Now even painted bike lanes are too "woke" for the MAGA warrior of Southern Brooklyn.
Council Member Inna Vernikov boasted on Tuesday that she'd gotten the Department of Transportation to pause its implementation of a series of painted lanes — four years in the making — in her Sheepshead Bay district.
“Happy to say as a result of our conversations and advocacy, @NYC_DOT is PAUSING implementation of bike lanes in the southern section [of the project],” she posted on X.
The project would have brought painted bike lanes to a wide swatch of Vernikov's and neighboring council districts that comprise Community Board 14 — all neighborhoods greatly underserved by the city’s current bike network. CB14 was identified as a “priority bicycle district” in 2017, meaning the area has one of the highest rates of fatal or serious injury car crashes in the city, and some of the lowest bicycle network coverage.
The DOT had pledged to “create/enhance 75 lane miles of bicycle facilities in these districts by 2022,” according to a 2021 presentation to the board, which did not reject the proposal.
But even the city's lowest-impact treatment — painted bike lanes that usually end up as parking lanes anyway — was too much for the conservative lawmaker, who claimed she was merely reflecting her community, despite the community board support.
“My constituents oppose it, and it is my job to support what my constituents want or don’t want in their neighborhoods," she told Streetsblog in a statement. "Do not try to come into our communities and dictate to my constituents what projects they should or should not have on their streets. The DOT’s need to push a woke agenda will not take priority over the needs of my constituents. I say this as a biker!”
But residents said Vernikov's statement, and its use of Trump administration talking points, didn't speak for them.
“There's a lot of street design that needs to be updated,” said Amber Adler, an activist and car crash survivor with Families For Safe Streets, who lives on one of the streets where Vernikov's actions led to a pause in safety infrastructure. “Here in southern Brooklyn, we have a lot of aggressive driving.”
The crash that injured Adler in 2016, occurred on 12th Street between Avenue J and Avenue K. She says the wide roads encourage reckless driving, but adding even a painted bike lane narrows the roadway in the eyes of drivers, encouraging them to slow down, resulting in a 32-percent reduction in risk of injury for all road users, according to the DOT.
“We had a proposal on the table that would have not just helped people driving, but it would have also helped pedestrians, and it would have also helped get scooters off the sidewalks,” said Adler.
The proposed project would have added painted lanes on the one-way streets (Dorchester Road, East 12th Street, East 13th Street, East 17th Street, and East 18th Street) and on one side of two-way Cortelyou Road, Foster Avenue, Farragut Road, Avenue I, Avenue J, Avenue L and Avenue M. None of the work requires the DOT to repurpose any street parking.
Now, because of Vernikov’s anti-safety activism, only the lanes on Farragut, Cortelyou, Foster, and Dorchester will continue as planned with implementation beginning this summer.
At the three community board meetings since 2021 when the project was first presented, there was near unanimous support. As such, activists in Brooklyn were stunned that Vernikov would intervene.
“To see a painted bike lane network, which was proposed in 2021, which doesn't remove any parking and just makes all of the streets more orderly and safer for everyone, get stopped after significant outreach is really disappointing,” said Liz Denys, an organizer with Flatbush Streets for People and member of Community Board 14. “There has been nearly unanimous support for not just putting in painted bike lanes in the area, but putting in a true network of protected bike lanes.
“It's just wild to hear someone opposed to safety, but also that project that's been in the works for over two years," added Denys. "It's wild that if the DOT doesn't get around to putting in your bike lanes, a Council member can just stop the project and keep people from having that safe infrastructure."
This isn’t the first time Vernikov has used her influence to block progress. The Council member, a known recidivist speeder, recently used her land-use voting power to pressure developers to shelve a rezoning in her district, resulting in half the amount of affordable housing and more parking spaces than apartments.
The DOT issued a statement highlighting that its "important bike lane network" would continue on schedule in the northern portion "while additional outreach is underway for the southern section of the district."
The agency declined to offer a timeline.
