Talk about a drive-by.
Mayor Adams on Tuesday called for a rebalancing of the Vision Zero policy he inherited from his predecessor, claiming that the effort to reduce road deaths has focused "solely" on cars for "far too long" — suggesting inaccurately that bikes and cars cause similar levels of carnage on city streets.
Responding to a question at his weekly press conference about the NYPD's controversial new policy of criminalizing minor traffic violations by cyclists, the mayor first defended the change, which has resulted in cyclists being hauled into criminal courts for the same violations that drivers can pay in seconds online.
"A lot of our focus on Vision Zero ... enforcement has solely focused on cars, that's been our primary focus, going after the four wheels," the mayor said. "True safe streets involve all those who use the streets. Our focus for far too long has solely been on cars. We need to look at the bikes, we need to look at the mopeds."
Motorists cause nearly all deaths and injuries on New York City's roads, according to the NYPD's own data, but that did not stop Hizzoner from equating the carnage caused by cars and bikes in his first public comments on Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch's month-old enforcement blitz.
Instead, the mayor confirmed the crackdown originated from bad vibes at community meetings, rather than data as police brass originally claimed.
"I have not attended one town hall – one older adult town hall – where this topic has not come up," Adams told reporters.
Contrary to Adams's claims of an unfair focus on drivers, NYPD traffic enforcement declined on his watch — even after crashes surged at the start of the pandemic. Traffic deaths sit at similar levels to the beginning of the Vision Zero program under Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2014, while serious injuries have climbed.
"It’s been abysmal since Covid, throughout the mayor’s time in office – like rock bottom, it’s terrible," said Jon Orcutt, a former DOT planner under mayors de Blasio and Bloomberg who now is the Director of Advocacy at Bike New York.
The mayor, meanwhile, repeatedly takes a car-first approach by stalling or killing bus and bike lane projects from the Bronx to Brooklyn — favoring vague notions of "input" over legal mandates for new miles of safe street infrastructure. Adams stayed true to that doctrine and wavered on the much-debated Bedford Avenue bike path. He defended that approach on Tuesday.
"When I came to office, I told the DOT that you have to listen to communities and not just do what you want to do, because if you put a bike lane somewhere where communities overwhelmingly don't want them, that's a problem, like Williamsburg," Adams said in response to a question from Streetsblog.
"I like bike lanes, but have we put bike lanes in places where communities say, ‘We don't want them?’ Yes."
One community board committee on the Upper West Side has already called on the mayor to "immediately end" the police criminalization of minor cycling violations and demanded that the NYPD provide data to explain why the pink slips were necessary.
E-bikes accounted for less than a half of one percent of the nearly 10,000 pedestrian injuries last year, but the NYPD has disproportionately ticketed them and non-e-bike riders well before the latest court summons bonanza.
"Sure e-bikes are the new vehicle on the block, but that has nothing to do with the facts of what’s killing and hurting people in the city by and large," Orcutt said.
In the first two weeks of the crackdown, the NYPD dialed up giving out the so-called pink slips, by 4,000 percent, which has dragged New York cyclists to court for severe offenses like not stopping behind a white stop line, failing to yield to a cop that jumped out in front of them, or not breaking the law at all.
Immigrant groups have raised concerns the crackdown will deliver app workers to federal enforcement agencies at courthouses, where judges lecture them on road safety while waving reckless drivers through.
The mayor's comments came as some of his, and disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo's, supporters have gone on the attack against bike lanes more generally.
"It has been clear for some time to most reasonable NYers that Bike lanes first policy has gone too far. It’s time to reset the entire Bike infrastructure - which removes the presumption that they should be omnipresent," Adams's former chief of staff and influential political fixer Frank Carone posted on X earlier on Tuesday.
— with Gersh Kuntzman
