This shouldn't be about lameass bike clippings, or about waiting for Brooklyn CB1 or DOT to get off their asses. We can all make such requests ourselves, for any location. Actually it would be an incredibly strong statement from New Yorkers if NYC DOT were to receive a virtual avalanche of requests for bike racks.

So?

Emily was suggesting people park a block away rather than chain their bikes to the subway-entrance railings. I think she may be right about this. I do agree with you about drivers in New York, but I just don't think crankiness or accusation matches will get anyone anywhere.

Here's a little news for ya, Emily: "Selfish" is Brooklyn's massively entitled, horn-honking, CO2-spewing, violent, moronic motoring class and its expectation that vast tracts of our public street space should be handed over to them for free for the storage of their gigantic, four-wheeled living rooms. These urban motoring morons are, by just about any reasonable standard, in the 99.9th percentile of most selfish people on Planet Earth.

After listening to all of the honking outside of my apartment window on Saturday afternoon and then being nearly run down by a van driver going about 50 mph on a neighborhood street while trying to bike my 9-month-old in the early evening, I would just like to hoist a gigantic middle finger to Emily and all the rest of 'em.

Brooklyn motorists: You should be stripped of your civil rights and charged $100 for the privilege of turning an ignition key, because most of you display zero responsibility to the rest of society. "Selfish" only just begins to describe it. You are a bunch of sociopathic idiots.

But stepping back, it is ALL public property. We, you and I, the tax payers of New York - WE own the MTA and the city streets.

The point is for the various agencies to connect to each other and work for the public. If the MTA doesn't own the sidewalk space where its entrances are located, then NYCDOT probably does. Fine. Whatever. Obviously the two bureaucracies have adjacent responsibilities. All it takes is for two enlightened administrators with initiative to pick up the phone and call each other and do whatever needs to be done to get a bike rack in there.

In the meantime, the public -- especially readers of Streetsblog -- should hold their feet to the fire and not be making excuses for them.

Is there any reason to believe that the MTA owns the real estate that would be required to install bike racks at that location? The streets belong to the city, not the MTA, so if you want bike racks on the street maybe the MTA isn't the right agency to look to. Maybe all they own above ground are the stairs and railings.

This is NOT Driggs and N. 7th.

And if the MTA is so worried about being sued, why is the green bike still there?

One question for the DOT: now that there are a number of "dead" bikes locked to the new racks at Bedford and N. 7th, whose job is it to remove them?

Seems very strange that the DOT installs racks but has no maintenance plan. I did call the DOT and ask them about the "cityracks", and was told that probably the Dep't of Sanitation would be responsible for removing abandoned bicycles.

Yes, I believe that Livable Streets advocates like you and me should push for more bicycling facilities, but that doesn't mean that cyclists (like me) get a free pass to park wherever we want or ride wherever we want until that happens.

IIRC there are plenty of parking meters up and down Bedford Avenue, on both sides of the street, to which one can fasten one's bicycle. If you can't find a good place to lock up your bike this morning, come a little bit earlier on Monday.

My "catchphrase" is intended to call attention to the MTA's response. There are three choices: 1). Do nothing. 2). Spend money confiscating bikes. 3). Spend money building bike racks.

The MTA choses to spend money confiscating bikes. My point is that money should go to bike racks instead. This would simultaneously solve the two problems of safety hazards and insecure bike parking.

It's incorrect to compare locking bikes to entrances with tying garbage such as old shoes to them. While tied shoes and locked bikes both pose safety hazards, they obviously call for different responses by the MTA. Garbage must be cleared away. Parked bikes, while safety hazards, are also the first/last transportation link to the subway system for many MTA customers. The recurring presence of parked bikes is not a result of loitering and carelessness, but of the failure to plan for subway riders arriving at a station by means other than foot.

For any believer in "livable streets," who the desirability of urban cycling as a given, the burden of responsibility here is on the MTA, not cyclists. The core problem is that the MTA has failed to provide bike parking. The core problem is not individual cyclists who park their bikes at certain angles or at one end or another of a railing.

Do you see the paradigm with which we must understand this issue?

This debate is reminiscent of the fight over bikes on sidewalks. With no safe place on the street, cyclists sometimes ride the sidewalk. Pedestrians then get angry at cyclists and accuse them of disregard for safety and all kinds of vile character flaws. But the problem is not the cyclist; the core problem is abysmal street design offering no safe place to the cyclist (thus adversely affecting both cyclist and pedestrian).

These are all symptoms of an urban environment that has no place for bikes. THAT is the real problem.

I do agree with your second point. If the head of NYC Transit, or even the station manager, came to a community board meeting and asked the CB to create more bike parking, I imagine it would make quite a difference.

Imagine the orderly bike racks that money could buy. Someone said it in the original post: if locking bikes to subway entrances is such a problem, you'd wish the MTA would say "gee, our customers have an unmet demand for bike parking adjacent to mass transit. Let's install racks for them," instead of sending out Suburban-driving employees to illegally block fire hydrants, bust locks and confiscate bikes at a storage location that New Yorkers who work normal business hours can't access.