning the actual cost to NYC is less than $2 million. That’s almost millions, but not actually millions. As Streetsblog, Gothamist, and others have pointed out, that’s also less than what DOT has spent to repair pot holes this winter, and the department is not even done yet. (It’s also a drop in the bucket compared with the $190.4 million DOT paving budget.)
Whether or not bike lanes have caused congestion has actually been studied, in case Goodwin cares to prove how he earned that Pulitzer. One example is that the new PPW moves the same amount of cars in the same amount of time as it did before it had a bike lane. Travel times near Times Square have actually improved since pedestrian plazas were installed. It’s convenient, however, to push the fantasy that traffic in New York City was more tolerable before Sadik-Khan was appointed in 2007. Remember how no one ever got stuck in traffic ever, anywhere and you could always find a parking space? Those were the good ole days.
Speaking of moving the goal posts, Goodwin writes that Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes, the “Brooklyn group,” is planning to file their law suit this week. But Transportation Nation reported on February 4 that NBBL was then “expected to come next week.” I know these things can take time, but one month later there’s still no lawsuit, only rumors.
Give Goodwin credit however. His article is the rare example of the Post choosing correctly between pedaling and peddling.
Letter Have It
I wanted to call attention to something posted on the Facebook page for those supporting the Prospect Park West bike lane and traffic calming project.
…write a letter this weekend to Community Board Six expressing your support [for the project]. As the “Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes” will tell you, each letter has a “standard multiplier effect” of 50.
I think it’s a great idea and mine will be in the mail on Monday morning. Please do the same so that the community board receives it in time for the meeting on Thursday, March 10 at 6:30 PM at John Jay High School. If you’re not able to attend this is a great way to have your voice heard. Even if you will be there you may not get a chance to speak, so write a letter to make sure your opinion is counted.
You can write to CB6 at:
Brooklyn Community Board Six, 250 Baltic Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
UPDATE: Mailed my letter today, Sunday. If you have one you’d like to share, or even if you’d just like to add your name to the roster of people who have written a letter, please leave it in the comments below. Thanks.
Pedestrians with Wheels
Mikael at Copenhagenize has an amazing set of pictures worth checking out. (Full set at Flickr.) In each, he took a picture of a person or group of people riding their bikes and then Photoshopped out the bicycles. The results are really illustrative of just where bicycling falls on the spectrum between walking and driving.
He writes, “If you take away the bicycles from the bicycle users on the cycle track they resemble, by and large, pedestrians.” In fact in a culture where cyclists aren’t wearing team kits, Lycra, reflective vests or even helmets and where most are riding in an upright position, “bicycle users are merely pedestrians who go a bit faster.”
Mark Your Calendars: Thursday, March 10
Community Board 6 is holding a public hearing on Thursday, March 10 and it’s important that all those who support the traffic calming project show up in big numbers.
The details:
Thursday, March 10, 6:30 PM, John Jay High School Auditorium, 237 7th Ave, Between 4th and 5th Streets, Brooklyn. (F train at 7th Avenue is the closest subway stop.)
Here’s the agenda for the evening.
– Review and discussion of (i) proposed modifications to the Prospect Park West bike lane configuration; (ii) other modifications that were suggested in responses to the community survey by Council Members Lander and Levin and Brooklyn CB6, and; (iii) other issues concerning existing or proposed bike lanes within the Brooklyn CB6 district.
I’m told there will be an opportunity for public input, so get there early in case there’s a sign-up list.
Here’s an important distinction between previous meetings and this one: what’s on the table are discussions about “modifications” to the bike lane, including those that were suggested in the Lander/Levin survey. The issue of moving the lane or changing the protective nature of its design does not seem to be a matter for discussion, although it will come up. Remember, the survey did not find a significant number of people who wanted to move the bike lane into the park or turn it into two painted lines running next to car traffic. The whole point was traffic calming, which has been achieved with outstanding results on PPW, but can not be achieved by a lane in the park or lines of paint on the street.
However, that seems to be precisely what Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes wants. Here’s Louise Hainline in the Brooklyn Paper:
…we support moving the two-way bike lane to the “green-way” already on the West Drive of adjacent Prospect Park. In the alternative, the city could follow its own Master Bicycle Plan, approved by Community Board 6 in 2007, by changing the current configuration into a simple “Class II,” one-way southbound lane on Prospect Park West paired with a northbound lane on Avenue.
In case you’re wondering what a Class II bike lane is, here’s a picture:
Hainline needs to know that this is not safe. It does nothing to stop cars from speeding, it does not protect pedestrians and cyclists, and it is simply not what the overwhelming majority of the community wants. It’s also not what we should be talking about anymore. As Brad Lander said at the last CB6 meeting on the subject, the data clearly “shows the project is working to me and that we should keep it and move forward.”
Also note that the agenda includes something about discussing “existing or proposed bike lanes” within CB6. NBBL is already taking credit for the chilling effect their actions may have had on other bike lanes in the neighborhood with Norman Steisel boasting to the Brooklyn Paper, “We have opened up a debate [and] a lot of people are questioning the process by which lanes are put in.” My guess is that they want to keep that debate going for a long, long time and are happy to see it spill over to every neighborhood in the city as long as it helps them at home.
That’s why it’s important for you to be there. I know that activism fatigue can set in. I felt it after the last CB6 meeting, especially when Lois Carswell, after getting an explanation from Ryan Russo on why NBBL’s data differed from the DOT’s, said, “I disagree with your logic.” I even feel it as I write this post.
Logic would tell us that it’s time to move on, to get to the real problems of the neighborhood, to expand bike lanes in areas where they could have a similar life-saving and community-enhancing effect. But NBBL has exhibited time and again that logic is not a factor in this debate, at least not for them. They’ll dismiss DOT studies as incomplete or dishonest, use the threat of lawsuits, biased media reports, a sympathetic borough president, and the influence of a certain U.S. senator to help them achieve their goals, but then cry foul that a well-organized group of bike advocates are advancing their agenda on unsuspecting neighborhood residents.
The new PPW makes everyone safer, drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists alike, and the only thing that can preserve it is a good turnout at this meeting.
See you there.
Release the Tapes!
This video isn’t news anymore, but it’s a real Rorschach test for anyone who watches it. Is all of that traffic a new and dangerous development caused by the bike lane or is the bike lane the only thing that allows the ambulance to get around the kind of traffic you see all over New York every day?
I first recall the subject of video coming up at the December CB6 meeting and then again at January’s DOT presentation, but it actually goes back to at least November 7, 2010, when, according to NBBL’s own report [PDF], they began a “verifiable 12-day video surveillance…from the window of a dwelling on PPW near Grand Army Plaza.” (14 Prospect Park West.) That means that they’ve been recording the activity on the street, sidewalk, and bike lane on this stretch of PPW for almost four months, sometimes for twelve hours a day. So how much video has NBBL released so far?
Seventeen seconds.
In their report the group claims that “pedestrian and vehicular safety has in fact decreased,” and that since the lane opened in June there’s been a slight uptick in bike and car accidents compared with rates for previous years. If accidents and traffic jams are happening with the frequency NBBL claims, why hasn’t the group released any more video?
There are two possibilities:
- NBBL is holding back the really damning stuff for a potential lawsuit or for another TV and newspaper story.
- This is all they have.
I’m inclined to think number 2 is the answer, but let’s say it’s not. If there is something really terrible on those tapes–a cyclist injuring a pedestrian, a driver swerving to avoid an open car door on the newly narrowed PPW, etc.–I think it would be in everyone’s best interest to release it publicly. If NBBL has video that could help remove what they believe is the true cause of danger in the neighborhood, and get that danger removed sooner rather than later, I believe they have a moral obligation to release whatever footage they have in order to make their case.
I don’t know when the next hearing on this subject will be, and lord knows we’ve had enough of them, but when it happens I hope everyone encourages NBBL to be the good neighbors they claim to be and release the videos for public viewing.
Chart of the Day
If Power Point presentations are not your thing, check out this nice representation of the DOT’s findings about the new Prospect Park West design. (Although it’s not so new anymore; should we have a birthday party for it in June?) It’s by Jonathan Soma, aka @dangerscarf, and it’s pretty good. Here’s his illustration of the speeding data:
Click to enlarge.
I like his to-the-point conclusions, too. And before a cranky commenter says, “Duh! Of course there’s less speeding! Prospect Park West has been turned into a parking lot!” Soma also has a chart of car throughput that neatly shows that PPW moved the same cars per hour before the redesign as it does now. PPW had extra capacity before the redesign. Now the number of lanes is commensurate with the traffic the street typically handles.
This one is also very good:
Thanks to Jen for bringing it to my attention.
“Post” Feminism
The Post and other tabloids in New York just love making fun of DOT commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, echoing Marty Markowitz’s claim that she is a zealot, and accusing her of imposing an anti-car ideology on New York, in order to turn New Amsterdam into Old Amsterdam.
Making things somewhat easy for the schoolyard humor of the tabloids is the matter of Sadik-Khan’s unusual last name, perfect fodder for the Post Pun-Bot 3000 headline generator (Khan job, Wrath of Khan), protest signs (“Don’t be Conned by Sadik-Khan”) and blog comments.
Working in a world of puns is the bread and butter of the tabloid world. Oftentimes they’re actually funny, like yesterday’s Sue and a Half Men. But looking beyond the jokes the papers use to describe Sadik-Khan’s name, one can easily find an somewhat uncomfortable, almost reflexive use of sexism to describe her personally. Mike Bloomberg is typically described as a bully, an elitist, or New York’s own version of Napoleon, imposing his will on his subjects. But Sadik-Khan? She’s just that nutso bicycle lady.
Yes, her predecessor at the DOT was also a woman, but I don’t recall such a level of gender-based invective thrown at Iris Weinshall. And besides, it’s much easier for chauvinists to keep their sexism in check when a strong woman pushes an agenda that conforms with their worldview. Had Weinshall realized that her job involved more than just keeping the traffic moving, and installed a pedestrian plaza in Times Square or a separated bike lane, perhaps she too would have been vilified by the tabloids in the same manner as Sadik-Khan.
To make matters more complicated, as these things often are, many of the insults leveled at Sadik-Khan come directly from women themselves, perhaps giving cover to some of the uglier sexism at play.
Here’s Andrea Peyser, 2/28/2011.
Is Janette Sadik-Khan, the psycho bike lady who helms the city’s Department of Transportation, nuts?
Here’s Peyser again (1/11/2011) comparing NYC department heads to Snow White’s seven dwarves. The six other “dwarves” of the Bloomberg administration are merely given nicknames such as Sleepy and Dopey, but Sadik-Khan merits an additional descriptive.
Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty (Happy) was first to swallow the administration Kool-Aid. He said that as a blizzard with hurricane-force winds barreled down on the five boroughs, including several that are not Manhattan, he and Janette Sadik-Khan (Grumpy) — psycho bicycle lady who runs the Transportation Department — made a decision, on their own, not to declare a snow emergency.
As with any kind of prejudice, irrational thinking often contradicts itself in the span of the same thought. Here’s a New York Post editorial, 2/27/2011, that manages to use both diminutive and domineering terminology to describe the DOT chief.
New York’s bicycle belle has her eye on 34th Street this time, which she’s planning to transform into another teeming walrus wharf . . . er, pedestrian plaza.
Which is why it is critical that the City Council exert its every power to force Madame Bike-Lady to explain — publicly and in detail — what she has in mind, and precisely what its impact will be.
Team Bloomberg — Deputy Mayor for Operations Stephen Goldsmith and Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty — ran interference for Sadik-Khan during last week’s City Council hearings, assuming virtually all of the blame themselves. Yet that’s not enough for the Bicycle Lady: She has to throw slush on Kelly.
But the growing debate over all those empty bike lanes imposed by our mayor and his transportation commissioner, Roberta Moses, is just a symptom of something more malign: the suffocation of the very spirit of our city. When Ms. Moses (aka Janette Sadik-Khan) declared diagonal Broadway irrational, started shutting down stretches of it to automobiles and all but said she’d like to see it gone because it violates the city’s grid, not to mention the earth, I saw red, not green.
Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, who icily pointed the finger at top cop Ray Kelly…
Last Week in Chuck Schumer
Now that so many media outlets from blogs to TV stations are making the connection between Senator Chuck Schumer and Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes, here’s a quick roundup of the week in Chuck.
Group Demands Citywide Bike Lane Moratorium, Gothamist, 2/23/11
The well-connected Park Slope group Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes—whose members include former NYC DOT commissioner (and wife of Chuck Schumer) Iris Weinshall and former Sanitation Commissioner Norman Steisel—are calling for a moratorium on new bike lane construction throughout NYC.
Prospect Park Lane Bike Opponents Support Moratorium on All Bike Lanes, Transportation Nation, 2/22/11
Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes was formed as the two-way protected bike lane along Prospect Park West was being installed last spring. The group, which represents many Prospect Park West residents, has criticized the city for what it sees as insufficient community outreach and too little data collection before installing the lane. Its supporters including Brooklyn College Dean Louise Hainline, former Deputy Mayor Norman Steisel, former city DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall, and her husband, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer.
Bloomberg and Schumer Face Off in the Great Brooklyn Bike War, Huffington Post, 2/22/11
Senator Schumer, who lives alongside the park and likes to cycle himself, has challenged the reserved bike lane. Schumer’s wife, Iris Weinshall, a former head of Bloomberg’s DOT, is part of a group, Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes, threatening to sue the city to force adjustments.
A New Take on the Prospect Park West Bike Lanes: Compromise, Park Slope Patch, 2/21/11
The groups, which include high-powered members such as former Sanitation Commissioner Norman Steisel and Iris Weinshal, former Transportation Commissioner and wife of Senator Charles Schumer, have threatened taking the bike lane debate to court, but said they hope it doesn’t come to that.
If you find more out there, please let me know by leaving a link in the comments. For now, I’m not including anything that goes up on Streetsblog.
Brooklyn Spoke 