Brooklyn, NY – A battle over a Brooklyn bike lane is in high gear, with a group of well-organized residents accusing the Department of Transportation yesterday of fudging the numbers of bicycles using the lane to support the city’s drive to make the pathway permanent.
Join our WhatsApp groupSubscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
Norman Steisel — a former sanitation commissioner and deputy mayor under David Dinkins — slammed the DOT for releasing what he called misleading data overstating how many cyclists ride along the Prospect Park West path, and refuting city claims of improved safety since the lane was created last summer.
“The community asked for all the underlying data, in its raw form, and instead DOT intends to present a rosy summary,” Steisel said.
“We are getting only what DOT wants us to see. We have a right to more.”
Among other things, he disputed the agency’s contention that weekday cycling increased along Prospect Park West between Third and Fifth streets from an average of 349 riders in June 2009 to 1,131 in August 2010 — shortly after the lane was installed.
Steisel said his group took its own videos of bike usage for a two-week period, 12 hours each day, at Carroll Street, and “discovered bike usage was one-third to one-half of the volume the agency reported counting.”
DOT officials and Steisel’s local group, Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes, faced off during a Community Board 6 meeting last night, where the agency presented its glowing report on the two-lane pathway.
Assistant DOT Commissioner Ryan Russo said that his agency counters caught more riders because they were at more points along the route.
An angry audience member called out, “We disagree with your numbers and we want to know where you got your data.”
When asked if the lanes were permanent, Russo said, “We plan on making changes as we get feedback.”
He said it would cost close to a million dollars to completely remove the lanes, three times more than it cost to install.
Could Ms Sadik Khan explain why it would cost more to remove those ridiculous PPW bike lanes than it cost to install them? It should cost very little to paint all the stripes black and take down the flashing yellow lights.
Can someone explain what costs 1 million dollars to remove some markers & paint on a road please?
You have to pay off the departments that are created to put more employees on the city payrolls to raise taxes. Enough is enough with bureaucracy. The whole government and even more in the federal mafia is created only to get bigger so they can get more money as head of the department.