John Mica and John Boehner would have you believe their bill is a blessing for transit. It isn't.

Republicans are not anti-transit, but we do recognize that the Highway Trust Fund is paid for by highways users, and cities and local governments must look at developing a similar user fee system for transit users.

This bill gives more flexibility to states to fund their most critical transportation needs, and under this bill states can also use the funds authorized under the highway program for transit systems if they so choose.

Because of the struggling economy, changing driving patterns and more fuel efficient vehicles, the Highway Trust Fund is in repeated danger of running dry. The Republican bill stabilizes the Trust Fund for the next five years, ensures states have the ability to fund their most critical transportation needs, and also guarantees transit funding.

Transportation myths die hard, and here the House GOP is trotting out a bunch of them — plus a few new sadistic rhetorical flourishes — to justify what’s quickly becoming known as the worst transportation bill ever. A quick primer on how the Republican leadership is lying about their bill:

1. The House GOP is not guaranteeing transit funding. They’re eliminating guaranteed transit funding.

Ask anyone who works in public transit, and they’ll tell you this bill would wreak havoc as soon as it is passed. By ending the policy begun by Ronald Reagan of funding federal transit programs with gas tax revenue, House Republicans would cast a pall of uncertainty over just about every transit agency in America. The Republican “guarantee” is nothing but a guarantee of more haggling over limited dollars as transit programs go up against other spending priorities in the general fund. Without the certainty that gas tax revenues provide, transit agencies will immediately move to cut service and raise fares, exactly what Americans don’t need while gas prices are rising and jobs are still scarce.

2. Highways are not “paid for by highway users.”

Gas taxes and tolls don’t cover the cost of highways, not by a longshot. In 2007, for example, user fees only covered 51 percent of highway costs, according to Subsidyscope. In other words, roads are subsidized — on a much larger scale than transit.

3. The House GOP bill does nothing to “stabilize” the Highway Trust Fund.

The bill relies on one-shot fees from gas and oil drilling to make up for the deficit in the Highway Trust Fund. While this would ensure that highways are subsidized even more than they are now, it’s a completely inadequate way to pay for transportation infrastructure, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

4. There’s already a “user fee system for transit users.”

It’s called the farebox.

5. “Changing driving patterns” are not endangering the Highway Trust Fund.

The truth is that even though Americans are driving less, the nation’s transportation funding system would be on solid footing if the federal gas tax kept pace with inflation. But since the gas tax is much lower in inflation-adjusted dollars than it was in 1993, the last year it was raised, the Highway Trust Fund is depleted. Congress and President Obama could solve the problem by taking another page from Reagan and adjusting the gas tax.

(The other Orwellian touch here is that the House bill doesn’t actually include any policies to adapt to “changing driving patterns.” In fact, it seems to have been drafted with 1950s-era driving patterns in mind. A bill that accounts for changing driving patterns would reflect the steadily increasing number of American transit riders, cyclists, and pedestrians, and the decline of driving per capita. Instead, the House bill puts all its resources into infrastructure for driving.)

6. States already have the “flexibility” to spend their highway funds on transit — the problem is they don’t like to.

States have had the flexibility to spend their highway funds on transit for decades. But highways are what they know, so highways are what they build.

When the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act passed in 1991, it was supposed to mark the end of an era, says Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director for the Natural Resource Defense Council. The interstate highway system was finished, and federal transportation money would go to increasingly to other things — dedicated funding for bike/ped projects, an expanded transit program, a larger program for congestion mitigation and air quality improvement, all part of an enlarged Surface Transportation Program. States could “flex” STP funds however they wanted. “Unfortunately, the track record for flexing STP has been very poor,” said Lovaas. “State highway agencies focus on highways.”

If the House GOP really cared about local control of transportation funds, they could draft a bill that distributes federal funding to cities and towns. The problem for John Boehner and the oil companies who back this bill is that cities and towns spend transportation dollars on things like transit, biking, and walking.

More headlines about the terrible House transpo bill at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

One of these bike-share workshop participants is the star of this classic Streetfilm.

It was another evening of hands-on bike-share station planning at Manhattan Community Board 2 last night, as New Yorkers hunched over maps of SoHo and Greenwich Village, marking the best places to site bike-share kiosks.

If you live or work in the bike-share service area, you really ought to mark your calendar for the station planning meeting in your neck of the woods. There’s something very gratifying about the process that NYC DOT and Alta Bikeshare have put together for people to rate different sites. Each time you put a sticker on the map, you’re shaping the bike-share system in a small but tangible way.

The other thing is that you never know who else will show up. Last night, former Talking Heads frontman and one-time Summer Streets spokesperson David Byrne was in the house, marking up a map. If the pattern holds, it looks like Jay-Z will be on hand for the Manhattan CB 6 workshop later this month, and John Franco and John Starks might turn up at Brooklyn CB 2.

The slug for the story on the metro section homepage reads: “New York often resorts to revenue-raising expedients like a lucrative new campaign to keep drivers on Broadway below Houston Street from venturing into the bus lane.”

Dwyer’s piece then uses the enforcement of the Broadway bus lane in lower Manhattan as a kind of poster child for what he sees as an excessive reliance on fines and fees in the city budget. He writes: “Whatever the virtues of bus lanes, and there are many, this one is a trap — a lucrative one.”

Dwyer’s source for claiming that the Broadway bus lane is a “trap”? Well, he doesn’t quote any transit planners with the MTA or NYC DOT, which implemented bus improvements on Broadway in 2007. He doesn’t quote any bus drivers familiar with the route. He doesn’t turn to any of the 41,000 or so passengers who ride the New York City Transit buses that ply Broadway every weekday. Instead he cites a cop who “concedes that traffic would be backed up to 14th Street if some drivers did not make their way into that Broadway bus lane.”

The other expert who turns up at the tail end of Dwyer’s piece is an anonymous state official who, “as it happens,” was pulled over for driving in the bus lane and “managed to wiggle out of the ticket.” A member of the placarded class who got busted but didn’t have to pay. Exactly the type of credible source Times readers should trust to render judgment on transportation policy. The official says of the Broadway lane: “It goes against the intent of bus lanes because it causes congestion.”

And here I thought the intent of bus lanes was to help bus passengers reach their destinations quicker. But who needs transit planners, bus drivers, and bus riders to weigh in on a bus lane when cops and anonymous state officials who drive in the bus lane are so generous with their expertise?

Go back a few years in the Times’ archive, and there’s a great explanation for why Broadway needs bus lane enforcement. From a Willie Neuman story in 2007:

As the bus continued south on Broadway, the driver pointed to the lane next to the curb, which was marked on the pavement as a bus lane. Despite that, the lane was mostly full of parked cars, most of them with city-issued placards on the dash, showing they were used by law enforcement personnel.

More than one bus stop was blocked with parked cars as well, some with placards, others with drivers sitting at the wheel. While the cars with placards are allowed to use the bus lane under the current rules, parking in a bus stop is prohibited.

“This is always like this,” the bus driver said. “And you know what’s missing? There are no ticket agents down here.”

Last week, Streetsblog reported that NYPD had released a detailed description of how the crash unfolded, supposedly based on security video from a business located at 157 Morgan Avenue. But the footage NYPD gave the Lefevre family does not convey the same details as the descriptions of video in the police investigative file.

Here is the description of a security video from 157 Morgan submitted by Detective Gerard Sheehan. It delves into specific detail about the crash:

Here are two videos captured from 157 Morgan that NYPD gave to the Lefevres and their attorney, Steve Vaccaro, showing footage at the intersection immediately before Leonardo Degianni, who fatally struck Lefevre and then left the scene, turned on to Meserole Street. In the first clip, the crane truck operated by Degianni enters the frame at about the 4:50 mark, and a cyclist is briefly visible at about the 5:02 mark. In the second clip, the truck enters the frame slightly after the 6:50 mark. In neither video is the moment Degianni struck Lefevre plainly visible.

Adding to the discrepancies, a second police description of security video does not match Sheehan’s description or the videos in the investigative file. The description from Detective Sheehan says that Lefevre was initially struck by the “passenger right side” of Degianni’s truck, which threw him “into the roadway” before Degianni struck him again. A second description, from officer Armand Tasca, says Lefevre “rode directly into the side of the truck as it made the right turn” (note that both Sheehan and Tasca wrote that Degianni and Lefevre were traveling north on Morgan, when they were in fact traveling south — see crash diagram at the end of this post):

“The FOIL documents raise more questions than they answer,” said Vaccaro. Even with a close viewing of the videos posted here — two of the four released by NYPD — it’s impossible to corroborate NYPD’s version of how the collision unfolded. (The third video shows the truck traveling on Meserole Street, leaving behind what appears to be Lefevre’s bike mid-block, and the fourth video shows Degianni parking the crane truck, then driving away in another vehicle.)

NYPD’s public information office has not responded to Streetsblog’s request to speak with Detective Sheehan about the discrepancy between the videos and the descriptions of the videos in the investigative file.

On January 27, Vaccaro demanded that NYPD certify that he and the Lefevres have received accurate copies of all videos in the department’s possession. He has not yet received a response. “The NYPD’s account of the crash doesn’t hold water, unless there is video or other evidence they are withholding,” Vaccaro says.

Diagram of the crash from NYPD’s investigative file:

Videos from 157 Morgan Avenue as NYPD submitted to the Lefevres and Vaccaro:

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Photo: @jackNruth/Twitter via @MikeLydon

This Twitter photo of LeBron James biking to American Airlines Arena before facing off against Derrick Rose and the Chicago Bulls last night has gone viral on sports news sites all over America.

There are some interesting sociological currents swirling around LeBron James, bike commuter. While the photographer labeled James a “manchild” for taking to Miami’s none-too-friendly streets on a bike, the prevailing sentiment in the ESPN comments section seems to be that the sight of LeBron riding to work will help rehab his public image.

After the Heat edged the Bulls, James told reporters in the locker room that bike commuting is pretty routine for him. In fact, he seems to enjoy talking about the bike ride more than the basketball game:

The Heat forward isn’t as vocal about his modal proclivities as say, Baltimore Orioles pitcher Jeremy Guthrie, but he sure has a higher pulpit if he ever chooses to speak up about street safety. Our friends at Transit Miami are hoping LeBron the bike commuter can quicken the pace of change in south Florida: “Maybe now we can get some Lebron-sized bicycle lanes.”

An exhaustive report published in the British Medical Journal found that traffic injuries declined in London's 20 mph zones and, to a lesser but still significant extent, on the streets immediately adjacent to the zones. Image: British Medical Journal

The Brooklyn Paper ran one of its trademark neighbor-vs.-neighbor stories today, turning a weekend public workshop about implementing a 20 mph zone in Park Slope into an occasion for more conflict-driven reporting:

Greenwood Heights activists claim drivers heading south on Sixth Avenue already speed up once they cross the Prospect Expressway and hit a five-block stretch between 20th and 25th streets with no stop signs.

“It’s already treacherous,” said resident Sarah Raskin. “This would divert unsafe driving from one neighborhood to another.”

Sounds like streets in Greenwood Heights need traffic calming too. And in fact, the Greenwood Heights residents quoted in the Brooklyn Paper seem to be saying they’d welcome a slow zone that encompasses their neighborhood.

It would be great to see a blanket 20 mph speed limit — pioneered by NYC DOT in the Bronx neighborhood of Claremont — extend to many neighborhoods at once. But if Park Slope gets a slow zone before Greenwood Heights, or if Greenwood Heights gets a slow zone before Park Slope, research suggests both neighborhoods will still be better off.

The definitive piece of research on 20 mph zones was published in the British Medical Journal in 2009. Reviewing 20 years of data, researchers found that London’s 20 mph zones, a patchwork of neighborhoods that expanded gradually over many years, prevent 27 traffic deaths and serious injuries annually. Within the zones, serious traffic injuries and deaths fell 46 percent, and children sustained 50 percent fewer casualties.

Significantly, the authors reported that the data “suggests that casualties inside 20 mph zones are not being displaced to nearby roads.” And on top of that, they found a spillover effect, with traffic injuries and deaths declining eight percent in areas adjacent to the slow zones (within 150 meters, or about two NYC blocks).

Adding slow zones is not a zero-sum game.

Introducing the newest member of the Streetsblog family… Luna Blue Evans-Snyder was born the afternoon of January 13. She weighed in at 6 pounds, 12 ounces.

As you might imagine, Tanya’s byline is going to be a little scarce over the next several weeks. If you’d like to send her well-wishes and recommendations for a good balance bike, you can reach her at tanya.c.snyder@gmail.com.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Police retrieved a video recording of the moment Leonardo Degianni struck Mathieu Lefevre with his truck only after the Lefevre family held a demonstration in front of NYPD headquarters and sent a letter protesting the department's handling of the case.

The hit-and-run truck driver who killed cyclist Mathieu Lefevre last October struck the victim with his front driver’s side tire, according to a description in NYPD’s investigative file shared by Lefevre’s family. The description, based largely on video evidence police obtained in December, raises serious questions about the driver’s claim that he was not aware he had struck Lefevre when he left the scene of the fatal collision.

Police released the investigative file on Friday, three weeks after Lefevre’s family filed a suit under the Freedom of Information Law to obtain materials related to the investigation.

In a statement released today [PDF], Erika Lefevre, the victim’s mother, revealed that NYPD has now issued traffic summonses to the crane truck driver, Leonardo Degianni, for failure to exercise due care and failing to signal, but no criminal charges. The statement criticizes NYPD for not charging Degianni with fleeing the scene and criminal negligence, given evidence that Degianni’s front bumper and driver’s side front wheel struck Mathieu Lefevre. The Lefevres are appealing to Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes to review the case.

The Lefevre case has shed light on an aspect of policing that NYPD is loath to conduct transparently. Police and press accounts of traffic fatalities tend to be riddled with gaps, and witness accounts from crash scenes often depict police failing to pursue potential lines of inquiry. Thanks to the Lefevres’ determined pursuit of the truth, the public not only has a better sense of what caused Mathieu Lefevre’s death, but how NYPD conducts crash investigations.

Evidence in the Lefevre file summarized by their attorney, Steve Vaccaro, directly contradicts at least one NYPD account of the crash, in which a police source said the victim ran a red light. The NYPD file indicates that Lefevre and Degianni were passing through the intersection of Meserole Street and Morgan Avenue simultaneously, with a green light, when Degianni turned across Lefevre’s path, without signaling, as the cyclist continued straight.

The new evidence is only coming to light after the victim’s family relentlessly pressed the NYPD to disclose information related to the crash.

NYPD records, as summarized by Vaccaro, show that in October police thought they had all the video evidence available. They had one video that did not capture the moment of impact, but showed Lefevre’s body being “ejected” by the truck, Vaccaro said. In early December, NYPD told the Lefevres that the video evidence was inconclusive.

Only after a rally at NYPD headquarters and the Lefevres’ much-reported search for information did police obtain the video showing the initial impact, collected from a Morgan Avenue shopkeeper on December 18. Vaccaro did his own canvassing and found several other businesses that had video. The day after the shopkeeper on Morgan Avenue provided his tape to NYPD, he told Vaccaro’s firm that he’d watched the video and found it disturbing.

The substantial time lag before NYPD obtained crucial video evidence is one misstep in a general pattern of carelessness on the part of police investigators. According to the NYPD file, police did not have functioning cameras to record critical blood evidence at the scene of the crash. While Vaccaro says the officer assigned to the case, Detective Gerard Sheehan, told him that blood and paint were found on the front bumper of Degianni’s truck, the investigative file omits that specific evidence, making only a general reference to blood found on the truck.

A document from the NYPD investigative file indicates that the camera used to record blood evidence at the scene of Mathieu Lefevre's death was not working properly. While a detective told the Lefevre family's lawyer that blood was found on the truck's front bumper, the investigative file does not include such specific information about blood evidence.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

As part of the grand bargain struck between Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor Andrew Cuomo that will create a new class of hail-able livery cabs, NYC will auction off 2,000 new yellow taxi medallions. The city is expected to haul in a billion dollars from the auction, but Komanoff calculates that in the bargain, central Manhattan streets will be overrun with even more traffic:

No one mentioned traffic when the taxi deal was rolled out last month at City Hall and in Albany. After all, with 800,000 motor vehicles already entering the Manhattan Central Business District (CBD) each weekday, what difference could a mere 2,000 additional yellow cabs possibly make?

Plenty, it turns out. Yellow cabs spend three-fourths of each shift, around seven hours, plying CBD streets and avenues. (And of course some are active for two shifts a day.) Most private cars driven in Manhattan don’t do so for long. Even at the CBD’s notoriously labored traffic pace — now averaging 9.5 mph, up from 8 mph before the recession — the two to three miles per day logged by the average car below 60th Street occupy 15 to 20 minutes.

Adding one new medallion is thus equivalent to adding 40 private cars. Adding 2,000 of them — as the City now intends to do during the next three years — would be the traffic equivalent of adding 80,000 cars, a 10% increase in volume.

Some form of congestion pricing would be just about the only way to mitigate the impact of all this additional traffic, Komanoff writes. You can see the analysis underlying his conclusions in this PDF.

Under Speaker Chistine Quinn, shown here with council members James Vacca and Diana Reyna, the current City Council has added red tape for bike projects and reduced incentives to obey parking rules. Photo: DNAinfo

A year ago Quinn made it clear that her top transportation priority wouldn’t be improving conditions for straphangers or making streets safer for walking and biking. Nope. In a city where 54 percent of households don’t own cars, Quinn focused on reducing the perceived inconvenience of storing cars on public streets.

Now the speaker is getting her moment in the spotlight from this agenda, with the passage of three bills yesterday. One would ban the Sanitation Department from placing stickers on cars that violate alternate-side parking rules. The Sanitation Department opposes the legislation, but the bill has enough votes on the council to override a mayoral veto. Another would let motorists escape a ticket if they show the parking enforcement officer a muni-meter receipt timestamped within five minutes of the violation, and the third would give illegal parkers more time before late fees kick in on their violations.

The 54 percent who don’t own cars get nothing out of this package, except maybe dirtier streets.

The real irony is that car owners don’t get much out of these bills either. The fact is that parking will remain a headache as long as New York gives away most of its scarce curbside space for free, or at bargain rates.

The City Council could learn a few things from San Francisco, where car owners are incurring fewer parking tickets thanks to a program that aligns parking prices with demand. Rather than bend over backward to address a few pet peeves, Quinn and Vacca would do more to lessen parking dysfunction by encouraging the city to move quickly with its own program to put the right price on curbside space. Instead, any time the city tries to adjust meter rates, the council is the loudest opponent.

After the jump, read the email blast that Quinn’s office sent out yesterday claiming victory against “unfair” and “unnecessarily punitive” parking enforcement.

Council Votes to Ease Parking Regulations
The Fair Parking Legislative package will promote more judicious parking enforcement and ticketing practices, providing relief for motorists citywide.  

At today’s Stated Council Meeting, my colleagues and I voted on the Fair Parking Legislative package – three bills intended to make parking enforcement fairer and to eliminate excessive ticketing in New York City.

The first bill, which I first presented during my 2011 State of the City address, will help drivers who receive a parking ticket while in the process of paying for a muni-meter spot. Under the legislation, Traffic Enforcement Agents, with electronic ticketing devices, will now be able – and required – to cancel the ticket immediately, averting the need for New Yorkers to dispute it later, saving them time and effort.

My colleagues at the Council and I also voted on legislation to prohibit late fees on parking tickets prior to a determination of liability. Under current law, late fees may start accruing 30 days after a ticket is issued, rather than 30 days after a determination is made in these cases. This bill will suspend the accrual of late fees until at least 30 days after a finding of guilt, or thirty days after an appeal is decided.

Finally, we voted to end a practice that utilizes adhesive stickers to mark vehicles allegedly violating alternate side parking rules. These stickers are unnecessarily punitive and this bill will end this practice.

IMMEDIATE CANCELLATION OF UNFAIR PARKING VIOLATIONS
To address complaints heard from New Yorkers who park their car and receive a ticket while in the process of paying at a muni-meter, my colleagues and I passed a bill earlier today to require Traffic Enforcement Agents to cancel a ticket on the spot when presented with a muni-meter receipt that shows a time no later than five minutes after the time the ticket was issued.

Currently, when an agent issues a ticket but is then presented with a valid muni-meter receipt, there is no option to cancel the ticket instantly. Under this law, anyone who receives a ticket while doing what they are supposed to do – purchasing parking time from a muni-meter – will not have to fight it later on.

This legislation only applies to tickets written electronically, which account for approximately 85 percent of parking tickets written in the city, so there can be no dispute over the time stamped on the ticket and the muni-meter receipt. Finally, the Administration will be required to report the number of cancelled tickets annually to the Council, which will provide valuable information about any trends.

This local law will take effect 180 days following enactment, provided that during this period, the New York City Department of Finance will be required to appropriately train agents to enforce the law.

Today, we’re tackling a recurrent problem for many New Yorkers– unfair tickets. Nearly every New York City driver has a story about getting tickets they clearly didn’t deserve. Ticketing is supposed to help us enforce the law – not unfairly punish people with no chance for swift recourse. With this bill, we’re saying to New Yorkers, “We’ve listened, and we want to make your lives a little easier.”

PROHIBITING LATE FEES PRIOR TO A DETERMINATION OF LIABILITY
Motorists have the right to dispute parking tickets and should not be penalized before a final determination is made in their case. However, as it stands now under the law, the late fee “clock” starts 30 days after a ticket is issued instead of 30 days after a determination is made in the case. This means that if a driver fights a ticket and is ultimately found guilty, fees may have accrued even before that finding is made.

My colleagues and I passed a bill that will freeze such late fees until at least 30 days after a finding of guilt. In addition, if someone appeals their decision, late fees or penalties may not accumulate until 30 days following a notice of determination of the appeal.

ALTERNATE SIDE PARKING STICKER BILL
Finally, we voted to prohibit the City from placing adhesive stickers to mark vehicles purportedly violating alternate side parking rules. These stickers are attached even before motorists are given the chance to prove their innocence. Besides the fact that many people successfully challenge alternate side tickets, cars should not be subject to such a nuisance before a finding of guilt. Actions like these are unnecessarily punitive.

Last October, two drivers traveling at high speeds crashed at the corner of Lafayette and Vanderbilt, jumping the curb. Photo: Fort Greene Patch

There’s still a long way to go before an official redesign moves forward, but Cohen and Loxton’s impressive organizing has revived the idea of redesigning Lafayette, and it’s a great case study in how to mobilize for safer streets.

Cohen and Loxton both live in Fort Greene and bike, walk and drive on Lafayette with their kids. They told the CB 2 committee last night that the street feels like it’s geared more toward fast-moving cars than people, with two eastbound traffic lanes and two parking lanes. The galvanizing moment for them came last October, when two drivers crashed at high speeds at the corner of Lafayette and Vanderbilt Avenue, jumping the curb outside a packed church.

The next week, they started gathering signatures supporting “traffic calming and a bike lane” on Lafayette. Their regular sign-up spot was the farmers market by Fort Greene Park. Since the weekend of the New York City marathon in early November, 1,500 people have signed the petition in writing and another 100 have signed it online.

“You would just say ‘Lafayette’ and people would want to talk to us,” said Loxton. “In the cold, they would stop.”

Cohen said petition-signers described Lafayette as a “notorious speedway,” and parents shared fears of letting 10-year-old kids cross the street alone. On a recent Friday evening, she clocked drivers routinely exceeding the speed limit by 7 – 10 mph.

Under the banner “Make Lafayette Safer,” Cohen and Loxton propose extending the Lafayette Avenue bike lane from Fulton Street to Broadway, preferably on the left-hand side of the street, and adding sidewalk extensions and more prominent crosswalks at intersections. In addition to providing a useful new link in the bike network, especially for cyclists heading east from the Manhattan Bridge or neighborhoods on the other side of Flatbush Avenue, striping the bike lane could curb speeding by reducing excessive capacity for car traffic.

Following the committee vote, there will probably be another vote at the full Community Board before DOT puts out a plan to redesign Lafayette. (“If we hear a lot of support from the community, that could move things forward,” said DOT’s Chris Hrones last night.) There may also be some action at Community Board 3, which covers Lafayette east of Classon Avenue.

While “Make Lafayette Safer” has the backing of City Council Member Tish James and the Fort Greene Association, a Lafayette redesign is no gimme. Most committee members who spoke last night seemed to be open to change, but there’s more apprehension on the board than the final vote lets on. Committee member Nancy Wolf questioned why a bike lane was needed to calm traffic: “There are a lot of ways to do that that don’t involve a bike lane.” And Board Chair John Dew framed the potential conversion of a motor lane to a bike lane as a loss: “Downtown Brooklyn has changed so much, with a new park, new condos, a new arena. We’re not getting any more streets. We’re losing streets.” (Replied one committee member: “It makes it more urgent to look at issues like this to slow traffic and makes streets safer.”)

Supporters of redesigning Lafayette for greater safety made a strong showing last night too, crowding the room and speaking extensively about their experiences on the street. It will take a few more evenings like that before the vision of a safer Lafayette reaches fruition.

Police are certainly reviving their tough-on-cyclists PR campaign, bragging to the Post earlier this week about the 19th Precinct’s bike enforcement prowess on the Upper East Side. Meanwhile, the message to motorists remains the same: If you’re sober and stay at the scene, you can do just about anything, like run over and kill a 12-year-old girl who stopped in a crosswalk to retrieve her backpack, and not face repercussions.

By leaking their cyclist summonsing stats to the Post, the police at least made it a little easier to highlight their skewed priorities. As reader Chris O’Leary pointed out this morning, the 19th Precinct issued 2,436 tickets for failing to stop at traffic signals in 2011 [PDF]. Apparently, nearly half of those tickets — 1,101, according to the Post — were handed out to cyclists.

Police are devoting all these resources to cyclist enforcement on streets where disproportionate numbers of New Yorkers get maimed by motor vehicles. Community District 8, which roughly overlaps the 19th Precinct on the Upper East Side, has the third-highest rate of injury-causing traffic crashes in the city.

Here’s what the precinct’s enforcement priorities look like out on the street, according to an account from reader Albert Ahronheim:

At about 1:50 on the afternoon of January 7, as I was walking on First Avenue by 81st Street, I noticed four police “three-wheeled scooters” and four police motorcycles completely straddling the bicycle lane, and eight police milling around, a couple of them writing, most just gabbing and laughing, while there were plenty of empty parking spaces they could have easily moved into. At least one cyclist I saw had to veer out into car traffic to get around what seemed to be a completely unnecessary blockage of basically a whole block. But a run-of-the-mill police blockage of the bike lane isn’t why I’m writing.

I was standing around trying to get up the nerve to ask eight cops to vacate the bike lane as long as whatever threat was over, when an elderly man with a walker, who’d been watching also, started talking to me. He told me that all these police were “just to give a ticket to a bicyclist.”  I asked him if he knew what the cyclist had been ticketed for, and he said he didn’t know — he just saw him ride away afterwards. The man with the walker told me, “I don’t care what he was doing, it takes so many cops just to give a cyclist a ticket?” When he mentioned all the real mayhem on the streets, I told him how NYPD routinely lets motorists kill without filing charges, and he wholeheartedly agreed that they’re failing to protect people.

So then I went up to one of the cops and politely asked what all the excitement was about. He paused, like he was trying to figure out how to tell me just enough to satisfy me, and said, “Uh, we just had somebody stopped — that’s about it.” Then I said, “It would be great if they’d not be blocking the bike lane if nothing is going on,” to which he politely replied, “We’ll be done in a few minutes and be out of your way.”  Only later did I realize that, since I wasn’t on a bicycle at the time and had just gone around a car and walked up to him from the curb, he must have thought I was a driver who needed to get through the bike lane and out of a parking space. After a couple more minutes they all drove away.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

The Pet Peeve Committee strikes again.

Streetsblog will be offline in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but we’ve got one more post coming before returning to a regular publishing schedule tomorrow.

Neighborhood residents who've fought for a safer intersection at Parkside and Ocean cheered DOT's plan when the agency unveiled it in December.

We have a late breaking addition to the Streetsblog calendar. Tonight the transportation committee of Brooklyn Community Board 14 will be discussing DOT’s plan to add more pedestrian space and realign the intersection of Parkside Avenue and Ocean Avenue at the southeast entrance to Prospect Park [PDF]. The redesign will be made possible by relocating a park loop entrance for cars from this intersection to Lincoln Road. An average of 20 people are injured in traffic at this location every year, and the project is expected to cut that number in half.

Neighborhood residents campaigned long and hard for safety improvements here, but Community Board 14 has a spotty record on livable streets. If you live in the area and want to see this project move forward, tonight’s meeting gets underway at 7:00 at 810 East 16th Street, by Avenue H.