Streetfilms Shorties: NYPD Blockage on Manhattan Bridge Approach

The debut Streetfilms Shortie caught an errant scooter blocking a bike lane. This time it’s New York’s Finest, camped out in the Manhattan Bridge bike path at Canal and Chrystie.

A half-step forward, two steps back.

  • Andy

    I wonder what would happen if a cyclist ran head-on into this car and said “He hit me”

  • It’s not parked in the bus lane.

  • If you see this happen again here, please document it at http://www.seeclickfix.com/issues/8889 so the community can organize for action.

  • Conrad

    You know, I’m a longtime daily cyclist in New York. And I find this sort of tut-tutting to be really irritating. People park in the bike lane? Get over it. We’re bikes! Flow around the obstacle! And a cop car? Cops, apparently, can do anything they want. This is no surprise.

  • Cops ignore traffic laws so often it really does make you wonder how they could possibly enforce the same laws.

  • That’s not a scooter – it’s a cruiser. It would be easy to go around a little scooter, but the cruiser nearly obstructs the whole lane – both lanes. And he sits there long enough to get video from every angle.

    I was once cut off by a NYPD van who was driving through a red light. When he was stuck behind traffic at the next light I caught up to him, and asked through his open window, “If the police don’t respect the law, who will?” He nodded and said, “you’re right…”

  • That’s funny, Ian. I’ll see and raise you.

    Civliian Jeep runs a westbound red on Tillary as I made my westbound turn off Sands into the middle lane at speed (where the rightmost two lanes go over the Brooklyn Bridge). Dude honks and tailgates me, so I pull up to him at the light and ask what’s his problem.

    Dude pulls a badge on a necklace out from behind his sweatshirt and says he thinks I know better than to ask a cop what he’s doing in traffic. I laugh (somehow I am deeply amused) and say no sir you should know better than to run reds and threaten civilians with your badge.

    He tells me to get out of the middle of the road with my bike, I say you’re a goddamn cop, how you not know that this is precisely by law where in the road I’m supposed to be; he says, yeah, go see your pretty little boyfriend, faggot.

    I’m so beyond being surprised by this stuff. It’s not /some/ cops it’s /most/ cops; for every civil one there’s three d-bags.

  • Oh they’re putting a bollard at Chrystie and Canal to stop what this cop’s done, and also to allow a protected northbound bike slip onto Chrystie. I saw two bollard marks chalked on the ground, one at the uphill mouth of that bike lane smack where the cruiser is, and one at the foot of the bike path by Forsyth at the stop light.

    Bollards. On streets. God I love DOT.

  • Really, Kaja? That’s good. I still think it was a huge mistake of DOT to have done ordinary bike lanes on Chrystie — they’re so often blocked or parked-in. It should have been a two-way protected path either on the park side of Chrystie or on Forsyth.

    We also shouldn’t have to take that narrow turn downhill and then cross Canal and go up the hill. There should have been a direct bike crossing across Canal without having to go down and back up. (Something similar is needed at the Manhattan side of the Queensboro Bridge as well.)

  • Epstein – A direct crossing of Canal means you’re mutually blindspotted with cars slaloming down the Manhattan Bridge intending to turn right. A bunch of cyclists died this way in the ’80s and ’90s, from what I recall.

    Also: Strongly recommend you hang a right on Canal off the bridge, and use Allen, which is swank and needs users.

  • What did they say about “the path of least resistance”? If you create a bike path without enough resistance then a cop car *will* be in it.

    Herding cars is like herding cattle, you need barriers to entry.

  • Sarah Goodyear

    Kaja,

    I agree the Allen Street bike lane is worth using. Check it out, people, good stuff.

  • Yeah, it would have to have a separate signal phase, as has just been added to the Brooklyn side.

    Allen is coming along, though a lot of the left turn signalization isn’t done yet, and it has really lousy connections north of Houston St.

  • rex

    Think_twice,

    To extend your analogy – While herding cars is like herding cattle, herding cops is like herding cats. They do whatever the think they can get away with.

  • The Dynamic Mumeshantz

    Conrad,

    What the heck are you talking about? Sure, parking in bike lanes is a way of life, I go around double-parkers and get miffed a bit, but this vehicle is blocking THE ENTIRE BIKE PATH, one that was put there for safety!!! Cyclists are not supposed to be on the roadway there.

    This is hardly something to say “Get over it” to. Sure a cop parked in a painted bike lane happens tons of times per day…whatever. But this is just plain rude.

  • MisterBadExample

    Look, everyone’s right–you can weave around the cop-car. The problem is, you can’t SEE AROUND him and you might end up tangling with a cyclist going the other way. The scary part about having cars and trucks in the bike lane isn’t the difficulty in getting around them–it’s the fact that you can’t see what’s happening around them. And not that this would apply in this case, but when you’re going around a vehicle parked in a bike lane that flanks a row of parked cars, the drivers potentially pulling out of those spaces in front of the parked vehicle can’t see you coming.

  • ziggy

    When did NYPD start using Nissans as cruisers? For a second I thought it was a rent a cop for the construction workers on the bridge, but it clearly says “police”.

  • ziggy – Within the last 6 months. Starting with downtown precincts I think?

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