From "Zohramp" to Mambummer.
The NYPD was back to ticketing cyclists at the Williamsburg Bridge bike path in Manhattan even before the asphalt had fully dried on a pro-bike repair made by the mayor himself — and hours after he said he no longer wanted cops to punish cyclists when city infrastructure requires them to break the law to be safe.
Streetsblog observed cops giving out tickets to cyclists who passed through a red light at Delancey Street and Suffolk Street on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning — but that intersection is notable because there is no intersecting car traffic, which encourages cyclists to treat the light as a stop sign. Meanwhile, driver after driver blew the adjacent red light with impunity.
The enforcement sting came one day after Mayor Mamdani joined a Department of Transportation crew to ceremoniously shovel the last scoops of blacktop onto the once-dangerous bump at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge bike path terminus in Manhattan on Tuesday, the first step in a $70-million full redesign of the dangerous area that will begin this fall.
Wags on the internet called the smoother exit path the “Zohramp” in tribute to the mayor.
At the event, the mayor had pledged to focus on infrastructure change to help cyclists rather than punitive enforcement.
"We have created infrastructure issues for cyclists that we are then ticketing them for, where it is easier to be out of compliance with the law than in compliance with the law," Mamdani said in response to Streetsblog's question on Tuesday.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch apparently did not get that memo, given that enforcement against cyclists continued. Tisch, a holdover from the Adams administration, altered NYPD policy last year to have cops give cyclists criminal summonses for minor traffic violations, instead of standard traffic tickets. Car drivers still only receive traffic tickets for the same offenses, even though motorists cause the vast majority of carnage on city streets.
And at the same intersection where cyclists were being summonsed, drivers of 3,000-pound cars routinely ran the red light, often at 40 miles per hour, a clear and present danger to the public.
"That whole area is chaotic, dangerous and confusing for all users," commented the admin of the local advocacy group, Clinton Street Neighbors, on Streetsblog’s video describing the situation at Delancey. "We have never, not once, seen the NYPD pull over a vehicle for blowing a red light four seconds late at high speed, which happens all day, everyday. So what gives?"
The mayor, of course, never promised to end ticketing of cyclists entirely, but livable streets advocates said they were disappointed at the appearance of cops mere hours after he fixed a longstanding infrastructure problem on behalf of cyclists.
"It really takes away the benefit of the mayor coming out and trying to help cyclists there," said Jon Orcutt, a former DOT official under the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations.
The mayor’s office would not respond to requests for comment on the ongoing sting operation at Delancey, and the NYPD did not provide information on how many and what kind of summonses they wrote at the location this week. Mayor Mamdani has said he is having "conversations" with Tisch about the controversial policy.
