Streetsblog New York City

More than 1,400 people signed a petition to extend the Lafayette Avenue bike lane east, though a compromise might only connect it to Carlton Avenue.

A Brooklyn bike lane scuttled during last winter’s anti-bike frenzy is back on the agenda thanks to some intrepid citizen activism. More than 1,400 people have signed a petition to paint a bike lane on Lafayette Avenue, reports the New York Times’ The Local blog, and the local community board will be revisiting the issue this coming Tuesday.

Right now, there isn’t a great eastbound bike route through the area. A bike lane runs on Lafayette for a few blocks from Flatbush Avenue to Fulton Street, while another eastbound route runs on Willoughby Avenue, five blocks north of Lafayette. The Lafayette lane would serve as a matched pair to the existing westbound lane on DeKalb Avenue. Another benefit of the bike lane would be traffic calming; the proposed design would remove one of two motor vehicle lanes.

Supporters are hoping to extend the Lafayette lane a full 2.7 miles to Broadway, but The Local reports that a compromise might extend the lane only five blocks in order to connect riders crossing Flatbush to the northbound Carlton Avenue lane, where they could zigzag up to Willoughby.

Despite the show of public support for the lane, the debate Tuesday evening is sure to be contentious, given the project’s history. While Community Board 2 never formally voted the bike lane down, the Department of Transportation withdrew its plans to stripe the lane in the face of opposition last March.

Those interested in speaking on the issue should attend the meeting of CB 2′s transportation committee Tuesday night at 6:00 p.m, held at St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street.

This map of bike-share trips in D.C. reveals plenty about cycling patterns in the city, but New York City's data will be far more robust, including exact routes for each trip. Image: CommuterPageBlog via GGW.

Here’s one more reason to get excited about the launch of bike-share later this year: the reams of data generated by the GPS units located in every public bicycle. The Department of Transportation will use that data to inform their bike lane planning, commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan revealed last night.

“It’s going to be amazing to have GPS generated data for all these trips,” said Sadik-Khan. “For planning purposes, it’ll be huge.”

Right now, data on individual bike trips are very scarce. While bike-share trips aren’t representative of the larger set of bike trips, the ability to track exactly where a large set of riders bike and at what speeds could be quite valuable for bike planning. DOT has used taxi GPS data to measure traffic speeds in Manhattan and evaluate initiatives like the pedestrianization of parts of Broadway, and there’s far more that can still be done with that kind of rich data set. Bike-sharing could start to build a similar toolkit for bikes.

The GPS data, which will be owned by the city and made publicly available to the extent possible, will provide even more information than exists in other cities with bike-share. In D.C., for example, there’s excitement about a new data set that only shows which stations Capital Bikeshare riders are traveling between, not their exact routes.

What would you do with bike-share GPS data? Let us know in the comments.

The city's older painted bike lanes, like the Fort Washington Avenue lane shown here, lead more people to ride bikes, not to more crashes. Photo: Department of City Planning

New York City’s tabloid media simply can’t stop seeing the city’s bike boom as a mortal threat to pedestrians. Even research showing a decline in the number of bike-ped crashes was somehow spun to say the opposite, that more cyclists were hitting pedestrians than ever. Now, new peer-reviewed research confirms once again that bike lanes don’t endanger pedestrians and don’t cause more crashes. If anything, researchers say, they make streets safer.

Even though they attract more cyclists onto the street, New York City’s painted bike lanes don’t lead to any increase in the number of traffic crashes, according to a new study in the American Journal of Public Health. The study’s authors expect that if they could adequately control for increased bike traffic, the numbers would show that crash rates went down due to the installation of bike lanes.

The researchers attempted to mimic the structure of a true experiment by pairing each street with a bike lane to a street without a bike lane that was otherwise as similar as possible. They attempted to control not only for design features like the number and direction of the lanes and the presence of stop signs or traffic signals, but also contextual factors like population and retail density. That enabled them to factor out the significant increase in traffic safety that has taken place across all of New York City.

“The difference between the treatment group and the comparison group in terms of a reduction is just not significant,” author Cynthia Chen, a transportation engineer at the University of Washington, told Streetsblog. The change in the number of crashes was statistically insignificant not only for total crashes, but for vehicle crashes, bike crashes, pedestrian crashes, and crashes that caused death or serious injury.

Read more…

With his skeptical reaction to the latest poll showing majority support for cycling infrastructure, James Vacca has established himself as the city’s most authoritative voice for anti-bike nonsense.

To deniers like Jimmy Vacca, these folks don't count. Photo copyright Dmitry Gudkov

This week Transportation Alternatives released the results of a telephone survey of 603 likely New York City voters, conducted by the firm Penn Schoen Berland. Along with support for preserving transit and stepping up traffic enforcement, pollsters found that 60 of respondents support bike lanes.

As the Penn Schoen Berland findings are in line with that of recent polls by Quinnipiac and Marist, the chair of the City Council transportation committee could reasonably be expected to make a statement of some sort lauding the city’s progress in making streets safer for cyclists and pedestrians. But here’s Vacca, as quoted by City & State:

“I would think that many people who speak in favor of bike lanes may reserve judgment based on where the bike lane would be, and on whether it was affecting their community, their business strip or their small businesses,” said City Councilman Jimmy Vacca, who chairs the Transportation Committee. “On a case-by-case basis, while people are in favor of bike lanes, they may say, ‘Wait a minute, on this street it may not work.’ ”

On first read you might interpret Vacca’s remarks as a series of unsubstantiated assumptions strung together by weasel words — and you’d be right. But look closely. Not only does Vacca dismiss poll data with his bike lane-bashing straw man, he repeats the canard that bike lanes, and the traffic-calming effect that comes with them, are bad for business. And he again implies that residents have no say in where lanes will or won’t go in their neighborhoods, when in reality projects are subject to an extensive public review process. (Since the council has codified much of what DOT has been doing all along, it will be interesting to see what criticisms Vacca and company think up now that they’ve vanquished the transparency bogeyman.)

More poll respondents said they wanted to add bike lanes (43 percent) than maintain the status quo (33 percent) or decrease the number of lanes (17 percent). Rather than align with council members like Mark Weprin and Melissa Mark-Viverito, who have responded in thoughtful and productive ways to support for lanes in their districts, Vacca is tacking toward the NIMBY fringe. The only other critic of the TA survey cited by City & State was tried and true hater Sean Sweeney, who declared that “the people of New York have had enough of bike lanes.” With allies like Sweeney, Vacca is looking like less like a leader than a reactionary who refuses to be convinced on the merits of cyclist and pedestrian safety.

It seems nowadays you aren’t truly a bike-friendly city until you’ve had your first civic dust-up over bike lanes. And by that standard, Memphis, Tennessee has arrived.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton wants to install 55 miles of bike lanes in the city in just two years. Photo: Skyscraperpage.com

Last month, this mid-sized Southern city fought back challenges by business owners to install a bike lane on one of its main major commercial thoroughfares, Madison Avenue. That street was just the latest in Mayor A C Wharton’s ambitious plan to add 55 miles of bike lanes in just two years.

Business owners along Madison were firmly against it; some 65 signed a petition opposing the change and a small group even held a news conference to air their concerns. But Wharton held firm after a engineering study of the 1.5-mile thoroughfare said the road diet would only add a few seconds to car travel times.

While indicating that he was sensitive to the business-owners’ concerns, Wharton said, “As we’ve seen throughout Memphis and all over the country, bike lanes are encouraging people to be healthier, more environmentally friendly, and more supportive of locally owned small businesses.”

Memphis’ progressive campaign for bike-friendliness began with Wharton’s election in 2009. Sustainability issues had been a focus of Wharton’s in his previous role as the first African American chief executive of Shelby County, which includes Memphis. Upon throwing his hat into the mayoral race, Wharton made bike-friendliness a key platform of his campaign, according to the city’s Bike and Pedestrian Coordinator Kyle Wagenschutz.

Read more…

Think twice before blocking that bike lane.

Arturas Zuokas, the Mercedes-crushing mayor of the Lithuanian city of Vilnius, has launched a new campaign to curb illegal parking. Here is Zuokas, as quoted from a press release:

“Every single day, we go about our work and try to be good citizens. And we run into obstacles that make us want to scream because we encounter problems that we are seemingly powerless to overcome. I used a tank, but perhaps a tank is not readily available for rent in your particular town. So, here‘s an alternative for those who don‘t have a tank handy — a sticker that anyone, anywhere in the world can place on an illegally parked car that intrudes on your space. The sticker is easy to apply and it simply says: ‘Don‘t make me get the tank.’ You just need to STICK it onto a car — Mercedes or any other — and your message will be heard.”

Stickers are available free of charge in Vilnius, and if seeing is believing, Zuokas has expanded his crusade to the streets of New York.

Has the mayor of a foreign capital really gone guerrilla with an enforcement tactic soon to be abandoned by our own City Council? As you watch the video (hat tip to Animal) and judge for yourself, keep in mind this cryptic Zuokas comment: “If the sticker doesn’t work, I do have the tank on standby and am willing to travel.”

Upgrading the Hudson Avenue bike lane would extend the protected lanes on both Eighth and Ninth Avenues.

The transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 2 voted unanimously on Tuesday to endorse a community-generated plan to upgrade the Hudson Street bike lane to a parking-protected lane.

Right now, Hudson Street has a buffered bike lane. It’s one of the oldest in the city according to Ian Dutton, a former vice chair of the transportation committee, who proposed the upgrade along with community board member Maury Schott and Mike Epstein, who works in the area. But the lane has become inadequate for safe travel. The paint on the street has been totally worn away and the lane is constantly blocked by double-parked vehicles.

Since it is already buffered, however, upgrading to a parking-protected lane is easy. “All we’re doing is flipping it,” said Dutton. “It has no impact on moving lanes — they stay right where they are.” The only trade-off for the safety upgrade is a few parking spaces that would need to be removed for new mixing zones and pedestrian refuge islands.

“All the statistics point to the fact that parking protected zones reduce both pedestrian, bike and vehicle passenger injuries,” said Schott. On Eighth Avenue, total street injuries fell between 18 and 35 percent after the upgrade. On Second Avenue, injuries fell 11 percent while the number of weekday cyclists using the lane more than tripled.

Hudson Street effectively runs in two segments. Above Abingdon Square, Hudson runs southbound, connecting Ninth Avenue to Bleecker Street. Below the square, Hudson runs north until it becomes Eighth Avenue. If installed alongside existing DOT plans for bike lanes in Midtown, therefore, the upgrade would create continuous protected lanes on Eighth Avenue from 59th Street to Canal Street and on Ninth Avenue from 59th to Bleecker.

Nearly every member of the public who spoke at the meeting voiced support for the proposal; a straw poll of attendees showed seven in favor and one opposed. Testimony submitted by e-mail weighed overwhelmingly in favor of the lane.

Safety — for both cyclists and pedestrians — was the top issue. CB 2  member Denise Collins,  said she worried for parents and children cycling to Hudson Street’s P.S. 3. “There are people who don’t even know that we have a bike lane on Hudson, it’s just totally washed away,” she said. “I hold my heart in my hands sometimes when I see these people on bikes.”

Ellen Peterson-Lewis, a public member of CB 2′s environment committee, noted that the neighborhood has a growing senior population, a group she included herself in. “To have that flip and to have that pedestrian island there,” she said, “I do think this is an excellent idea.”

Read more…

Last month, the Brownsville Partnership and the local office of the Department of Health took DOT on a group ride of Brownsville to observe cycling conditions. Image: Community Solutions via Facebook

Brownsville wants safer streets for biking.

Currently there isn’t a single bike lane inside this eastern Brooklyn neighborhood, though two bike lanes run along the edges of Brownsville on East New York Avenue and Rockaway Parkway. Neighborhood activists, including the business community, senior citizens and public health advocates, are now organizing to convince the city to install both north-south and east-west routes through the area.

The push for bike lanes originated from Bettie Kollock-Wallace, the first vice president of Brooklyn Community Board 16. “My philosophy is the more active you are the younger you get,” she told Streetsblog.

Last summer, the 72-year-old Kollock-Wallace was leading Brownsville seniors on group rides in Prospect Park. Without a strong network of bike lanes, however, she found it difficult to get there, especially with inexperienced cyclists trailing behind her. “If we had the bike lane you could easily follow the route,” said Kollock-Wallace. “You could be safe.” She identified Mother Gaston Boulevard as the preferable location for a lane connecting to the existing bike network.

Three weeks ago, the Department of Transportation came out to Brownsville for a group ride co-hosted by the Brownsville Partnership, an initiative of the non-profit Community Solutions, and the Brooklyn District Public Health Office, a local arm of the NYC Department of Health. Scouting an eight-mile loop of the area, they discussed street conditions and obstacles to safe cycling. A spokesperson for DOT said the department is in the process of identifying bike routes that could be implemented in the future.

Read more…

Yesterday the City Council passed Lew Fidler’s Intro 412 — the bill mandating community board notification about the installation of bike lanes — setting the stage for some showboating from Fidler, Speaker Christine Quinn and Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca.

Little-known fact: Lew Fidler's bill also requires the city to notify community boards before a bike lane is removed. Photo of Bedford Avenue bike lane erasure: Elizabeth Press

“Our legislation will ensure the Department of Transportation works with community boards and fully considers feedback from neighborhood residents on where, and how, bicycle lanes are installed,” Quinn said in a statement.

This is kind of like bragging about legislation that ensures the Department of Sanitation will pick up the trash. The city already brings bike lane proposals to community boards. The past few years have produced a long record of community board votes in favor of safer streets, as well as a few that went in favor of the status quo. With or without this bill, the bike lanes are going in where the community boards sign off on them.

Defending the need for the legislation, Vacca told NY1, “I don’t think it’s anti-bike to make sure that local neighborhoods have input as to where bike lanes go.”

Can’t argue there. Having a public process for bike lane installation is not anti-bike. What’s anti-bike is to imply that the recent expansion of bike lanes has somehow lacked sufficient public input, which is the message that comes across from the coverage of this bill.

It’s also strange that the City Council thinks it’s necessary to mandate notification for all bike lanes, but not for all changes to motor vehicle lanes. If the city wants to carve out some left-turn bays from a pedestrian median, for instance, there’s no law requiring a public hearing.

So yeah, it’s anti-bike to grandstand about the imaginary problem of community input on bike lanes when the council could be focusing on real transportation problems like the MTA debt bomb, obscenely wasteful subsidies for stadium parking, or NYPD’s refusal to disclose information on traffic crashes.

In any case, Quinn, Vacca, and Fidler missed their chance to boast about the real innovation in this bill. It requires the city to inform community boards before any bike lane is removed:

Read more…

In City Council Member Mark Weprin's district, 61 percent of those surveyed said they like the city's bike lane program. Image: City Council

Several surveys this year by top polling organizations have found citywide support for bike lanes. And in Park Slope and the Upper West Side, questionnaires put out by local elected officials have shown consistent neighborhood-level approval for new bike infrastructure. Now, another member of the City Council has found widespread enthusiasm for the city’s bike lane program among his constituents — and he doesn’t represent the heart of the NYC bike belt.

In fact, the district in question upends the assumption, held by certain members of the tabloid media, that “ordinary New Yorkers” aren’t interested in safer streets for cycling. It’s the turf of Council Member Mark Weprin, whose Queens district hugs the Nassau County line. A recent survey found that 61 percent of Weprin’s constituents support the city’s installation of bike lanes.

“I was somewhat surprised at the results,” said Weprin (not to be confused with his brother, Assembly Member David Weprin, who recently lost the race for Anthony Weiner’s seat in Congress and fought hard against congestion pricing when he sat in the City Council). “You tend to hear from the naysayers. When you go out to civic meetings, a lot of people complain about bike lanes, but obviously that’s not the majority.”

The survey went out by e-mail to a list of thousands of Weprin’s constituents, asking: “Do you support the network of bicycle lanes that the New York City Department of Transportation has installed on city streets?” About 400 people responded. While the methodology wasn’t scientific, Weprin guessed that if anything, it probably oversampled the high-intensity opinions of the bike lane opponents. “People seem to like them,” said Weprin, “including myself.” In the latest Q-poll, which uses random sampling and other scientific statistical techniques, 53 percent of Queens residents said they supported the expansion of the bike lane network.

Weprin's pro-bike lane district sits at the easternmost edge of Queens. Image: NYCityMap.

“It always helps to know that your constituents are behind you when you support an issue,” Weprin said when asked how the survey would affect his actions moving forward. While he cautioned that there might be problems with the location of any given bike lane, Weprin said it’s important “to realize that we have too many cars in this city and it would be more environmental and healthier to have more people ride bikes.”

He also praised the city’s upcoming bike-share program, again reserving the right to critique the particulars of its implementation, should issues arise. “In theory, it’s a great idea to have bike-sharing and have people have an alternative to taking taxi cabs and even subways and buses, because those too are overcrowded on occasion,” said Weprin.