The Spaghetti-on-the-Wall Strategy
I’m not one for conspiracy theories. 9/11 was not an inside job, Oswald acted alone, the Moon landing was real, and Elvis is still dead.
When it comes to all of the bike lane hate that seems to be spewing forth from various corners of this city, and Brooklyn in particular, I feel the same way. Norman Steisel probably has a better chance of getting calls to Marty Markowitz returned than you or I, but I wouldn’t begin to suggest that Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes is in communication with Marty’s office on matters of strategy. If they were, I think their war plan would at least appear to be coherent.
To wit, see if you can follow this logic:
- There are two sets of data: the DOT’s and NBBL’s.
- On the same day the DOT counted 863 cyclists using the Prospect Park West bike lane, Neighbors For Better Bike Lanes collected video surveillance showing only 470 bikes, a difference of about 54%.
- Such a huge discrepancy is beyond the realm of statistical variation.
- Therefore, the DOT is making up bike counts out of thin air.
- If the DOT makes up bike count numbers, then none of their data can be trusted.
- The NBBL data can be trusted.
This is somewhat reasonable, especially if you’re inclined to not trust the DOT. But just when it seems like it all makes sense, along comes Marty Markowitz with his own logic:
- There are two sets of data: the DOT’s and NBBL’s.
- Marty Markowitz claims that on the day DOT did their bike counts, the department tipped off cycling advocates, resulting in a 54% difference between their count and NBBL’s.
- Such a huge discrepancy can only be explained by cycling advocates who flooded the bike lane with extra trips beyond what one would find on a typical weekday.
- Therefore, the DOT is inflating bike counts by tipping off cyclists.
- If the DOT tips off cyclists, none of their data can be trusted.
- The NBBL data can be trusted.
Marty, you’re messing things up for NBBL! Either the DOT inflated their numbers by counting imaginary cyclists who were not present or they tipped off real cyclists to ride the lane in big numbers. Your head might explode if you start thinking of ways in which both statements can be true.
In the first case, the difference has already been explained by Ryan Russo at the DOT. According to the Park Slope Patch, Russo’s explanation was that “Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes had monitored a different section of Prospect Park West, a section with less bike traffic.” I’m a bigger fan of Occam’s Razor than I am of conspiracy theories, and this explanation is as simple as it is true.
Marty’s claim in second case makes things really complicated for Norman Steisel, Iris Weinshall, Louise Hainline, Lois Carswell and the other NBBLers. If they claim that their numbers can be trusted over the DOT’s, how can they explain that on a day when the bike lane was teeming with riders, NBBL failed to count 393 cyclists? Either their collection methods didn’t work, which I’m guessing they will not admit, or 54% of the participants in this vast bike-wing conspiracy stopped riding before reaching President Street. This failure to ride the length of the bike lane seems especially curious since Grand Army Plaza was the gathering point for cyclists and advocates for safe streets at the October 21, 2010 rally.
There is no conspiracy, just abject paranoia coming from Marty Markowitz. We’ve now reached the latest–and hopefully last–phase of anti-bike-lane strategy: throwing claim after claim against the wall and seeing what sticks. I don’t even know if you can call that a strategy, much less a conspiracy.
Quote for the Day
“You’ll have to excuse me, but what they said was bull—t,” Lois Carswell, Neighbors For Better Bike Lanes
Just Say Snow
When the discussion of bike lanes comes up, one of the most predictable questions from opponents is about emergency access, especially during winter. How will fire trucks and ambulances get through a roadway narrowed by a bike lane and then narrowed again by a blanket of snow?
I shot this picture on Friday following an overnight and early morning snowstorm. It’s the bottom of 6th Street and 5th Avenue in Park Slope. It was taken at about 8:30 AM, well into the morning rush.
As you can see, even though the street had not yet been fully plowed, and even though the street is slightly narrower due to snow near the parked cars, these two trucks were able to get to the scene of the emergency, arriving at it from different directions. The only thing that could have blocked these fire trucks from responding would have been double-parked cars or delivery vehicles.
Most streets in New York are more like 6th Street, pictured, than Prospect Park West or on many other two-lane roads on which traffic calming projects have been installed. You don’t hear a chorus of people calling for the city to widen one-lane roads for the sake of emergency access. It’s even more nonsensical to suggest that a roadway with two traffic lanes could somehow become impassable just because of snow. Bike lane and traffic calming critics know this, but since they tend not to get up in arms about cars narrowed by parked cars, their “concern” is just a cover for their own perceived inconvenience.
Print First, Ask Questions Later
Sunday’s New York Times Metropolitan Section featured assessments of various neighborhood blocks by local residents, a kind of grass-roots State of the City report. Here’s one report on a stretch of Dekalb Avenue in Clinton Hill by area resident Catherine Kunicki. Wouldn’t you know it? Everything was fine until those darned bike lanes were put in.
Since the bike lanes were enabled, there has been a marked increase in traffic. This might be coincidence, but traffic changes designed for the ease of all the new downtown Brooklyn co-op and condo construction has resulted in our mainly residential street turning into a speedway. Other commercial streets nearby aren’t nearly as busy. The bike lanes, while welcome, have narrowed the increasing heavy traffic stream, resulting in a dangerous situation for pedestrians and bikers alike.
Yes, it might be a coincidence. Perhaps the fact that there are is all those “new downtown Brooklyn co-op and condo” buildings has something to do with an uptick in traffic. It may also be a coincidence, but since a bike lane opened across from the new dog run, there has been a marked increase in dogs.
There have already been many pedestrian casualties, including the death of a young woman riding a motor scooter.
As sad as any death is, a “young woman riding a motor scooter” is not a pedestrian.
On our corner, at times, there has been an accident a week because a cross street has no traffic signal.
Has there really been an accident a week? Could the Times verify this claim before allowing it to be printed?
I don’t believe that the random observations of one Brooklyn resident are all that important, since no one can be reasonably expected to control for all of the illogical and irrational thinking that exists in this world. Even this article is not such a big deal, but it does make me wonder why the Times continues to give voice to unsubstantiated claims that bike lanes are even tangentially causing a neighborhood’s traffic and safety woes. That’s not to say that mentioning bike lanes in a negative context is verboten, but that the Times, even in minor neighborhood reports like this, has a responsibility to verify some claims before printing them.
Quote for the Day
“I think the data is very encouraging. I think we should keep at it and I think we should move forward.” City Council Member Brad Lander on the Prospect Park West Bike Lane.
Neighbors For Clear Crosswalks
UPDATE: 6:34 PM: Confirmed. It’s clear.
UPDATE 4:37 PM: Reports are in that it has been plowed. If you can confirm, please comment below.
As Aaron Naparstek points out in a detailed post, much of the Prospect Park West bike lane remained covered in snow and ice as of last night:
I’ve mentioned before that this is not about bikes. This is about pedestrians. If someone is playing petty politics by not plowing this stretch of asphalt, they also are playing with people’s safety.
Even if the bitter cold keeps every single bike rider at home from now until April, there’s still a need to plow the lane. Every driver in the picture above who parks his car on PPW has to enter and exit the driver’s seat via a snowy and icy patch of pavement. Passengers in the back seat have a choice: exit on the left onto ice or on the right into traffic.
Where is Marty Markowitz now? Where is Norman Steisel? Where is Iris Weinshall? Where is Marcia Kramer, Tony Aiello, and the Mobile 2 van? Where is the New York Post?
Where are the people who were at the last CB6 meetings expressing their outrage over the risk the bike lane posed to senior citizens at the Madonna Residence? The very first question at last week’s DOT presentation came from a woman outraged that it was now more difficult for people with handicapped placards to find places to park. But now, even if a handicapped person could find a parking spot, how could he or she safely get out of his car? Has that woman called 311? Where is Louise Hainline, Lois Carswell, NBBL and Seniors for Safety now that the crosswalks in front of their apartments are iced over?
The bike lane is a red herring. None of these people care about pedestrians. They only care about their view.
Apologize, Marty
I sometimes find Marty’s clowning and boosterism amusing, as I did during the 2005 transit strike. I remember walking over the Brooklyn Bridge during my long trek home from my office near Penn Station, as tired and cold as everyone else that week. As I reached the Brooklyn side of the bridge, there was the borough president, greeting people with a cheery smile and a hearty “Welcome to Brooklyn!” What else could any of us do in that situation but laugh? Sometimes a place like Brooklyn does, in fact, need a cheerleader.
But other times it also needs a champion, someone who will stand up for what’s right. Unfortunately, the truly shameful recent behavior of our borough president not only shows that he’s up to the challenge, but that he may actually not care to take it on.
Updating Streetsblog’s recent rebuke, Marty Markowitz was on CBS2 twice already in the first three weeks of 2011, using both appearances to denounce street designs implemented to improve safety for everyone, especially pedestrians. Marty did not, however, take to CBS2 to denounce or even comment on the car accident that claimed the life of an 83-year-old rabbi named Mosha Adler, visiting from Israel. He did not, to my knowledge, appear on CBS2 to make a statement about Patricia Maschuca and her 9-month-old twins, Gustavo and Daniel, visiting from Baltimore and injured in an accident involving a livery cab and a double-parked car. Nor did he take to the CBS airwaves to mention anything about a three-year-old toddler in Williamsburg, nearly crushed to death by a van that ran him over as he was being pushed across a crosswalk by his sister. I wonder, as Streetsblog does, if Marty is even paying attention.
This is not about the bike. It is about Marty Markowitz, who is just as incensed about tiny pedestrian refuges in Midwood as he continues to be about one mile of green paint and stripes on Prospect Park West. More clearly, this is about whether or not Marty Markowitz values–or even notices–the health and lives of the many over the cars and personal convenience of the few.
From my perspective, the real, verifiable human tragedies involving the elderly, mothers, and children do not seem to be worthy Marty’s time, at least not when they also involve cars. However, the imagined and statistically-unlikely worst case scenarios involving bikes and islands of cement have motivated him to take to the airwaves at least twice so far this year. And there’s still a week to go in January.
Please, someone tell me I’m wrong. Point me to a TV news report that aired in the wake of those tragedies in which Marty even offered one statement of sympathy for the victims and their families. I’ll apologize for this post immediately. Because that’s what adults do when they are wrong.
Snow Job – Call 311
As of earlier today, the non-controversial Prospect Park West bike lane was still unplowed and about as icy as you can imagine. Clearly, a decision has been made to not make this even a minor priority. (Even not making a decision to include this in snow removal efforts is, in its way, a decision.) The snow fell early Friday morning and no effort was made to clear it for the Friday evening commute, the Saturday green market at Grand Army Plaza, or even, it seems, tomorrow’s commute. (If someone has information that it has since been plowed, please comment and I’ll edit the post.)
Remember that this is also an issue of pedestrian safety. If the bike lane is not plowed, it is unsafe for people to cross it on foot, especially the elderly. It also can make it difficult for people parking their cars on PPW and exiting to the sidewalk, which has been cleared. Who knows? Maybe this fits in with Marty’s request for cyclists to ride their bikes on the sidewalk.
Please use this online 311 snow removal request form to contact the city and file a service request. With enough voices making regular requests, we may be able to get this and other bike lanes on the city’s radar once and for all.
Quote for the Day
“The sidewalks are wide enough for bicycle use and they pose no threat to the few people that walk up the street…” – Marty Markowitz, endorsing illegal bicycle riding, April 12, 2010, WNYC.
Quote for the Day
“I hope that the commissioner and the department is right. If they’re right, and in fact it causes no bottlenecks, no inconvenience, and if it works, I’ll be the first to say I was wrong. I would.” – Marty Markowitz on the PPW Bike Lane, April 12, 2010.
Brooklyn Spoke 