Houston Street: Bike Boulevard of Death?

2:03 PM EDT on June 26, 2006

New York 1 reports that a cyclist was killed this morning around 9:40 am while making a right turn from LaGuardia Place to West Houston Street. "Witnesses say the bike rider was trying to squeeze between a truck and a van."

The crash took place near an ongoing $25 million DOT street construction project which, incidentally, is narrowing the median on parts of Houston Street, replacing refuge areas for pedestrians with left-turn bays for cars, and doing nothing to make the street safer or more accessible to cyclists.

Gothamist provides a brief recap of last summer's bike fatalities on and around Houston Street and suggests that we might begin calling it the "Bike Boulevard of Death." Gothamist's comments section has erupted in what has become an all too frequent and predictable post-bike-crash online screaming match between commenters who blame the victim and those who argue that New York City needs to do more to help people commute safely by bike.

Aaron Naparstek

AARON NAPARSTEK is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparsteks journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is the author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage" (Villard, 2003), a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by the endless motorist sociopathy observed from his apartment window. Prior to launching Streetsblog, Naparstek worked as an interactive media producer, pioneering some of the Web's first music web sites, online communities, live webcasts and social networking services. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Naparstek is a co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. You can find more of his work here: http://www.naparstek.com.

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