Comments on: The 5 O’Clock Shutdown: What If Your Building Limits Bike Access?

By: Kaja

Kaja — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:29:31 +0000

Looks like it’s actually just false imprisonment in New York, not kidnapping. Misdemeanor, still totally worth calling the cops about. (I am still not a lawyer.)

By: Kaja

Kaja — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:22:53 +0000

Seconding all of this.

I work in a Jeffries-Morris building which was bike-friendly before the Bikes In Buildings law. After Yassky’s bill, my building banned bicycles outside freight hours out of spite — “we’re not going to be told what to do!”, and, “bicycles don’t belong in office buildings”, among phrases out of the mouths of my building’s management.

I am told this is now the case for all J-M buildings in the city.

(The freight here runs 7.30am to 4.45pm.)

My employer is big on bicycles, but has a ten-year lease, and got tired of fighting the building over this.

So, Yassky’s bill has resulted in me having to carry locks around all the time, when previously I was in hog heaven. Did wonders for my libertarian streak and respect for unintended consequences.

Laws aren’t the way to solve these problems.

Erin:

#3′s tough, but #1′s kidnapping, which is a felony. If someone ever prevents you from leaving a space, you should reach for your phone and call the police.

Tell the cops nothing except that these men here prevented you from leaving. ‘Why’ doesn’t matter; say nothing else. (I am not a lawyer.)

By: JK

JK — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:14:15 +0000

If your building mgr is being unfriendly, email Sblog and TA the specifics. Maybe one or both will do a running Bike Parking Hall of Shame and spotlight their unfriendliness like the Voice does with Worlds Worst Landlords. Every year TA can add this to their friendly/unfriendly award. It’s important to praise the good, but also to call attention to the unhelpful.

By: Erin

Erin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:15:42 +0000

Lee #6 wrote, “just bring your freaking bike in and out of the building. what are they going to do, call the cops?”

In my case, building management at the front desk did the following:
1) blocked the doors so I couldn’t leave
2) said I had to take it back upstairs (using the elevator they said I’m not allowed to use)
3) told the CEO of the company I worked for that I was breaking the rules of the building, resulting in me getting yelled at by the three highest people in the company and consequently very nearly fired.

Not so easy.
And yeah, the freight elevator in my work’s building closes at 4:45, and there’s no space in my office anymore for bikes anyway.
And the building has a huge empty concrete back room where they used to let people park their bikes, but they don’t anymore.

By: lee

lee — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 03:36:16 +0000

just bring your freaking bike in and out of the building. what are they going to do, call the cops?

By: J

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:45:38 +0000

I don’t mean to be discouraging, but in some (many?) cases a well-designed law is the only way. A few coworkers and I went door-to-door a few years ago, with a petition asking the building to allow bikes inside. We probably got over 70% of the 60 or so companies to sign on. We even met a broker for the building who lost a tenant at the last minute when they found out about the bike policy. The building still said no way.

It certainly can’t hurt to ask, but sometimes a well-designed well-enforced law is necessary when reason and compromise fail.

By: Clarence Eckerson Jr.

Clarence Eckerson Jr. — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:05:43 +0000

When I worked at Comedy Central, there were five or six of us that rode to work regularly. When one day the building decided it didn’t want to allow bikes anymore (this was in 2001) and handed us each a piece of paper as we brought our bikes up that day, we went to our CEO at the time Larry Divney and each wrote him a letter. We told him it was very important to us as employees to have this option as it keeps us healthy, happy, and eager to work every day. He turned around and wrote a letter telling the management of the building that they needed to stop this policy. And they did.

So I would tell folks who this is happening to: if you can, get the management of your business involved or team up with other people in the building.

By: Gwin

Gwin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:02:39 +0000

I (and others on Streetsblog) have been griping about our buildings’ freight elevator hours as an impediment to bicycle access since the law was implemented.

By: J

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:44:32 +0000

It is all well and good to ask the landlord to work “in good faith” with “the spirit of the law”, but it is the bike-hostile landlords that necessitated a law in the first place. Unless you legislate all the details necessary to make this a legitimate means of storing your bike, it doesn’t really change that much. Sadly, it seems that that is the case here.

Hopefully, this can be amended in the future to provide real access.

By: Andy B from Jersey

Andy B from Jersey — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:29:35 +0000

Sounds like the Bikes in Buildings Law has a long way to go.