Bike Lanes

A reader sent in these photos from a media scrum last Friday evening in the Tillary Street bike lane in Downtown Brooklyn. Notice how the press vehicles have completely blocked the two-way protected lane, forcing cyclists onto the other side of the barrier.

Activists from Monday morning's guerrilla bike lane striping on Bedford Avenue say two individuals were indeed given summonses for criminal mischief, contrary to media reports published today. Police haven't yet answered inquiries from Streetsblog, but organizers of the action confirmed that two were charged.

For your viewing pleasure this morning, YouTube footage of yesterday's early a.m. direct action on Bedford Avenue in South Williamsburg. It's hard to say for sure, but it looks like the Hasidic bike lane painters chose to stay off-camera. After the jump, a look at the results in broad daylight, courtesy of a tipster.

The guerrilla re-striping of a portion of the Bedford Avenue bike lane at 4:00 a.m. this morning was the work of both secular Williamsburg residents and members of the Hasidic community, according to Baruch Herzfeld, a local bike-shop operator and cycling advocate with ties to both communities. 

Looks like some New Yorkers who bike on Bedford Avenue decided not to sit idly by after the city removed 14 blocks of bike lane in South Williamsburg. Multiple sources informed Streetsblog this morning that DIY, unofficial bike lane striping has appeared along the stretch of Bedford Avenue that was sandblasted last week. We don't know who is responsible for this act of civil disobedience and guerrilla safety enhancement, but apparently, their efforts have run afoul of the law.

We posted the link in today's headlines, but you really need the visuals that go with this story of bike-lane blocking, curb-mounting Sunday motorists, and the police who sanction them. Via Gothamist, the video comes courtesy of Ink Lake blogger Peter Kaufman, a Brooklyn Heights resident who noticed that all the cars illegally parked on Henry Street during Sunday services at First Presbyterian sport postcards on the dash. They say "Church Business," and the 84th Precinct honors them as if they were etched on stone tablets.

The removal of the Bedford Avenue bike lane in South Williamsburg this morning proceeded without any public input. Although the thermoplast has already been stripped away, the cause of safer streets will be better off if New Yorkers who ride this bike lane speak out strongly in response. It's important, if you can make it, to enter your opinion into the public record at tonight's meeting of Brooklyn Community Board 1.

As reported by Gothamist, DOT is removing a 14-block stretch of the Bedford Avenue bike lane between Flushing Avenue and Division Street in Hasidic Williamsburg. Workers were seen erasing the lane this morning, taking away a safer cycling connection to central Williamsburg that had been in place since 2007. The northbound bike lane now ends abruptly at Flushing, with space that once belonged to bikes already converted to left-turn lanes and the like:

Here's another case of dangerously uncivil servitude, via Gothamist's John Del Signore, who came upon an Access-A-Ride driver parked in the elevated Sands Street bike lane. It's no surprise that Del Signore's complaint to the driver was answered with a shrug (or, more accurately, a "What's the big deal? Just go around."). But when he sent the photo to NYC Transit for comment, here was the response: