Case Dismissed! Brooklyn Judge Affirms DOT’s ‘Rational’ Right to Build Bike Lanes

It’s all so rational.

The city Department of Transportation was completely justified in building the Court Street bike lane last year because it has the overarching power to design city streets and because it has specifically been tasked to build more bike lanes under city law, a Brooklyn judge has ruled.

“DOT has demonstrated it has a rational basis for installing the bike lane and other features along the Court Street corridor,” Judge Inga O’Neale wrote in her ruling, which was written on Monday, but only made public on Thursday. “The promotion of cyclist safety clearly constitutes a rational basis for DOT’s actions.”

DOT commissioner Michael Flynn praised the decision. “The redesign of Court Street reflects a proven approach used across the city and around the world — one that has been shown to improve safety for everyone, whether they’re walking, biking, or driving, and to support local businesses,” he said in a statement. “We appreciate the court’s ruling, which affirms the city’s ability to deliver street improvements that protect the people who live, work, shop, and take their children to school on Court Street.”

The main issue before the court was whether state law gives DOT the right to control the streets as long as it does so rationally. Secondarily, the judge also considered the validity of the argument put forth by the so-called Court Street Merchants Association that the bike lane hurt their bottom lines and made the roadway less safe.

On both counts, O’Neale sided with the city.

On the “rationality” argument, O’Neale evoked (albeit not by name) the ghost of former Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who pushed to create a “Streets Master Plan” that bound the city to build 50 miles of protected bike lanes per year. Given the existence of that law, the DOT must have been acting rationally because, indeed, it is required to do so.

She also dismissed all the business owners’ group’s concerns by simply stating, multiple times, versions of this phase: “Petitioner has failed to present any evidence demonstrating” the alleged harm.

Most interesting among the dismissed claims is the plaintiff’s notion that the city should be blocked from building bike lanes because they hurt an establishment’s business. “Such [safety] measures … do not constitute the type of wrongful conduct necessary to sustain such a claim,” she wrote, citing the plaintiff’s failure to present evidence that DOT willfully sought to harm local businesses.

And unlike a different judge in Queens, who recently ruled that the city failed to get proper certification from the FDNY before installing the 31st Street bike lane, O’Neale ruled that business owners don’t have standing to defend the FDNY and other city agency’s right to weigh in on new bike lanes.

City requirements, she wrote, “are plainly intended to afford the departments entitled to notice an opportunity to raise and address concerns [but] petitioner has identified no basis for standing to assert the rights of those departments.”

O’Neale said she did not want to diminish local businesses’ concerns about changes made to the streetscape — but then more or less said the law did: “These concerns do not establish that DOT lacked a rational basis for its determination.”

She urged opponents of safe streets to work to elect less progressive leaders if they want change. “Questions relating to the best use of city streets implicate policy concerns that are beyond the authority of courts to address and that are best left to those elected and appointed officials,” she wrote.

The lawyer for the Court Streets Merchants Association did not respond to a request for comment.