Park Slope

Wondering how the members of bike lane opposition group Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes manage to get quoted so much in the papers? It helps when you have a public relations firm working the press for you.

Assembly Member Jim Brennan's office released the results of a telephone survey on the Prospect Park West redesign this afternoon [PDF], and the topline numbers echo the results of the web survey conducted last year by Council Members Brad Lander and Steve Levin and Community Board 6.

Senator Chuck Schumer broke his long public silence on the redesigned Prospect Park West in dramatic fashion this morning, leading members of Congress on a two-wheeled tour of the physically separated bike lane that runs past his Brooklyn home. Schumer used the occasion to announce that he'll be introducing new legislation to promote investment in bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure.

Streetsblog has received multiple reports from people who were called yesterday for an opinion survey about the Prospect Park West bike lane. Notably, the question set focused specifically on the redesign of this one street, not broader issues of cycling or bike infrastructure.

The first court date for the Prospect Park West lawsuit has been pushed back two months. Though Brooklyn Civil Supreme Court Justice Bert Bunyan was originally scheduled to begin hearing the case tomorrow, the case is now scheduled for May 18, according to the court system's online information.

This morning, Gibson Dunn attorney Jim Walden continued his media tour calling attention to the lawsuit he filed earlier this month to remove the Prospect Park West bike lane. Appearing on the Brian Lehrer show, Walden tried to distance the group he represents from former DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall and her husband, Senator Chuck Schumer.

Suing the city has earned the well-connected opponents of the Prospect Park West bike lane a lot of media attention, but ultimately their lawyer, Gibson Dunn's Jim Walden, will have to show up in court and make his case that the lane was illegal. According to the legal experts we spoke to, that case looks shaky indeed.

The transportation and public safety committees of Brooklyn Community Board 6 unanimously approved a motion last night supporting DOT's proposals to, among other things, add raised concrete pedestrian islands and bike "rumble strips" to the redesigned Prospect Park West.

Opponents of the Prospect Park West bike lane got some page views in the Park Slope Patch yesterday, repeating arguments from their lawsuit against the city [PDF] (arguments that have also been published, basically unaltered and unanalyzed, in the Daily News and the Post). Their core claim is that DOT should not have used three-year averages to assess the rates of crashes and injuries before the bike lane was installed, because there was a small uptick in crashes and injuries if you compare the second half of 2009, before the bike lane was installed, to the second half of 2010.