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NYC's DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan may be beloved by cycling enthusiasts for her radical expansion of the city's bike lanes, but to critics like Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, she's "an anti-car extremist. It's kind of easy for Ms. Sadik-Khan to be holier than thou and tell people they have no business driving. She may live down the block from the subway station—but most people don't." And John Liu, the City Council member from Queens who chairs the council’s Transportation Committee, says her agenda comes with "a sense of the elite telling the everyday people what’s good for them, and that’s simply not appreciated. I think it can no longer be ignored, the demographic groups calling for these changes versus the demographic groups that protest."
Those quotes are from a terrific NY Mag feature on Sadik-Khan and the DOT's dramatic re-imagining of NYC's streets. In June, for example, two sections of Broadway in midtown will be closed to motor vehicles and transformed into pedestrian islands, as part of a pilot program that could be expanded to other parts of the main stem. In the article, Sadik-Khan explains that "midtown is basically broken. There’s just not enough space for people."
So little by little, with the help of Jon Orcutt, a former director of Transportation Alternatives, she's been giving it back to the people, telling NY Mag: "One of the good legacies of Robert Moses is that, because he paved so much, we’re able to reclaim it and reuse it. It’s sort of like Jane Jacobs’s revenge on Robert Moses." But this being New York, her vision has sparked increasing opposition from business owners in some neighborhoods who say the bike lanes are keeping deliveries and customers away. One unidentified source who's followed New York City transportation policy for years says, "I’ve been in this business a long time, and I am absolutely shocked to see how a group like Transportation Alternatives is literally writing transportation policy in the city of New York—unchecked."
Last Friday was National Bike to Work Day, and Sadik-Khan, who often rides to work from her West Village home, was out there pedaling with cycling advocates and Transportation Alternatives. The utopian Streetsblog video above shows everyone having a good time and cycling on their best behavior, in full accordance with traffic laws. Speaking of which, Transportation Alternatives has just announced a new "Biking Rules Street Code" campaign, urging riders to adopt safe practices like keeping crosswalks clear, staying off the sidewalks, and always yielding to pedestrians. Here are the DOT's regulations about cycling in NYC [pdf].
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"The utopian Streetsblog video above shows everyone having a good time and cycling on their best behavior, in full accordance with traffic laws."
Wrong, very early in the video :
- Delivery guy riding the wrong way in a protected bike lane
- Someone using the right side lane when the bike lane is clearly free of parked cars and other obstructions
Also, later in the video :
cyclists riding more than two abreast in and outside a bike lane. Not entirely unsafe in the situation, but still against the rules.
Riding in bike lanes is not mandatory. And my mention of the cyclists following traffic rules was obviously referring to those participating in the Bike to Work Day Ride, not the delivery guy.
Riding in bike lanes is legally required UNLESS the cyclist deems the lane unsafe. And what about riding three abreast outside the bike lane?
Where did you find that law?
From the link posted in this article.
RCNY § 4-12 (p) Bicyclists should ride in usable bike lanes, unless they are blocked or unsafe for any reason.
Should != Must ?
Traffic code / law status = MUST.
Given the number of obstructions in bike lanes citywide, the "should" in that regulation ought to be as loosely followed as the corresponding regulation that drivers "should not" block bike lanes. Until police start doing a better job ticketing cars in bike lanes, I'm going to interpret that as a suggestion.
Fair enough, I only worry because failure to use bike lanes when they are clear makes cyclists who DO use the lanes less safe from traffic.
The lanes have been remarkably clear for the past 6 months compared to 2007 and 2008 (this is purely observational, but ticketing on 5th Avenue, where some of the video was shot, has increased almost two-fold it seems).
There are all kinds of the cranes and other development crap blocking bike lanes around where I work.
There's no law against riding more than two abreast in NYC.
Riding three abreast outside the bounds of a bike lane when the bike lane is not obstructed? Yes.
Any bike lane that runs next to a curb full of parked cars is unsafe in IMO.
I like the 'one unidentified source' vs a plethora of community members, and even commenters on the NY mag site giving praise for the new pedestrian improvement around the city.
I guess the one whiny source will remain unidentified? Kind of like the cowardly commenters on gothamist who can't stop talking about Nazi's.
To the unidentified source - what's really the travesty is that it's taken this long to revise the previous unchecked car-centric policy that has dominated NYC since the days of Robert Moses.
This is the one thing that makes me love Bloomberg. Now, if only we could pass those congestion laws.
wah, wah. My heart bleeds for the unidentified source.
If I had a bike, I would totally ride to work. If I had a job.
I own an operate a car, motorcycle and bicycle in NYC, and I feel like we need more bike lanes, more dedicated 2 wheel parking zones, dedicated bus lanes, and municipal bikes, the way they have in Paris, along with residential parking permits, tolls on all the river crossings, and congestion barriers from 59th to 23rd between 3rd and 8th aves. And the Broadway Boulevard pedestrian project should be implemented asap., with a time window for deliveries to businesses and sanitation trucks being allotted between 5 and 7am.
"And John Liu, the City Council member from Queens who chairs the council’s Transportation Committee, says her agenda comes with "a sense of the elite telling the everyday people what’s good for them, and that’s simply not appreciated."
Oh, so it'd be better if those a**holes in Detroit who've been blowing our money left and right told us what to do? How about those dickheads in the Middle-East who supply us with oil who, forget about us, don't even give a shit about their own people. Sure, let's keep listening to those guys and their lobbies because that's really working out for us.
settle down beavis. what is with this near-religious fervor inspired by the car vs bike debate? since when is riding a bicycle a political statement? is it hard to ride a bike and thump your chest at the same time?
BTW canada is the biggest supplier of gasoline in the usa, followed by our friend to the south, mexico.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
Jeffrey Dinowitz is so full of it. The vast majority - overwhelmingly vast majority - of New Yorkers live and work within walking distance of a subway. That's just a fact of life in the city.
5-10 minutes = 5 blocks walking or 20 blocks biking
The people most fiercely opposed to bicycle infrastructure and commuting are mostly likely those that haven't been on a bike in the city since junior high school.
Create the biking infrastructure (sheltered bike lanes, sheltered bike racks) around major subway hubs and it'll be very easy to change people's perceptions regarding what they formerly thought were inaccessible.
I don't know about an overwhelming vast majority of New Yorkers living near a subway. I've live all my life in New York City and for the past 15 years in Flushing. There a many places in this city where you have to take a bus just to get to the subway. Maybe if you visited some of these places in New York you would understand why cars are still needed by some of us. New York City is not just Manhattan and trendy Brooklyn despite what the loud minority of recent transplants would like to believe.
If you have bus access to the subways why do you need a car? I commuted from Flushing to the UWS for high school and knew plenty of other students and worker drones who took the Q12 to Main St to take the 7-train.
And again, if they built safe infrastructure to get to subway hubs and a safe way to lock up your bike it would open up a lot of options.
Maybe because I don't want to spend 2.5 hours of my day commuting? I did that same commute as you did for high school as well. Except mine was the Q46 to the E/F train to the 1/9/2/3 to battery park city. A bus and TWO trains. I would love to bike to my subway station but I would have to bike across a couple of highway on-ramps that have no crossing signals (Van Wyck and Grand Central). Plus there's no guarantee that my bike would still be there after a whole day.
I'm NOT against better bike facilities or safer/less congested roads. I was merely responding to some people's beliefs that almost everyone in NYC lives walking distance to the subway and that's simply not true. I would absolutely agree that if public transport was better and safer (I've had 2 cheap! bikes stolen from me in 5 years) - that I would not have a car.
Finally, someone else realize you still a car in New York City even with the vast public transportation system. Places in the Northern Bronx, Staten Island, and Eastern Queens are not like places in Brooklyn or Manhattan. How many people here have been to Riverdale, Spuyten Duyvil, Bayside, Little Neck, Utopia, Whitestone?
Amazingly none of her critics screamed, "Khan!"
hahaha... You sir, have made my day.
Don't be so sure. I bet "thefacts" will be here any minute to rail against "Diktator Sadik-Khan," as he loves to call her.
It's kind of a shame, if he rode with the group ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan last week, he would have had a chance to actually talk to her.
You're kidding, right? "thefacts" says he owns a bike but he never, ever rides it. I think he's allergic to two-wheeled transport.
"The Facts" is John DelSignore who is some dickhead from Ohio.
I think we need more taxes in this town... so that we can build better stadiums for sports teams! YEAH!!!
I live in Brooklyn, and don't own a car or a bike. My street is clogged with cars in the morning and at night. The vast majority of these drivers speed through the neighborhood, honk at other cars, blare loud music, and are generally nasty people. Many of them are also fat. I resent that people who don't live in my neighborhood contribute so negatively to the quality of life here. The subway isn't bad. They should try it sometime.
hey, i'm with you on the fat thing. (seriously, why do people let themselves get that way?)
but what about loud music? what's so bad about that? it's wonderful and adds to the city experience! i bet you dislike street musicians too! and dogwalkers! and people on cellphones! get with the program, dick
I am a native New Yorker from The Bronx and honestly I don't like the idea of pedestrian malls in NYC. I feel like New York has been taken over by outsiders who want to turn this city into some comfortable suburban type place. New York has become so "livable" that people who would never have moved here during difficult times have done so - the whole survival of the fittest aspect to living in New York is gone and now we are stuck with a bunch of wining babies. I am not trying to romance the past but I liked living amongst people who were real New Yorkers - whether native or not - who lived there lives and did what they wanted without trying to force everyone into there way of thinking. Why move to NY if you want it to be Seattle or some other town.
I am a lifelong NYer too. Born and raised. Your comment makes sense for just about everything EXCEPT this one particular issue. Did you know that the Bronx has the highest levels of asthma in the entire city? Do you think that the children in the Bronx who grow up breathing the shit air and suffer as a result really care what you think about keeping it "real" in NYC? While pretty much 99.9% of the discussion regarding the plague of traffic revolves around Manhattan, the outer boroughs would do well to demand reductions of traffic as well.
What's wrong with trying to improve the city so that it's friendly to pedestrians and cyclists? The majority of the people living in the 5 boroughs (with the probable exception of SIers) don't own or have access to cars, so why the hell are we giving up so much resources and space to automobiles?
The biggest crock is the fact that there are crews working 24/7 to fill in potholes on roads. Meanwhile subway stations all over the city are literally falling apart and flooding at the slightly mist and the best options strap hangers get are fare hikes and a loose promise that services won't be cut...for now.
I'm a native NYer and support any projects that make it safer and easier for me to get around the city without a car.
" But this being New York, her vision has sparked increasing opposition from business owners in some neighborhoods who say the bike lanes are keeping deliveries and customers away."
Car traffic being banned will give those businesses more foot traffic and more customers. The City should also work out a system of night-time or early morning delivery schedules. The traffic, and pollution from it, in Midtown has to be addressed.
I contend that 90% of the cars on the streets of Manhattan are driven by people who don't live there. Hence, I can understand where Sadik-Khan is coming from.
Instead of bickering and arguing about it, why not devote resources to improving mass transit (including cabs) in order to minimize the number of cars on the streets. If I may offer a bit of advice: look to Amsterdam for a wee bit of inspiration.
If you have bus access to the subways why do you need a car?
Try living in a two fare zone like I do, then come back when you've been properly schooled on the matter, mmm'kay?
Thanks.
Please, educate me.
A bus + subway commute to Midtown can take two hours or more from some areas.
Get rid of welfare and you'll have a lot less douches riding around in their Escalade-class monsters blaring reggaeton that you can hear 2 blocks away, even with their illegally super dark tinted windows rolled up. This also includes the folks who live along 8th Ave. in Brooklyn but only drive to Chinatown and back.
Long Island needs to expand parking at a lot of LIRR stations as well as add security (Wynandanch, for example. G-h-e-t-t-o.), but thanks to Robert Moses and the MTA, that's probably not going to happen.
NJT is just terrible, parking is practically nonexistent and really, would YOU want to leave your car in Jersey City or Newark? And Hoboken's always packed. Taking the bus in the 'burbs usually means you still have to drive somewhere where you can't leave your car all day long.
Sure, carpooling would work, but PA doesn't want to make a big deal out of the pretty nice discount you get for that, especially at the Holland tunnel.
There's no easy answer and it's not just "LETS GET RID OF CARS MMKAY" because that's just stupid.
Edge,
People on welfare don't drive Cadillacs.
I know Ronald Reagan told that story so many years ago, but it's not true.
Do you have any idea how low the welfare grant is in New York City?
If you did, you wouldn't make a stupid statement like that.
Also, why exactly do you have a problem with people of color having nice cars and listening to their music while driving them?
That sounds kinda - racist.
It's not racist if it's true, now is it?
And yes, people on welfare DO have luxury cars. I know for a fact most of Chinatown is on welfare, yet own cars and houses (see plural). You think *all* those douches riding up and down Atlantic Ave. in their tricked out Escalades and Hummers pay taxes? You think they're not on medicaid?
Really?
The thing is, it's not true and you're a racist moron.
Q.E.D.
Prove me wrong, then, especially about Chinatown.
I think Ms. Sadik-Kahn needs to step back and realize that not only are bicycling commuters a minority, they also don't bicycle to work year-round. She is an avid cyclist and takes her enthusiasm for biking to inconvenient levels for the rest of us.
As for off hour deliveries- you do it. See how you like being told you can't work when everyone else is working.
If we really want to make a difference then ALL non-nyc commuters (long island and NJ and CT) Should have to pay an extra commuter tax for the LUXURY of driving your car to work everyday. "Don't like paying an extra $100 dollars a week to drive in?" Too bad, take the train
I cannot stand when people from other places in The US come here and try to make us more like Portland or Chicago. Why can't NY keep its character? why must it change for YOU? Didn't you come here to experience THIS place? Why would you want to make it like somewhere else. NYC has its problems but they belong to NYC. Just like the Cubs wouldn't be the same if they won the series, well NYC won't be so great if it was the same as everywhere else.
Uh, it's not always a "luxury" to commute by car from CT/NJ/LI.
I have a counter-question. Why should NYC stay the same for you? Heaven forbid anyone try to improve the city. You want NYC to keep its problems because they give the city "character." But you don't give any proof that what you want to keep is better than what's coming or even what came before. You have the conceit that what you personally want is the very best era of the city and things should be frozen in time for you alone.
P.S. Your "experience" commuting to high school doesn't count, because living in a bus-to-subway 2-fare zone is a helluva lot more stressful and frustrating for a working adult than it is for an adolescent.
Relax, bubby, I've lived and worked all over NYC and it's suburbs and commuted using every imaginable way possible. From Queens - both as a student and working adult - I've done the combo routes of bus/subway and LIRR/subway. During a stint in the lower hudson valley, I've commuted to work via car to NJ. From the same place I've used the combos of commuter bus/metro-north and straight commuter bus into midtown then walking. Currently, from Brooklyn, I'm a mix of subway and biking.
I've got commuter "credentials" up the wazoo.
My question of why one would need a car if they had bus access to a subway station should have been more specific. I should have said MTA city bus to subway since obviously using a commuter bus to a subway is impractical and an added cost. Again, if a subway hub was close by and had bike and city bus infrastructure built around it, one would rarely need to use a cars to get to/from work.
I'm not saying people aren't entitled to cars, especially in places like Middle Village Queens or Staten Island, etc. Living without a car in those areas suck and blow (usually why real estate costs around LIRR stations are astronomical). In those instances, you take the good (lawns, more space for your money) with the bad (longer, more expensive commutes).
Hope is dope! Yay Dani! I didn't read all the responses posted here, but I thought this was a great idea and I enjoyed participating. That said, I do think that people who aren't as experienced with cycling in heavy traffic are absolutely going to shy away from doing this kind of thing until there are more dedicated bike lanes that are clearly enforced. Yes, there are more bike lanes now than ever before, but I feel like a significant amount of the time they're obstructed by construction or cars, which renders them rather pointless. I'm not completely anti-car (however, I think we absolutely need a congestion policy for downtown) but I say we need to re-think how our streets look and function so that everyone is happy and safe. Here's an interesting feature that addresses what city streets *could* look like in the future: http://tr.im/lGAz
Another native New Yorker here. I've never owned a car and also think that transportation policy has been too car-oriented in the past. But I'm very skeptical of both promoting bicyling and pedestrian malls. Bicycling will only become feasible for most people if you reduce the amount of traffic first because of safety issues, you don't promote bicycling to reduce auto traffic, its the other way around. I also suspect that bicycle enthusiasm has become something of a dodge to avoid making the hard decisions involved in improving subway and bus service and making things easier for pedestrians. Pedestrian mall just never seem to work.
I'd like to see one north-south avenue on the East Side and one north-south avenue on the West Side closed to private auto traffic and reserved for express busses, emergency vehicles, and bikes. You then don't need bike lanes and can take some busses off the other avenues, which may even cancel out the effect somewhat from diverting auto traffic from the two reserved avenues. We badly need more express bus service to take pressure off of some of the more overcrowded subway lines.
The DoT has been celebrating bicycles by closing off the north pedestrian-bicycle path on the Williamsburg Bridge so that everyone -- pedestrians with and without strollers and shopping carts and small children and dogs, drunks, bicyclists, and skateboarders are crowded onto the narrow, steep, bumpy south side. There is supposed to be work going on on the north side but nothing is visible. It is this kind of inefficiency and stupidity that renders most of the talk about bicycles phony. Painting lines on the street is cheap; thinking is apparently very difficult.
I don't know why everyone is so in love with bicycles in this city. Half the year the weather sucks here. Bicycling is only good as the weather, such as a climate like California. From May - October is good bicycling weather here, the other half sucks, Who wants to ride a bicycle in the middle of winter???
I rather spend the money on better subway, bus, Metro North and LIRR service.
Riding in winter is actually quite enjoyable -- if you've layered your clothes and have a pair of good gloves. Remember, exercise warms you quickly, and biking is no exception. It's actually much better than freezing your ass off on the walk to/from the subway and standing on the platform...
Personally, I do adhere to certain limits (I don't ride when it's raining or when there's snow/ice on the ground), but there are others who are more intrepid. I've been riding year-round for 11 years now.
just imagine how this woulda went down if there was a substantial economy...
gang way, i got my helmet on.
ima pee on that.
Nothing like a bunch of hipster transplants who want to change NYC into some utopian paradise. Oh and by NYC of course we mean Manhattan below 125th street and western Brooklyn only, the rest of NYC doesn't count. Funny how none of these people are protesting for a bike lane down Linden Boulevard...
Oh God PLEASE make the crime rate go back up so these jackasses will run back to whatever midwestern shithole they were born in.
+1 vote for most retarded comment so far
So anyone have any ideas how to actually encourage delivery/couriers/hood rats to ride in the lanes?
Definitely an issue for pedestrians and law abiding cyclists. I take the time to yell at the dumb crackheads and other idiots who fail to use perfectly clear bike lanes. Usually the just look confused but sometimes they join me in the bike lane, which is usually faster anyway.
So, keep making the lanes the safest place on the street for cyclists, and when there is a much lower vehicular intrusion rate, start ticketing cyclists who fail to use the lane consistently.
Sadik-Khan is a limousine liberal who has no idea of how the city is actually run.
This city relies on delivery trucks to get us all of the items we use every day - the newspaper you read, the food you eat, the materials that built the building you work in, all came in on trucks.
Less lanes of traffic make it harder for deliveries to get done - in some cases, this means deliveries have to be done at night.
And that costs money - money that will eventually be passed along to you in the form of higher prices.
Sadik-Khan doesn't care - shes rich, so it won't bother her.
Beyond that, this whole bycicyephillic orthodoxy that cars are evil and bikes are good is just a bunch of do gooder nonsense.
Some people find it more convenient to commute by car.
They should have the right and freedom to make that decision - instead of having Sadik-Khan ram her will down their throats.
This is not Amsterdam or Copenhagen, this is New York.
"Sadik-Khan is a limousine liberal..."
Gregory, you are not being metaphoric. This is the GODDAMN TRUTH.
At photo-ops with TransAlt pulling her around by the nose like a bull to slaughter, this West Village, hippy, upper-crust, elitist tells the plebians to ride bikes or take the subway.
However, most of the time she is driven around in a chauffeured, limousine paid for by us plebes.
She removes parking spots elsewhere in NYC except in front of her DOT office on Chambers Street. The phony.
I have mentioned this hypocrisy many times on this blog, but the Spandex Nazis conveniently ignore this. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Ignored? No way - you're hilarious!
You are a day late on this one, we already discussed that you're a moron. And you know you missed out on a chance to actually talk to the person you bitch and moan about so much on bike to work day.
Was I a day late in commenting? Really? Oh my. Horrible of me, isn't it? Did you piss in your Spandex waiting for to to comment, little guy?
Excuse me if I have a job and a life outside gothamist, unlike losers like yourself who have nothing better to do with their vapid and shallow existence than to comment obsessively almost two dozen times on a NY Magazine article.
Not with tractor trailers and taxis ever ready to steamroll you. Biking is for bike trails in parks...
www.forgotten-ny.com
Thousands of people make it to work and school safely everyday by bike. I've been doing it since I turned 14, and my little brother rides to high school everyday.
I hate to say it, but maybe spending so much time documenting old new york has left you out of touch with modern day transit in the city.
I make that comment after years of bicycling and walking in the city and nearly coming to blows with not just doorers but other cyclists who insist on breaking traffic regs, like cycling the wrong one-way and blowing through lights, almost clipping me while crossing at the green. I'd much rather stick to Ocean Parkway, the Vanderbilt Motor Parkway in Queens, and other places built for cyclists where interaction with cars and pedestrians is at a minimum.
www.forgotten-ny.com
So have you continued to ride in the streets? Dooring shouldn't be an issue if you stay out of the door zone. And almost clipped means that they didn't hit you, right? Maybe you're just skittish?
I'll have to take out my vintage coupe more often, to introduce you to my "door zone".
Uh huh...
Was I a day late in commenting? Really? Oh my. Horrible of me, isn't it? Did you piss in your Spandex waiting for to to comment, little guy?
Excuse me if I have a job and a life outside gothamist, unlike losers like yourself who have nothing better to do with their vapid and shallow existence than to comment obsessively almost two dozen times on a NY Magazine article.
I didn't comment on the NY Magazine article. I commented on the gothamist article.
Get a fucking life, or else take obsessive-compulsive medication.
Go fuck yourself. You'll forever be a racist coward bitching and moaning about traffic changes.