I was reading some stuff last night by the controversial John Forester about sidepaths and the cyclist inferiority complex, and I gotta tell you, I'm the kind of guy who falls for Forester at the drop of wayward ped.

Nothing gets people out of the way like seeing a fast bicycle coming directly at them.

You did not tangle with a car or truck, which is still possible, but hopefully much less likely, though you report problems with cars also, and which could have caused some serious injuries or been deadly, even if you were going slow.

Cars really have to be regulated so they can't hurt people.

Not issuing a warning, and going behind a jay-walking pedestrian by Chelsea Piers, she paniced at the last moment, went back the other way, I hit her and she knocked me into the curb. Luckily I was going slow and bore the brunt of accident with scrapes. She apologized and ran away to work.

Now I warn or yell at anyone who seems not know what is going on or are ready to do the wrong thing, no matter how impolite it might seem.

I tried it out for the 2nd time today. Last time I had couple of close calls with cars who were turning and completely oblivious to the fact that there was a bike lane there. But I was being extremely cautious of that, so it turned out fine.

But tonight, I encountered a pedestrian who was using the bike lane as a staging area for the red light (crossing perpendicular to my direction). I slowed down and tried to go behind him, but he froze, and then backed into me and knocked me down. Fortunately I was going pretty slow by the time we made contact. In retrospect, I think the max safe speed for that lane is probably about 5 mph.

It was a nice experiment, but it's not for me.

There should be crack down before a lot of people get hurt.

OK, I was just walking down 9th Avenue in Chelsea, admiring the work they’re doing on the new separated bike lane. (They’re currently putting in traffic islands at the start of each block to help keep cars and bikes apart – what a great idea.) Just then, a garbage truck comes barreling down the bike lane (12:30 p.m. around 19th or 20th streets, just before turning right onto a westbound street). OK, I’ll give our hard-working civil servants the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was going to pick up trash on that block and was saving his herniated disc from having to drag a garbage pail an extra four feet or so before hoisting its contents into his refuse recovery vehicle. Well, no one really had their trash out, so it wasn’t garbage day and he didn’t even slow down to pick up the overflowing municipal garbage pail at the corner.

Which is why I’ve been reciting the number 37697 on my way back to the office. That is the identification number on the upper left of his truck. Wish I had a nice digital camera to capture the moment. The whole incident reminds me of the death of Eric Ng, an NYU student run down by a car that careened down the Hudson River Park bike path last December.

Speaking of updates, my brother told me today that they have already started construction of the curbed separation on the 9th Avenue bike lane (it might just be the pedestrian islands at the intersections, it wasn't entirely clear). It seems that for the new DOT, "short term" = "next week" and "long term" = "next month" - the speed of this whole work just blows me away.

Since the deli is called "Dil E Punjab," then I'm guessing that most of the patrons will be Punjabi speakers. But as Huh says, all the taxi drivers are likely to understand a poster in English.

English is (with Hindi) the "link language" of India. In my experience most Indians in NY - including those who drive taxis - speak highly educated (if accented) English. But if you want a Hindi translator, just go to Stuyvesant and take the top 25 students. Half of them will be Indian :).

As for the taxis in the bike lane at 20th - that block has been a taxi layover spot for a long time (there's a great little hole-in-the-wall Indian deli "Dil E Punjab" on the east side between 21st and 20th which is very popular with the South Asian taxi drivers). A little outreach education on this will probably go a long way - and maybe the deli owners would allow somebody to put up a poster explaining how the bike lane works and asking drivers not to park there, Does T.A. have anybody who can write Hindi? I'm a bit surprised about this, though - with the plastic bollards visible in the NY1 segment, it would seem to take a bit of work to drive into the bike lane and park there. Were these taxis parked in the lane before the bollards went up?

(Tap, tap, tap.)