Thinking maybe the monthly 5th Precinct meeting was last night and someone complained about bikes so they sent out some enforcement as a token response. Got be at those meetings to know what the community is asking PD to respond to.

It really is ridiculous.  I guess politics trumps common sense.

Will SB writers not be happy unless NO cyclist is ticketed? Clearly that’s never going to happen, so why not see the positive to this? I get it that car and truck drivers have much more potential impact to do harm, but here is a clear example that cops are using another mode to help the situation. A bike cop can at least do their business on the sidewalk (as we see here) instead of taking up a lane while wasting everyone else’s time around them in the process. I would imagine that being cited by someone standing next to you feels much less threatening than having a 3 ton SUV with lights flashing at you for 20 minutes.

If the numbers continue to show that more cyclists get tickets than drivers, write an article about that. But don’t just take every image of a cyclist getting ticketed and call that discrimination.

As long as they also go up and down the bike lanes and ticket drivers illegally parked in them (won’t take long to find one), then I don’t mind…

A few months ago I saw two bike cops give chase to a biker who blew a couple lights on the Bowery, then turned west onto Prince.  Which is all fine, but they has no good way to let him know they wanted him to stop — he didn’t even notice they were chasing him until they literally pushed him off his bike onto the sidewalk (and a few bystanders) two intersections into Prince.  Also, the cops had to ride like total maniacs to catch up to him (he was going fast, but not careening as they were.)  Those bikes need sirens or something.

while i can see the red light as silly for bicyclists in certain situations, wrong way cycling is dangerous for cyclists who are going the right way.  why cant nypd ticket these guys.  if anything they DEFINITELY deserve tickets.

@twitter-26265957:disqus 
– at the 84th Precinct Community meeting the other night, the precinct commander said that while they did have a couple of cops on bikes, they specifically did NOT ticket motorists – the rationale being that a motorist would be be tempted to ‘floor it’, and therefor endanger other people.

I don’t necessarily buy into the philosophy of “more important things to do”; MAYBE there’s a real reason there were 50K cyclist tickets VS 25K to truckers.  Oh, I know, truckers do a LOT more damage; the point is, you ENFORCE THE LAW.  You don’t let 50 piddlers go by in order to catch a half-dozen players.

I’m no fan of the NYPD, trust me, heard enough stories that NYC is off my visit list;  but in general, when I hear people talk about police having “more important things to do”. . . if they really DID, they’d be DOING it.  If they were all that lazy, they wouldn’t be doing the minor stuff, either.

These folks break the law on the bicycle. They should be ticketed. Is it hard to wait until the light changes? You are a vehicle on a bicycle. Many cyclists, of course not all, get hit not because the automobile is in the wrong it is because they break the law on their bicycle. We all need to follow the law,

No ticket if you follow the city’s cycling laws.

I received a ticket for running red light last April 2011, fuming and mad, I,m a 50 year old male on a 40 year bike. Frustratingly I attempted to obey the lights, this is near impossible. Anyhow, 8 months latter after numerous postponed hearings, I was found not guilty or dismissed because the cop retired. There has to be a fine line between reckless biking and petty enforcements, come on NY we can do better than this!

I ran a light on my bike  on 8th ave and 23rd. The cop said ” look the city spent a lot of money putting in these bike lanes. ” ” They have me out here in the 100 degree heat writing up you guys and btw you and me this is bullshit.” He ended up writing me up for not having a bell on my bike. It get’s better. ” You know what is really dangerous? ” he asks. ” see that douche bag in the Lexus on his cell phone? ” ” Now he is gonna get a real ticket.”
” oh and just so you know. The ticket is less expensive if you ran the light in the traffic lane.” He said as he bid me a good day and strolled over to the aforementioned Lexus.  

more important things to do …

Patrol officers are not making a daily decision along the lines of “Should I go write bicycle tickets today … or go spy on a mosque in New Jersey?”  Framing the issue in those terms is facetious.

At a high level, the NYPD is allocating resources for things like the aforementioned spying (in another state!), bicycle traffic violations, and all manner of other BS.  At the same time, they are drastically underfunding the resources to investigate car and motor vehicle related deaths and injuries.  Allocating 19 investigators across the entire city to investigate vehicle crimes is woefully inadequate.  This should be its own bureau with resources similar to those allocated to homicide and narcotics.

As others have mentioned, street crime in NYC is at historically low levels.  Now is the time to allocate resources away from street crime (aka the stop and frisk division) and redeploy them to vehicular crimes, which injure and kill far more people.

The fallacy of the “quality of life” enforcement pioneered under the Giuliani administration is that it is very subjective depending upon whose quality of life one takes as a baseline definition.  Personally, I am not much bothered by people smoking crack or drinking in public.  But for the typical suburban-minded property owner from the outer boroughs the worst quality of life crimes are those which either decrease property values or impede motor vehicle mobility.

Nobody should be running the light at Bowery and Delancy. That is just dangerous. If cops are to use judgement about when it’s appropriate to write a ticket to a cyclist for running a red light–which I don’t necessarily think they do–this would be a place where I think tickets should be written. It seems like a bad example of injustice to me. 

urban cyclocross doesn’t work if you’re wearing clipless, unless you want to fall on your face in the middle of the intersection and potentially get run over. 

> Will SB writers not be happy unless NO cyclist is ticketed? Clearly that’s never going to happen, so why not see the positive to this? 

If labeling the police on bicycles as “The Good” does not constitute seeing the positive, that must be an empty phrase indeed.

The ugly thing is that this was the NYPD’s response to a dangerous intersection where pedestrians and cyclists are being killed in unusual numbers, by motorists. It’s the same thing police do in places like Savannah to pedestrians, they start enforcing “walking” laws more strictly when they notice a few poor sods getting run over. And there’s a depraved logic to it: if you blame the victims when they’re hit, you should also penalize potential victims beforehand.

Fortunately in Manhattan, pedestrians are too high-status to be subject to vindictive enforcement of unwise traffic laws, but cyclists are only partway there. We still get “the treatment” on occasion. But if you’re worrying about how Streetsblog is covering that, you’re missing the point.

It’s an insult to everyone who’s been injured and killed by motorists at this intersection that when police finally respond, they bring in a bicycle brigade.

Send the bicycle cop in his snazzy blue jacket away from this place with the deadly serious automobile danger and put him somewhere that cycling is documented to pose an elevated danger. I hear there’s an vengeful lady with a Foundation keeping tabs on such things–haphazardly but it’s a start. Hang out there and write tickets to cyclists who cut off pedestrians, and you’ll find many other cyclists cheering on the good work.

But THIS. This cynical misdirection on the site of a massive automotive killing field–even as the other police present direct motorists to drive their vehicles into pedestrians with walk signals–it’s just not to be tolerated.

John, Can’t believe you think it’s such a big deal, just walk the streets of the central business district where thousands if not millions of pedestrians go through red lights every day; try Penn Station during rush hour; indicative of foolish transportation rules totally unenforceable geared to the really dangerous liability accounting that transportation systems based on automobiles require for the entire legal and insurance game because this machine system is such a bad design and so destructive; and the way the public has been duped into paying for it.

Red lights are not needed when there are no cars.

And cars are surely not needed when the streets are safe since more sensible practical low cost mobility methods would prevail.