Is Transportation Reform Possible When the Cops Don’t Care?
A reliable Streetsblog tipster sends along this photo of a police cruiser parked in the Department of Transportation’s new Ninth Avenue bike facility. The police officer seen getting into the car was returning from a nearby deli with what appeared to be lunch for him and his partner.
Again, as we pointed out yesterday, the Ninth Avenue cycle track is still under construction and it is way too early to judge whether it is working or not. New medians, planting beds, street markings, muni-meters and traffic signals will likely make it clearer that the city’s first on-avenue, physically-separated bike path is not a loading zone.
Still, no matter how the final design of this particular bike facility works out, the larger question remains: Is it possible to have meaningful transportation policy reform and a successful Livable Streets movement in a city where the police generally do not care to enforce traffic laws and, in many cases, actively break those laws themselves?
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