New York, NY – In blistering August heat and sopping city humidity, Councilman Alan J. Gerson held a rally on the busy corner of Mott and Grand Streets in Chinatown at noon on Friday to oppose a bike lane. Mr. Gerson, his collar wilting in the heat, told the sweat-drenched crowd, which included a fair share of helmet-wearing cycling advocates, that while he supported bike lanes in general, he objected to the way this particular lane was put into place.
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“It’s not whether or not there should be a bike lane,” he said, “but where.”
The protest capped a week of escalating Council grumblings about the city’s proliferating bike infrastructure, and conflicts over street space of the kind seen in January on Kent Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, may intensify as riders spread to new areas of the city.
On Staten Island, three City Council members, James S. Oddo, Vincent M. Ignizio and Kenneth Mitchell, responded last week to rising tensions between riders and drivers with a letter to the commissioners of the Department of Transportation and the Police Department decrying a “wild, wild, West atmosphere” and urging better education about the rules of the road.
“Staten Island is a car culture due to the lack of mass transit options,” the council members wrote. “It has never been a bicycle culture.”
The letter came in response to a July episode in which a driver, trying to make a right turn off Father Capodanno Boulevard, confronted a cyclist who was waiting for a light to change in one of the island’s few bike lanes. The driver, Michael Graziuso, was arrested and charged with assault; he is due in court next week.
“To me, this was inevitable,” Councilman Oddo said in an interview. “I think there will be additional incidents.”
The Capodanno bike lane also raised the ire of Staten Island drivers in August when the police began ticketing motorists for driving in the lane. In response, the borough president, James P. Molinaro, called for the lane to be removed, claiming that it interfered with traffic flow.
“We’re not against bike lanes per se,” Mr. Oddo said. “The sentiment boils down to this being imposed on us by an entity that supposedly knows better. I get the feeling that the upper echelon of the D.O.T. looks upon Staten Island as a bunch of Neanderthals who don’t get sustainability.”
“I live on this Earth, too,” he added, but he said bike commuting was unrealistic for Staten Island: “Almost no one — maybe Lance Armstrong — on the south shore is going to be commuting to work by bike.”
On the north shore, however, bike commuting is more common. Until he lost his job in November, Nicholas Rozak, 24, said he often rode to his office in Midtown and back.
Mr. Rozak now uses his bike “for everything minus going to Home Depot” and spoke of a growing level of rage directed at riders on Staten Island this year. “It’s quite noticeable,” he said. “You get people honking, you get people screaming at you — anything from ‘Get off the road!’ to something more profane.”
Bike advocates said the tension over Staten Island’s lanes reflected the sort of growing pain that accompanies many new lanes, especially in neighborhoods unaccustomed to cyclists.
“Every debate about bike lanes is less about the specific lanes than it is a referendum on bicycling as a mode of transportation,” said Wiley Norvell of Transportation Alternatives, a cycling advocacy group. “But those debates always subside.”
Yet on Grand Street in Chinatown, where the Transportation Department unveiled its separated lane last fall, the debate continues.
“We want a bike lane, but not on Grand Street,” said Justin Yu, president of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association.
Other community members said that not enough cyclists were using the lane, though one crowd member noted that at least 30 bikers had passed the rally in half an hour. Some local business owners complained about traffic, which has reportedly contributed to a cacophony of honking along the tight, busy commercial street.
Others voiced concern that reckless cyclists were putting pedestrians, especially the elderly, at risk. Those concerns have not been backed up by studies by the city’s Transportation Department, which found that total traffic accidents along the lane decreased 29 percent, despite a significant increase in the number of bicycles.
“The Grand Street bike lane provides critical protection for the nearly 1,000 bicyclists who use it daily and also for motorists and pedestrians along the corridor,” Seth Solomonow, a department spokesman, said in a statement.
From 2007 to 2008, there was a 35 percent increase in the number of New Yorkers who biked to work, an indication of the growing numbers competing for the same amount of shared roadway.
The lane on Grand Street was approved with overwhelming support from the local community board a year ago, but Councilman Gerson said the community had not been made part of the conversation in the right way. He suggested that the Transportation Department consider moving the lane to a more suitable crosstown street nearby.
Probably five years from now it will be implement car lanes too…
Bike lanes are here to stay and those that oppose them will get run over (politically and literally). We are choking on cars in NYC and the traffic and pollution they cause. Other than the disabled, there really isn’t any excuse not to ride a bike and leave the car at home. If your out of shape, than its time to get into shape. All this whining will be unsucessful. The bike lanes are a wonderful addition to the city and those lazy and overweight kvetchers might as well get used to it.
Mr. Oddo said it right: “The sentiment boils down to this being imposed on us by an entity that supposedly knows better”.
This entity is the mayor who put up the bike lanes in Williamsburg on Shabbos in middle of the summer to make sure that it will be a fait accompli.
Remember all who are about to comment, that the discussion is NOT if bicycling is good or bad; it is about giving “preferential treatment” for the bikers on the backs of all people of New York. The bike lanes have been shoved down our throats; that’s the issue, and the only issue.
Williamsburg who once upon a time had the power to stop Mayor Ed Koch from building a garbage incinerator there, now can’t even remove ONE bike lane. What has happened to us?
as someone who has actually utilized the bike lane during the middle of the day while attempting to get a slice of pizza on Grand & Essex, the lane could work! most importantly, people shouldn’t be walking in these lanes- that’s perhaps the most dangerous situation that isn’t being publicly addressed.
Please look at nyc bike map (avail in bike stores). They have 13 and 14 Ave marked as upcoming bike lanes. I’m amazed that there is no commotion about it yet.
“The Grand Street bike lane provides critical protection for the nearly 1,000 bicyclists who use it daily and also for motorists and pedestrians along the corridor,” Seth Solomonow, a department spokesman, said in a statement.
I would like to see satistics to back this up. I would say the bike lanes were made for one reason to generate money for the city.
I do a lot of driving around the city in most bike lanes I rearly see a bike. What also makes no sense to me is that bikes are permitted to drive on any street. if it was so dangerous to drive on a non bike lane street then it should be illegal for a bike to ride there.
There are many intersections where cars used pull to the right to make a turn now there are cars backed up to the next block.. (Dahil Road and Ft. Hamilton Pky is one example.)
Beware – a bike lane is a no stopping zone this is worse then a no standing zone.
Do you know a bike lane is like a no stopping zone this is worse then no standing.
I for one would get rid of most of the bike lanes.
FACTS AS I EXPERIENCE THE ISSUE
1, Traffic for cars is worse than before since NYC removed a traffic lane to allow a bike lane on bedford Ave.
2, Bike riders seem to have free reign over intersections. Red lights, Stop signs and School buses with flashing lights are all ignored by many bike riders. Tickets are generally not given for these harmless crimes (harmless till there is a victim, then the lies start, it was my light etc)
3, Imagine your old parent being hit by a wild bike rider with green attitude and you might start to understand. Green attitude is the belief that “I am doing the right thing and all of you are wrong.
I don’t dare use bike lanes in NYC. The driving culture is not sophisticated enough to share the road and respect bicycles on the road. I have constant fear of being hit by cars who drive in bike lanes all the time.
As a person that’s been riding everywhere since about 8 years old (not in NYC) I’ve always felt that bike lanes should be kept away from busy shopping strips. I feel as if it’s an unnecessary risk due to all the cars going into parking spots and coming out. Otherwise I fully support all bike lanes.
They give a few lanes to bikes here and there…but cars get so much more….How about turning the tables. Give the streets back to the people and give cars a few lanes here and there.
All to do at this point is to say it with your vote to have ANYONE other than Mayor Mike Bloomberg for a 3rd term. He and his entire should mob should get out of town. Sadik-Khan is an idiot of evil proportions. It is a ship of fools. I can’t believe Isaac Abraham boasts of a one way Kent avenue as a great accomplishment. Crazy.
#8 is right bikers can ride on any street with or without bike lanes. So then why do we need them. and even if somehow it makes it safer for bikes why does is have to be a no stopping zone? A better solution may be is for all bikers over 18 to pass a test which would train them to share the streets with cars I am also for somehow sensitizing drivers that bikers are on the streets eg look before you open the door.
The most dangerous bike riders in the city?
The bochurim whizzing down the busy sidewalks going to yeshivas in Flatbush.
Of course slowing down may make them late for their minyan, but it may save them from harm or from injuring person walking down the street.
By the way, as a bike commuter who often uses bike lanes, I find they make my trips much safer, and I generally take them when possible.
the bike lanes are a farce. tehy ride where tehy want, when they want. they dont follow any rules. they ride on sidewalks as well.
this is another gimmick to raise money for the city .the mayor wants to show power . this isthe way dictators are working
The streets simply do not belong to cars and cars alone. Pedestrians can cross them, cyclists can ride in them. That’s the law. Don’t blame bicyclists, they didn’t make the law.
Car drivers whine and complain endlessly about the traffic congestion they themselves cause. Their solutions seem to always be of a type…exclude everyone else from the roads, widen the roads, create more parking space.
This city is changing, like other progressive cities the world over. The car drivers are slow to catch on that this is not the 1950’s, and Robert Moses and his vision of everybody driving big parkways in their Pontiacs and Buicks is gone, gone, gone.