Wouldn't you likely have more foot traffic which equals more walk-ins for your business??

If the plan included converting a lane to wider sidewalks - and permissions during warm weather months for businesses to take advantage of that new space I bet the proposal would have gotten farther ...

After reading this article a few times, here's what I think is going on. It's no accident that the Greenwich Village - Chelsea *Chamber of Commerce* is the main party claiming that a bike lane will be harmful to the LGBT community. I read it as a group of gay business owners who believe the old canard that a bike lane will negatively impact their revenue because it will be less convenient for people to shop there by car. So then they try to alarm everyone by claiming a bike lane will have a negative impact on the gay community. Here's one gay man who doesn't buy it.

The real battle here, as Timmy pointed out, is winning over the restaurant and bar owners, and finding ways to solve the problems they have with the design. That anyone could argue that the current dangerous truck and car dominated streetscape is more "gay" just leaves me gobsmacked. Then again, people will always play cards when they want to cover their real interests, and it is always the "silly season" when it comes to politics.

Kudos Streetsblog! You're now big enough to attract the bottom feeders of the internet. Onward and upward.

To "S.U.V." - how about those gas prices, huh?

Note to Mr. S.U.V.: Every single one of the projects above have been or will be implemented except, perhaps, Gerritsen Beach. If those people down there at the end of the road want to keep their communtiy a cesspool, by all means. It doesn't hurt anyone else.

Your Community Board axe-grinding and your angry little blog comments are irrelevant. So feel free.

You guys just don't get it, do you? Every time I log on here, it is the same myopic coterie of zealots blogging away day after day in a massive circle jerk, and who are out of touch with the rest of the citizenry. No wonder you are constantly mocked on the other blogs.

Point is that members of the community have no respect for you. E.g. Recently CB1 in Manhattan objected to the Summer Streets closing down Centre St as well as bikes in City Hall Park. CB2 earlier voted down the Prince Street Closing, the Gerritsen Beach CB also rejected another of your silly schemes, CB 8 uptown opposed bike lanes on a closed street (west 92nd?) and now CB4 turns this bike lane down.

And you still don't get it!

No one cares much about your agenda, and most view cyclists as reckless lawbreakers who endanger more citizens than cars do. At least you break more laws.

CB4 gave you your latest comeuppance. Good for them.

When Bloomberg leaves, he'll take that hippy bike-riding DOT commissioner over to Bloomberg News with him. Your Messiah will have departed, and you will all be relegated back to the fringes.

Hats off to Roskoff, Dirk McCall, Corey Johnson and the rest of CB4 for a breath of sanity.

The residents and businesses of Chelsea applaud you for saving us from these agendaists.

Well said. Your analysis is right on point.

You really get the sense of that in the Gay City News article that Timmy links to above. The gay community seems to be worried about gentrification and the dissipation of the area's gay identity as new buildings, businesses and people move in. The bike lane and pedestrian safety improvements end up being viewed by active, vocal community old-timers as being part of this change that they feel is pushing them out of their neighborhood. Really, these changes being proposed by DOT have almost nothing to do with those other issues.

We saw similar phenomenon on Prince Street in Soho and 9th Street in Park Slope. In Soho the community has longstanding grievances regarding street vendors and the commercialization of their neighborhood. On 9th Street, the neighbors have lots of anxiety around development, traffic congestion and parking. Small groups of vocal, old-time community people rose up on Prince to try to kill the car-free weekend idea. And on 9th Street they tried to kill a really nicely designed road diet. In both cases, the list of grievances often had nothing to do with the actual DOT project. On Prince, for crissake, the car-free idea would have gone a long way to SOLVING the vendor problem. But no.

My theory is that these livable streets projects often end up serving as easy targets and good opportunities for aggrieved old-timers and Community Board types to take out their frustration on an official target. After all, the real estate developers putting up the condos as-of-right don't have to go before a Community Board. The European tourists walking through the neighborhood don't need approval. No one has to get permission from a CB commmittee to ride a bike down the street.

But DOT does need to go before a Board to make a bike lane. And this is the only chance these folks have to vent and to put their foot down and just say NO. So they do.

It's impacting the LGBT community disproportionately, because most or a lot of the storeowners on Eighth Avenue are either gay or cater to the gay and lesbian community.

It's hard to tell for sure, but it seems like all the people complaining about this are gay men, no lesbian, bisexual or transgender people. As a member of the transgender community, I would like to stand with the gay men who've commented above and say that the cycle track would not have any net negative affect on transgender people. Speak for yourself, Dirk. No NIMBYism in our name.

Think of the stretch like Sunset Strip. Why that works is because the traffic crawls anyway. We could enforce crawling.

On the other hand, I guess you can tell them that cruising in the post-carbon era is over and to go jump in a lake.