Bike Lanes

The Times devoted a feature story today to NYC's new bike lanes and the people who dislike them. Hard to argue with the timing of the piece. The separated lanes that went in on the East Side, Park Slope, and the Upper West Side this year are highly visible, they shake up the way the street works, and people have opinions about them.

Noah and I are busy with meetings and the Stop Speeding Summit today, so posting may be a little light until the afternoon. I do have a couple of items to share, including this short video from EcoMobility.tv. I know the title is over-the-top and there's some egregious wrong-way riding, but I like the outsider's viewpoint you get in the vid -- it was made by two guys from Montreal who think New York's new bikeways are great and want to understand why the press makes such a fuss over them. Also, I got some experience being in front of the camera.

For the second time in 12 months, the Bloomberg administration will remove a link in the bicycle network after receiving complaints from bike lane opponents. The Staten Island Advance reports that the bike lane on Father Capodanno Boulevard will not be striped again after the street is repaved. The news comes two months after the Advance published an editorial urging the city to remove the lane, and about a year after the city erased a 14-block stretch of the Bedford Avenue bike lane in response to opposition from local Hasidic leaders.

Earlier today, Kate Hinds at Transportation Nation asked Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan about the status of extending the East Side bike lanes north of 34th Street. She received an open-ended but not-so-encouraging response:

Build bike lanes? Manhattan's Community Board 12 doesn't even want to talk about bike lanes.

Mark next Thursday on your calendars. It's a critical day for one of the city's most innovative livable streets projects. If you care about safer streets, it's going to be an excellent time to respectfully show your support in public.

This poll on the Crain's site has been tearing through the Twitterverse rather ferociously this afternoon:

Looks like Assembly member Joan Millman's efforts to keep the Henry Street bike lane clear of cars belonging to church-going motorists yielded only a Pyrrhic, pre-primary day victory.

With the new protected bike lane on Second Avenue as a backdrop earlier today, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer called for a stepped-up campaign to keep bike lanes clear of obstructions and show New Yorkers how to use their re-designed streets the right way. While many Manhattan streets have been re-engineered for improved safety, he said, enforcement and education aren't keeping up.