That got me to thinking: maybe SoHo’s businesses look to the Larrabee’s and their chauffeur-driven RR’s for their clientele. After all, we all know that automobile=affluence, and anyone who doesn’t drive to the boutique on Grand can’t afford to be shopping there.

On the otherhand, i may have just been riding too fast, since i didn’t have to worry about merging out into traffic to dodge a car parked in the bike lane, or worry about a car merging into me to pass the “slow morons” in front of him. Maybe if there had been more congention, i might have seen just the perfect gift, shining like a beacon from a display window. I guess i’ll just have to look again tonight, and tomorrow, and Monday.

What are the negative effects? When you speak about your way of life, do you mean your personal convenience to drive everywhere? Everyone opposed to this keeps talking about the negative effects, but I haven’t heard anything that seems very legitimate. Please, tell us and we can have a conversation.

No. I am not missing the point. People are reacting to the change because it has a negative effect on their way of life. That’s the point you’re missing. Don’t be so selfish.

But it might be a nice touch to keep our helmets on while we shop on streets served by bike lanes, and congratulate the business owners and staff on their good fortune for being located on such a street. We have to communicate the fact that the reason we’re there is because we ride bikes and because they are on a bike lane.

If we are headed for a Grapes of Wrath kind of economy, well run businesses that offer non-frivolous products and services and have good access for bikes, peds, and transit will thrive. Strong commerce is not about mobility, it is about accessibility.

http://www.streetsblog.org/2006/10/25/mta-response-to-pokey-traffic-congestion-vibrancy/

Compare the two photos of New York City and Copenhagen street scenes. Which street looks like it’s friendlier to shoppers and business owners: the one designed for motor vehicle traffic or the one designed for pedestrians and cyclists? I mean… How is this not obvious to Downtown Manhattan retail business men and women? Cars don’t window shop!

I’m also reminded of how the City of London is handling the holiday shopping crush these days. Rather than issuing a “gridlock alert” and standing back and watching the chaos, London is pedestrianizing the city’s major shopping districts. Has this hurt business? Hmmm….

http://www.streetsblog.org/2007/12/10/this-holiday-season-londons-streets-are-absolutely-jammed/

Doesn’t look like it.

I’d absolutely LOVE to stroll down a pedestrianized Prince Street with my kids and do a little holiday shopping at the Apple store and some other SoHo shops this weekend. I’m quite certain that I’d end up buying a bunch of crap that I didn’t even intend to buy and make some local businesses quite happy if Prince Street were a nicer place to actually walk and sit and stay for a while.

http://www.streetsblog.org/2006/12/14/rethinking-soho/

Thanks, however, to the fine work of the SoHo Alliance, I’ll be doing my shopping online this weekend. What’s the opposite of the Jane Jacobs Medal? Sean Sweeney should be awarded that.

Manhattan will never be car-free and nor should it be, but it is truly a step in the right direction that the city is considering creating more facilities and amenities for peds and cyclists to better the non-auto network.

There will always be growing pains. However for businesses to cry foul about the loss of curbside parking space is really sad in this city when the majority of shoppers are pedestrians. Improving bike connectivity and mobility just opens up a new means for people to get around and… shop.

The point of the op-ed is that there is this hysteria that is not borne out by any statistics and has no basis in reality. It is just that people see a change and react as if it was a cancer, the way the body fights a harmless substance when you have an allergy. It’s not actually that there is anything wrong. It’s just emotion.

That being said, providing safe space so that some people are not run over means that other people have to give up some convenience. You’re hallucinating if you think that it has ever (in recent decades, at least) to park in this neighborhood. The small number of people who drive to shop or go to restaurants aren’t going to be materially affected by the removal of a small number of parking spaces. Businesses need to get their deliveries and that’s a purpose that’s being addressed through modification of parking rules.

This single editorial has already proven he is smarter than at least half of the City Council combined.

After it spends tens of billions of dollars to build freight sidings so freight trains don’t block passenger traffic, and condemns dozens of high-cost buildings for equipment to bring freight to the street.

Might have been a good ideal when the IND was built in the late 1920s.

Commerce is drastically effected by traffic. The space taken by bike lanes is minimal compared to the space taken by private cars in the area. The bike lane actually addresses many of the delivery problems in the area by designating loading zones. Previously, deliveries were done illegally in the bike lane. Now they are done legally in the loading zones. The bike lane is usable and deliveries are legal.

Your point may not be without merit, but I have yet to see a specific example of how the bike lane is negatively affecting Grand Street businesses. Please keep in mind that we are in the worst economic recession since the 1930s, so a general decline in business is not really a good example.

Commerce comes before bike lanes, tolls and congestion pricing. Bike lanes don’t drive commerce.

When will the city finally use the subway system for commercial deliveries? Think of all of the cash the MTA can make from freight.