Streetsblog New York City

Elevated from today’s headline stack, via Animal NY: A driver on a South Williamsburg street refused to share the road with cyclist Rafael Huerta, and after harassing Huerta in the street three times with his vehicle, refused to take responsibility for his actions. Instead, he claimed the cyclist was at fault — but video from the cyclist’s handlebar-mounted camera indicates otherwise.

The video begins with Huerta riding eastbound on Wallabout Street, starting at Kent Avenue. (Wallabout is a parallel route to Flushing Avenue, which has shared-lane markings but also heavier truck and auto traffic.) The street is two-way and the lane is relatively narrow; the video shows Huerta riding in the right-hand third of the lane.

After the intersection with Franklin Avenue, a gray Toyota minivan driver passes him, then hits the brakes and moves to the right, squeezing him between the moving vehicle and parked cars.

Following a third encounter where the driver swerved into his path, Huerta stopped, and the driver, a middle-aged Hasidic man, gets out of the car and says, “You are not allowed to drive in the middle of the street.” This is incorrect. According to state law, as encapsulated in DOT’s “Bike Smart” guide, “Cyclists should ‘take the lane’ when necessary.”

As Huerta calls 911 to report being harassed, a third man comes over, and the driver calls Huerta a liar. “Don’t bang my car,” he says, laughing. “He’s harassing me right now.”

This incident thankfully ended without physical harm to anyone, though not before a plainclothes police officer intervened to break up the crowd that had gathered around Huerta, blocking his way. Huerta says in the video’s description: “Please refrain from using racial comments…This man doesn’t represent the Jewish community…And I don’t represent the biking community either.”

Harassment like this isn’t limited to Hasidic Williamsburg. A few years ago, Streetsblog reported about two cases, one involving a cyclist and one a pedestrian, in which people were physically endangered or injured by motorists, then cited by police for damaging the vehicle of the perpetrator.

With bike-share stations hitting the streets but the launch still a few weeks away, there’s a lot of misinformed speculation floating around about Citi Bike. A favorite tactic of the bike-share opposition is to conjure visions of chaos and “hell on wheels” after the system launches, as the Daily News did in a recent opinion piece. But there’s a reason the anti-bike-share crowd has to invoke imaginary scenarios: In the real world, crash statistics from bike-share cities show that bike-share users are less likely to be involved in crashes than other cyclists.

If New York's experience is like other cities, Citi Bikes will be the safest bikes on the street. Photo: Planetgordon/Flickr

Earlier this week, US DOT Secretary Ray LaHood was at a bicycle safety summit in Minneapolis, where the seasonal bike-share service Nice Ride has logged 575,000 trips since its launch in June 2010. At the same time, LaHood wrote, “the number of bicyclists killed in motor vehicle crashes in Minneapolis has actually declined.” This meshes with the “safety in numbers” effect, first noted by researcher Peter Jacobsen in the journal Injury Prevention ten years ago, which holds that the injury rate for walking and biking is lower in places where more people walk and bike.

Of the Nice Ride system’s nearly 600,000 trips, only four have resulted in crashes, executive director Bill Dossett told Streetsblog. There were no serious injuries, and only two resulted bruises and cuts, he said.

“Nice Ride has had a very good safety record,” said Simon Blenski, bicycle and pedestrian planner for the City of Minneapolis, adding that the system has not caused a significant change in the city’s total number of bike crashes since it opened.

The experience in Minneapolis is typical of other American cities that have launched bike-share systems. Streetsblog’s Noah Kazis wrote about this phenomenon in 2011, and we recently got some updated stats that show the pattern has held since then.

In Boston, Hubway, also a seasonal service, has logged more than 700,000 trips since its launch in July 2011. There have been only three reported crashes, Hubway general manager Scott Mullen told Streetsblog. One crash resulted in serious injuries after a van driver ran a red light, while one resulted in a minor sprain, and the third resulted in no injuries.

“We’re seeing overall a much lower incident rate among bike-share users as compared to regular bike users,” said Jessica Robertson of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, the regional planning agency for the Boston area.

Although limitations in data collection make it hard to rigorously compare bike-share riders with other cyclists, the available numbers suggest the superior safety record of bike-share holds true in Washington, DC, where Capital Bikeshare launched in September, 2010. Since then, users have made more than 4 million trips. In that time, there have been 64 reported crashes, says DDOT bike-share project manager Chris Holben. At the same time, Holben says there are an estimated 40,000 daily bike trips in DC, which works out to about 14.6 million trips per year, while the District saw 538 bicycle crashes in 2011, according to DDOT. Run the numbers, and it’s clear that, even accounting for some variation in the number of total bike trips, Capital Bikeshare riders are far less likely than other riders to be involved in a crash.

New York, it should be noted, has lower traffic fatality rates than Boston and DC, according to NYC DOT’s Pedestrian Safety Study [PDF]. In other words, NYC streets are safer than streets in cities that have already launched bike-share systems and observed low crash rates.

There are a number of possible explanations for why bike-share users are less likely to crash in the first place, but there are two main avenues for conjecture. First is the type of bicycle being ridden, and second is the type of person riding it.

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NYPD is ticketing cyclists riding on the Hudson River Greenway after 1:00 a.m., which is the Parks Department’s citywide closing time, according to a reader who was stopped by police on the greenway last night.

NYPD shut down the Hudson River Greenway as a functional transportation route last night after 1:00 a.m. Photo: Ed Yourdon/Flickr

A Streetsblog reader who gave her name as Ellen says she was commuting home at around 1:30 a.m. early this morning when she saw a police cruiser blocking the path near 72nd Street. She had heard that officers were ticketing cyclists for using the greenway after 1:00 a.m., so the encounter wasn’t entirely unexpected.

“He didn’t ticket me, but gave me a warning,” Ellen writes. However, she says the officer’s partner gave tickets to other riders that passed by during that time. The officer told Ellen that riders are putting themselves at risk of attack by riding in the park after 1:00 a.m. ”I told him we are commuting home on the safest route possible,” Ellen said. “I said I would rather take my chances in the park than on the street with the drunk drivers.”

Calling the rationale of getting cyclists off the greenway in the name of safety “just plain nuts,” Ken Coughlin, who serves on the transportation committee of Community Board 7, which covers the Upper West Side, noted that the greenway is “the cyclists’ equivalent of the Henry Hudson Parkway.”

“Sharing streets with motor vehicles is more dangerous for cyclists in any case, but it is far more dangerous late at night when drivers tend to go faster and are more likely to be impaired,” he said.

It’s hardly the first time that Parks Department policy has conflicted with the greenway’s role as a transportation artery. A few years ago, the department banned biking on greenway access paths linking to Riverside Park, but later reversed the decision. After a nor’easter last November, for instance, the Parks Department decided to shut the path entirely. Now, police enforcement of the 1:00 a.m. curfew is diminishing the benefits of improved lighting on the greenway between 59th and 72nd Streets, which NYC DOT installed in February, encouraging evening and nighttime cycling.

South of 59th Street, the greenway is owned by the New York State Department of Transportation, and remains open 24 hours a day.

Parks Department spokesperson Philip Abramson confirmed that Riverside Park and Riverside Park South, including the greenway, close at 1:00 a.m., but referred other questions to NYPD. Streetsblog has inquired about the ticketing with NYPD via phone and email, but has not received a reply.

UPDATE:  CB 7 chair Mark Diller told Streetsblog, ”It’s of concern that the greenway is not open at all hours, if only for the reason that streets get more dangerous after dark.” Because the path is a major route for cyclists north of 59th Street, Diller would like to reach some kind of agreement with the Parks Department, and will be meeting soon with the parks administrator to address this and other park issues.

Today, Transportation Alternatives is launching CrashStories, a new website where pedestrians and cyclists can report crashes or near-misses with motor vehicle drivers on an interactive map. Developed by Hunter College city planning graduate student Aaron Fraint, the project aims to fill gaps in official data sources and offer a place for crash victims to be heard.

CrashStories asks pedestrians and cyclists to report crashes or near-misses on a map of New York City.

Data mapped by TA’s CrashStat tool, which originates from NYPD and is filtered by the state DMV and state DOT, tends to skew toward collisions with major injuries, leaving fender-benders and other, less severe crashes underrepresented in the data. “Everything else tends to get underreported or not reported at all,” said TA’s Jennifer Godzeno.

TA, said Godzeno, gets calls every day from people involved in minor crashes. ”If we can start to record that information in enough detail, then maybe we can start to intervene on streets or at intersections before tragedy even strikes,” Godzeno said.

The project grew out of a prototype developed for TA by Columbia University city planning students last year. Over the summer, Fraint was considering developing a similar tool as part of his fellowship at Hunter but couldn’t reach a broad audience to collect data. Meanwhile, TA was looking to move the prototype to the next level but didn’t have the internal capacity to develop the tool. In November, Fraint met with Godzeno.

“It was really the right place at the right time on both accounts,” Fraint said. “I don’t really have a way to reach 100,000 people the way they do.” Fraint and TA came to an agreement, and Fraint got to work. The service uses Shareabouts, a platform developed by Streetsblog’s parent organization, OpenPlans.

Fraint hopes to use the data to analyze the effectiveness of street designs. He also wants to compare CrashStories data to police crash reports. “Ideally, the same intersections would be identified as hot spots,” he said. Eventually, he hopes to launch CrashStories with partner organizations in other areas, and compare data between cities.

TA plans to use the tool as a component of its street safety advocacy, encouraging residents to enter their stories along particularly dangerous streets, providing information that can help convince decision makers to take action for safety.

“This site is a way to humanize the experience of having been in a crash or a near-miss,” while also putting the data to good use, said Godzeno. “Everybody tells us about this every day.”

Spotted on the door of Greenpoint Finest Deli on Manhattan Avenue. Photo: Hilda Cohen

Here’s a welcome sign on the front door to Greenpoint Finest Deli, at the corner of Manhattan and Norman Avenues. The notice, ostensibly from NYPD, reminds drivers and passengers of their obligation to look before opening the door of parked cars. “Summonses will be issued,” the sign warns.

The sign, spotted by Hilda Cohen, would be consistent with the anti-dooring campaign TLC and DOT launched in September.

Bodega employees said that an officer from the 94th Precinct had distributed the sign. Officers on the street couldn’t verify whether the sign came from the precinct or not. Streetsblog has put in an inquiry with NYPD headquarters and the 94th Precinct for more information. We’ll let you know if we hear an update.

DOT is proposing to add a two-way, jersey barrier-protected bikeway to a block of Bruckner Boulevard that's currently a high-speed asphalt free-for-all. Image: DOT

The Bronx River Greenway, threaded along the waterfront between expressways, railroad tracks and busy arterial avenues, is difficult to access for many of the surrounding South Bronx residents. A proposal from DOT [PDF] would improve park access while providing some order to the area’s streets.

“It’s hard for folks in the neighborhood to get to these parks,” said Joe Linton, greenway director for the Bronx River Alliance. “We’re going to need these on-street improvements.”

The plan has four components. The first will add a two-way barrier-protected bikeway along a block of Bruckner Boulevard, immediately adjacent to the Bruckner Expressway. It would connect a sidewalk near the southern end of Concrete Plant Park to north-south bike lanes on Bryant and Longfellow Avenues. The lane is carved out of the massive expanse of asphalt currently used for a 41-foot wide travel lane.

While this is a huge safety gain for a location that currently sees a lot of wrong-way cycling on a high-speed road, the lane connects to a pedestrian bridge across the Bruckner Expressway that has no ramps. Instead, bike riders have to carry their bikes up a sloping set of stairs.

“They can still do more to seamlessly connect it,” said Richard Gans, a volunteer on the Transportation Alternatives Bronx committee. “In general, we’re happy with the improvements that are proposed,” he added.

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“It may seem surprising,” admitted Bike League President Andy Clarke.  And even AAA PR Director Yolanda Cade acknowledged that the 750 bicyclists in the room may be asking themselves, “‘Why is AAA here today?’” After all, she said, “We do have ‘Automobile’ as our middle name.”

AAA and the Bike League have been working to find common ground, and offered this video as an indication that they found some.

Still, this is the same AAA that opposed congestion pricing, blamed the victims for pedestrian injuries, and urged Congress to dedicate all Highway Trust Fund monies to highways.

Time will tell if the new alliance with the Bike League is just a PR move, or if it reflects a shift in AAA’s attitudes toward bike/ped policy.

Quick, what aspect of police work and law enforcement were mayoral contenders addressing when they said the following at Friday’s candidate forum?

• Bill de Blasio: “It’s hard to report crimes and get the kind of response that you deserve…The police need more training to treat these crimes with urgency…Police need better training and we need to strengthen the laws.”
• Christine Quinn: “If we see any situation where police or DA’s are not taking those crimes seriously, we need to take action no matter what elected position we are in.”

Were they talking about traffic violence and NYPD’s lackluster crash investigations? Nope, they were responding to questions about assault against bus operators and harassment and crime against bus and subway passengers.

Safety on the transit system is important, but so is safety on the streets. And so far the candidates haven’t approached the NYPD’s failures on traffic violence with the same fervor they displayed Friday evening for tackling transit crime.

Tom Allon called for “GropeStat” to pinpoint problem harassment locations. “If there’s somebody who’s a serial offender, the DA’s office should take away his MetroCard. Ban him from the subway, ban him from the bus forever,” he said.

Streetsblog followed up with Allon after the forum to ask if this banned-for-life standard should apply to deadly drivers. “There should be a zero-tolerance policy. We have to crack down on people who are a menace to other people,” he said. “It’s one of those crimes that doesn’t get enough attention.”

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Bike lanes on W. 218th Street in Inwood have been replaced by sharrows. An image of the former street layout appears below. Photo: Brad Aaron

A short stretch of bike lanes in Inwood has gone the way of the disappearing bike shelter, further reducing the neighborhood’s scarce cycling infrastructure.

West 218th Street, Manhattan’s northernmost cross street to extend west of Broadway, connects Broadway and Inwood Hill Park, and delineates the southern border of the Columbia University Baker Field complex. It is part of a marked and mapped bike route for cyclists headed to and from Van Cortlandt Park, in the Bronx. Not long ago, the four blocks of W. 218th west of Broadway had bike lanes. When the street was repaved recently, the lanes were replaced by sharrows.

Said a DOT spokesperson, in an email to Streetsblog: “Following a resurfacing project on that street, DOT updated the markings to reflect current design standards, which don’t allow for a five-foot bike lane on a street that width.”

The efficacy of sharrows is a topic of debate. But if a street is deemed too narrow for bike lanes, yet wide enough for two lanes of parked cars, the issue isn’t a shortage of asphalt – it’s the decision to prioritize free curbside parking over safe space for cycling. This in a neighborhood that has few bike lanes as it is, and where DOT has responded to residents’ desire for more bike infrastructure by nipping away at what little exists.

Much is made of securing the blessing of community boards before bike infrastructure can be added, but this is not the case when bike infrastructure is removed or downgraded. We know DOT did not ask Community Board 12 before repossessing Inwood’s lone bike shelter. We asked DOT, twice, if CB 12 was consulted on the decision to remove the bike lanes from West 218th Street. We’re still waiting for an answer.

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A commercial van driver mounted the concrete barrier protecting cyclists on Flushing Avenue just west of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway on Friday. Photo: Dmitry Gudkov

Elevated from today’s headline stack: Photographer Dmitry Gudkov snapped this picture on Friday afternoon of a commercial van — the phone number goes to Glass & Windows, Inc., of Long Island City — straddling the concrete barrier that separates a two-way bike lane, and the sidewalk beyond, from the busy intersection where Flushing Avenue crosses beneath the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.

It’s not hard to understand why many New Yorkers feel unsafe biking and walking on streets where deadly speeding goes unchecked. And while we have the studies to prove that protected bike lanes have an impact not just on perceived safety, but on actual safety as well, every now and then something comes along to cut through the dry data and illustrate why these safety improvements matter.