Please come to Yonkers!

I was elated this morning when I saw a large station right in the middle of Broadway outside of Marlow & Daughters. That was prime Hasidic double parking territory, and is now gone. Yay!

This religious group in particular has been very vocal against biking and street improvements of any kind. Look at the bike share map, see the giant gap in Brooklyn? Guess who lives there?

They use their religion to attack safer streets.

i passed by a bunch of workers installing a station on bway and 41st. i cheered them on and said next Monday right? They said Yup and then asked me if i signed up for the membership. i held up my citibike fob which i already am proudly wearing, and they responded with an “awesome” with two thumbs up!

But are those Bed-Stuy locations new too? I didn’t realize it went that far east.

Because in Willburg you can tell by the uniform who is who. And if you want to pass through that area safely, it’s a pretty good idea (read:much safer) to ASSUME people wearing a certain uniform are going to try and mess with you while you are on a bike and they are in their cars.
And the lane removal wasn’t about scantily dressed female cyclists. It was a power play, on one person’s part to prove had City Hall’s ear, and to threaten to swing a voting block one way or another.
Cyclists and their attire as well as their riding though the neighborhood certainly matters to this crowd, but that bike lane removal was all politics.

It looks like the map on citibikenyc.com was updated yesterday. It now includes the nine Williamsburg stations, as well as a station at Grand Army Plaza & Central Park South. It also moved a station from 60th and Broadway to Broadway between 60th & 61st.

It looks from the map like Turtle Bay residents were successful in getting their neighborhood deprived of docking stations. There are no docking stations on 1st Avenue north of 51st Street and only one on Sutton Place at 59th Street. Turtle Bay, already a transportation desert, must want to stay that way. They could have had this amenity in their neighborhood but they fought it. Fred Arcaro, the chair of the Transportation Committee of Manhattan Community Board 6 was especially influential in fighting bikeshare. He was also deceitful. CB6 conducted a survey of the proposed docking station locations. Fred Arcaro only forwarded the complaints to the DOT. Those who said they liked the proposed locations, or suggested a nearby location instead were not given to the DOT. Fred Arcaro only forwarded responses against the docking stations. Worse yet, he likely did not tell the DOT that he had filtered the responses so the DOT probably thought the negative feedback was the sum total of the feedback received about the proposed docking stations. Fred Arcaro also abused his power by refusing to share the responses he received with the Transportation Committee; he kept the responses to himself and made his own determination that the DOT should only see the negative feedback and did not tell the DOT that they were only seeing a partial selection of the feedback received.

Aside from Turtle Bay, I am concerned with other locations that do not have docking stations close enough together. Murray Hill has docking stations too far apart (also Fred Arcaro and CB6 territory). I would have liked to see docking stations every 3-4 blocks but there are many locations where the stations are 5-6 blocks apart.