The civil rights fight for equitable transportation didn't end with Rosa Parks.

So says a report from the Leadership Conference Education Fund, a project of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. The coalition wasn’t involved in the transportation reauthorization debate in 2005, when SAFETEA-LU was passed, and they’re determined to be at the table this time.

In March, they quietly published their report, “Where We Need to Go: A Civil Rights Roadmap for Transportation Equity”, and since then they’ve put out three more reports, springboarding off of that first overview. The subsequent reports focus on access to health care [PDF], access to housing [PDF], and access to jobs [PDF].

They never really released these reports to the press, which is why we’re just letting you know about them now. Some media outlets caught wind of it in late July and a small flurry of stories came out in the week or two after the Leadership Conference hosted a “fly-in” lobby day, where nearly 40 constituents from nine target states came to Washington to meet with their representatives’ offices.

According to the Leadership Conference report, racial minorities are four times more likely than whites to lack access to a car and to rely on public transportation for their commute to work. African Americans make up 12 percent of the U.S. population but 20 percent of the pedestrian fatalities. And the problem is far worse for Native Americans on reservations. Pedestrians there have the highest per capita risk of injury and death of any ethnic group in the U.S. While vehicle fatalities are dropping around the country, they’re on the rise on reservations.

All of that explains why the a group focused on civil and human rights would be interested in transportation – it’s an issue of racial justice. It’s also an economic issue, they say: with job sprawl pushing more and more jobs far outside the urban core, access to those jobs can be exclusively by private car. Even three out of five jobs “suitable for welfare-to-work participants” are not accessible by public transit, the report says.

Transportation is also a housing issue, when people of limited means are priced out of even inexpensive housing because transportation costs are too high outside the city, where transit doesn’t reach.

And transportation is a health issue, when people with disabilities who cannot drive skip medical appointments because they have no way to get there. “Imagine being an 80 year-old dialysis patient waiting for the bus for three hours—this happens in today’s America, and it hurts people,” said the National Association of County and City Health Officials. Meanwhile, families in autocentric communities lack convenient access to healthy foods or walkable neighborhoods to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

“Although our laws promise to open doors to opportunity,” the Leadership Conference writes, “this is a hollow promise for people who are physically isolated from jobs, schools, stores that sell healthy food, and health care providers. As our metropolitan areas have expanded and jobs and services have become more diffuse, equal opportunity depends upon equal access to affordable transportation.”

Indeed, the suburbanization of poverty is a large part of the problem. The suburbs were designed to be autocentric. They’ve never made any bones about it. For decades, the suburbs have sucked up a disproportionate amount of transportation dollars and wielded a disproportionate amount of power in decision-making bodies, and they’ve used that money and power primarily to build roads. And those roads have led farther and farther away from the urban center, and the only way to get to any of these places was to drive there.

But now, housing values are crashing in suburbia and, especially, in exurbia – so much so that Section 8 voucher-holders are increasingly residing in pockets of suburbia that used to be out of their reach, while their inner-city neighborhoods are the new urban hotspots, with rising prices forcing them away.

Even in transit-rich areas, affluent people often have cars. One mark of gentrification is the sudden scarcity of street parking. On the flip side, even in the transit-poor world of sprawling subdivisions, some low-income people can’t afford to own a car. We’ve seen the tragic results when people try to walk and bike on roads designed exclusively for the automobile.

All in all, the Leadership Conference has determined that “Transportation is back as a major civil rights issue,” in the words of Angela Glover Blackwell, founder and CEO of PolicyLink. “Today’s focus is not on getting a seat at the front of the bus but on making sure the bus takes us where we need to go.”

The Leadership Conference says transportation inequities have further entrenched segregation:

By investing disproportionately in highways that expand metropolitan areas, funding construction far from urban centers, and tipping decision-making power away from urban and inner suburban constituencies, our transit planning has placed inequitable burdens on low-income people, people with disabilities, and people of color by entrenching the segregation of racial minorities and increasing the concentration of poverty.

Post-WWII highway projects plowed through minority urban neighborhoods to shuttle commuters to and from the suburbs. Transportation planning has historically prioritized suburban development over strengthening cities and incentivized geographic expansion rather than improving infrastructure to accommodate larger, more densely populated areas. The result: Geographic segregation, along with unequal investment in transit options for urban, low-income people.

Indeed, the suburban sway over MPOs around the country isn’t likely to mean transit expansion and better walking conditions just because the demographics of the suburbs are shifting. As low-income people move out to the suburbs, they aren’t necessarily becoming part of that suburban power structure, said Lexer Quamie, counsel and transportation expert at the Leadership Conference.

“The individuals that are being pushed out there, not necessarily by choice, may not put themselves at the table,” she said. “If you don’t know there’s process you can be part of, you’re left out.”

That’s why “meaningful representation” of low-income people, people of color, and people with disabilities is a major plank of the Leadership Conference’s platform for change. But most importantly: “Ending the disproportionate investment in car-based transit must be a centerpiece of the transportation equity agenda.”

A high number of schools in Queens, outer Brooklyn, and Staten Island are inaccessible from existing bike lanes. A Hunter College team recommends linking bike network expansions to a more robust Safe Routes to School program. Click to enlarge.

Unless the city devises a successful strategy to build bikeways in neighborhoods where bike infrastructure is scarce, the Hunter team writes in “Beyond the Backlash” [PDF], many parts of the city may get left behind for years to come. “A lot of the city isn’t served as well by the bicycle network as the central business district and Downtown Brooklyn,” said group member Jennifer Harris-Hernandez in a presentation at NYU on May 6. “This has reinforced transportation inequalities around race and class.”

The Hunter team notes that the pattern of building the best cycling infrastructure near the city core may inadvertently give ammunition to opponents of bike infrastructure by overlooking the full breadth of New Yorkers. “Counting [working-class, outer borough] cyclists and planning with them in mind will create a more equitable and relevant network while countering recent claims that bicycling in New York City is for the privileged,” they write.

To that end, the Hunter team proposes a geographic shift in focus for the DOT’s bike program, paired with more intensive public outreach at the local level. At a moment when the city’s tabloid press is launching weekly attacks on bike projects and local politicians seem to think they’re doing constituents a favor by blocking plans for bike lanes, the Hunter team’s report offers a thoughtful and constructive critique intended to strengthen the city’s bike program.

The accelerated expansion of the bike network has built new bikeways in every borough and brought safer conditions to some low-income neighborhoods, but overall the city’s bicycle planning has concentrated the most and best bike infrastructure in close-in, affluent neighborhoods. The bike network is at its densest and most interconnected in downtown Manhattan and northwest Brooklyn, and the overwhelming majority of the new protected lanes are located in high-income neighborhoods. While bike lanes serve many people who ride from outside the immediate vicinity, neighborhoods like Chelsea, the Upper West Side, and Park Slope are so far the primary beneficiaries of protected lanes and the robust pedestrian and cyclist safety improvements they produce.

There are good reasons for the bike network to be expanded this way. The roll-out of new bike lanes has tended to follow the path of least political resistance, at least in the short run. The Hunter team notes that the neighborhoods that have received the most bike infrastructure are the same ones that already had bike-friendly community boards or strong local advocates.

There are also technical explanations for DOT’s current strategy. In explaining to East Harlem’s Community Board 11 why that neighborhood wouldn’t be receiving protected bike lanes last year, for example, DOT reps emphasized the importance of an interconnected bike network, which argues for extending bike corridors from the inside out. The city calculates that a bike-share program can succeed without subsidies if the stations are densely clustered in the central city, but a profit-turning system won’t reach areas where bike-sharing can be most useful to low-income New Yorkers, the Hunter students note.

At a certain point, the Hunter team says, the lack of bike infrastructure in many parts of the city feeds into a vicious cycle. The full picture of the city’s bicycle network “reinforces the impression that gentrification follows bicycle planning, and vice versa,” they write in the report. “This practice, in turn, makes it more difficult for DOT to build outside the most bicycle-friendly community districts.”

To escape this cycle, the Hunter students offered DOT a range of suggestions. Building local bike networks oriented around transit hubs mitigates the need for new bike lanes to be connected to the Manhattan network, for example. Integrating bike planning into a strengthened Safe Routes to School program could help spread safer infrastructure across the city while addressing the particular needs of young people and families.

They also urged DOT to change the tools it uses to measure cycling. The agency’s focus on the screenline count, which measures the number of cyclists entering the Manhattan CBD, quantifies certain trips but ignores others (an issue which has also come up in the context of the screenline’s divergence from Census counts). The screenline is “legitimating DOT’s siting choices, so there’s a cycle of counting and building in the same places,” said team member Sam Stein.

The Hunter team tried out ways to supplement the screenline count by surveying cyclists in Flushing, Corona, and Jackson Heights. One survey was placed on the handlebars of parked bikes in those neighborhoods. The respondents mostly did not bike into Manhattan, so they would never turn up in the screenline count. A majority responded in either Spanish or Chinese. These cyclists had a serious need for safety improvements — 43 percent had been doored and 28 percent hit by a car — especially on popular routes like Roosevelt Avenue.

Cyclists in Flushing, Corona, and Elmhurst filled out surveys describing their daily routes. Roosevelt Avenue is widely used to get from one neighborhood to another. Click to enlarge.

Separately, the Hunter team recommended that DOT build stronger support for cycling by changing the way it integrates local groups, especially community boards, into the planning process. This call didn’t come with any rose-tinted glasses about the current failings of some community boards. “Community boards can often be parochial, short-sighted, and not truly representative of the full breadth of the local community,” they wrote in their report.

Even so, they argued, engaging more with community boards is necessary, especially given the strong likelihood that the next mayor will be more hesitant to support the expansion of the bike network. There is a need “to think beyond this administration and find community support for bicycle infrastructure,” said Harris-Hernandez. Despite the anti-bike impression you might get from some southern Brooklyn community board votes, the Hunter team notes that there are plenty of local groups outside the central city who want to bring safer cycling to their communities.

There are already some good examples of innovative agency outreach for DOT to build on. The Hunter students point to the relatively smooth rollout of a transportation plan for Jackson Heights, arguing that the steady, long-term public outreach that accompanied that project paved the way for its success so far.

Part of the current problem, they say, stems from a lack of capacity at the community board level. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has proposed providing every community board with a trained urban planner, but in the absence of that, the Hunter team recommended that city agencies at least provide board members with regular trainings. “While this kind of work was begun with the ‘DOT Academy’ program,” they note, “it seems to have fallen by the wayside.”

The report suggests that bringing in community board members early on in the process, by inviting them to collect transportation data with DOT, for instance, can help overcome parochial concerns that too often obstruct change. Perhaps most importantly, Hunter identified groups like Make The Road New York, Desis Rising Up and Moving, and Queens Community House as eager to work with DOT on bike planning in their communities.

From left to right, TWU Local 100 president John Samuelson, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Congressman Charlie Rangel, and Congressman Greg Meeks. Photo: Noah Kazis.

The star of the rally was Jackson, introduced by Congressman Charlie Rangel as someone who "not only brings a political stimulus, but answers to a higher power." Calling the budgetary woes of the nation's transit agencies part of "the heart of the urban crisis," Jackson told the crowd that "we must now bail out from the bottom-up," beginning with urban transit. 

Jackson added that the coalition's fight "may end in a massive March on Washington," linking the coalition to the history of the civil rights movement.

Keep America Moving increasing operating funds for the nation's transit systems. Nationally, the coalition is pushing to pass Missouri Congressman Russ Carnahan's bill to allow cities with more than 200,000 residents to use federal dollars on transit service, not just capital projects. Transit systems across the nation are facing huge budget deficits as a result of the recession. Multiple speakers at the rally questioned the wisdom of buying new buses if you can't pay anyone to drive them, a situation that gained widespread attention when the 2009 stimulus bill emphasized funding capital projects instead of maintaining service.

Members of the Keep America Moving coalition are not just looking to the feds. Streetsblog asked John Samuelson, the new head of New York's Transport Workers Union Local 100, whether the coalition would also target state and local governments. "In a word, yes," Samuelson answered. "We have a full-scale lobbying effort in Albany." Samuelson didn't specify what the TWU is asking for in Albany, but he did refer to his union's support for shifting flexible stimulus dollars from the MTA's capital budget to pay for operations.

The two founding partners of the coalition are the major transit unions, the Amalgamated Transit Union and the TWU. Some of New York's most powerful labor groups, including the SEIU, DC 37, and RWDSU also came to show their support. The rallying cry of the afternoon was "jobs, jobs, jobs," repeated by the heads of union locals and elected officials, including Rangel and Congressman Greg Meeks.

The coalition also includes environmental organizations: Cecil Corbin-Mark of the West Harlem-based WE ACT for Environmental Justice and Dan Miner of the New York City Sierra Club connected the need for more transit funding with the imperative of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving air quality. Other speakers included Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign and Kate Slevin of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.

Yesterday's event was the second rally by Moving America Forward, following a Chicago event last Saturday. 

Russianoff saw the formation of the coalition -- and the participation of a public figure with Jackson's stature -- as a major step forward for transportation advocacy. "The momentum has been growing," he said after the rally, adding that the coalition is just getting started. 

"You're going to see a lot more of us," promised Warren George, the president of the ATU.

A federal judge yesterday upheld NYPD rules which effectively outlaw bicycle rides with 50 or more cyclists that proceed without a permit. The case is closely associated with police crackdowns on Critical Mass but affects any group ride of sufficient size.

In his 54-page decision in favor of NYPD and the city of New York [PDF], District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, a Staten Island native who holds a JD from Harvard Law (Class of 1969), dismissed the case put forward by the Five Borough Bicycle Club, Columbia history professor Kenneth T. Jackson (who organizes educational nighttime rides for students), and several Critical Mass participants. The cyclists' attorneys argued that the NYPD permit rules violate First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly, and that police have selectively issued citations to cyclists who have not broken any traffic laws.

Judge Kaplan rejected these claims across the board. One of the more fascinating aspects of Kaplan's ruling is his application of local traffic law to cyclists' behavior, and the way his judgments about traffic safety influence his judicial opinion. In concluding that NYPD's 50-person limit on group rides justifiably advances public safety, for instance, Kaplan writes:

Large groups of cyclists may well be more visible than individual cyclists and may take up less space than large groups of vehicles, but countervailing factors such as their lack of predictability and their tendency to try to stay together in a moving column, even if this means going through a red light, nevertheless endanger other travelers and disrupt orderly traffic flow. Their presence may add traffic volume that otherwise would be absent.

This reality was borne out by a video clip of the September 2007 Manhattan Critical Mass ride shown... at trial. As the Court noted at the time, the clip shows a cyclist engaging in dangerous behavior by pulling out and to the right of a motor vehicle that itself was in the process of pulling out of the bike lane to its right. The biker comes up from the motor vehicle driver’s blind spot and passes the motor vehicle on the right just as the motor vehicle begins to pull to the right and out of the bike lane. I find that the video demonstrates the danger of the cyclist's actions.

According to a court transcript obtained by Streetsblog, Kaplan is in fact referring to video shot in July, 2007, which appears beginning at the :37 mark in the above YouTube clip. It depicts a cyclist traveling south in the Broadway bike lane at 19th Street. When he encounters a BMW SUV partially obstructing his path, he bikes into car traffic and passes the SUV.

This behavior, in Judge Kaplan's estimation, is the cause of safety hazards and a reason to give legal standing to NYPD regulation of group rides. As for the motorist blocking a bike lane with his multi-ton SUV before merging back into traffic, without much seeming awareness of the cyclist approaching from behind, Kaplan's opinion gives no indication that such carelessness registers with him.

In another passage, on page 47, Kaplan interprets state law as requiring cyclists to ride as close to the right-hand curb as practicable if they are traveling at "less than the speed of normal traffic." It's a rather restrictive take on the legality of taking a lane, and omits the fact that the rule in question applies only to two-way streets. At no point in his decision does Kaplan mention the NYPD's reliance on section 1234 of the New York State traffic law to issue violations to Critical Mass cyclists, which plaintiffs cited as evidence of discriminatory enforcement. Section 1234, which requires cyclists to ride in the right hand curb, does not apply in New York City.

The Five Borough Bike Club says it is disappointed in Kaplan's ruling and will review the decision with other plaintiffs. No word yet on whether an appeal will be filed.

The proposed Oakland Airport Connector train. Photo: BART via Streetsblog SF

Several Bay Area advocacy groups briefed the media on the civil-rights complaint they filed against the OAC, which the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) heeded last week in a letter [PDF] that threatened to yank $70 million in stimulus money from the project unless planners comply with federal equity rules.

Stuart Cohen, executive director of TransForm, said advocates' victorious bid to push Bay Area's transit planners to examine more cost-effective and equitable alternatives to the OAC would "have a ripple effect" as other cities re-examine how their transit plans would affect lower-income and minority riders.

The FTA's decision on the OAC, described as the first of its kind, "represents government at its best," PolicyLink president Angela Glover Blackwell told reporters, adding that by "us[ing] the power of purse to make transportation agencies accountable, government shows it can be consistent with its values."

So where else are civil rights complaints playing a role in local transportation decision-making?

In the Twin Cities of Minnesota, several community groups filed suit against planners of the Central Corridor light rail line to protest the choice of route, prompting local and federal officials to announce the addition of three new stops.

The move appears to be motivated as much by low-income residents' concerns about changing development in the area as it is by their fear of losing transit access. A corresponding lawsuit filed by the Minnesota groups charges that the Central Corridor “project is designed to result in the displacement of the existing population along the Central Corridor through gentrification," according to the Finance & Commerce newspaper.

Meanwhile, the town of Navassa, North Carolina, has filed a civil rights complaint of its own with the Federal Highway Administration seeking to expedite construction of a highway bypass through their town, alleging that the road project would bring needed jobs and economic benefits to local residents.

Back in California, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) authority and metropolitan area officials have a limited amount of time to respond to the FTA's letter before the $70 million must be reprogrammed to other projects.

Public Advocates staff attorney Guillermo Mayer, who helped work on the OAC complaint, said the money could be used to help close the operating budget gap for San Francisco's transit systems despite legal limits on the use of stimulus funding for transit operations.

"The short story is that it's flexible," Mayer said, citing the federal government's treatment of preventive maintenance as a capital expense rather than an operating one. "These funds can be used to maintain existing services."

Time is running out. The Five Borough Bike Club and several others are plaintiffs in a lawsuit which challenges New York City's attempts to suppress Critical Mass rides. The Court has given us an August 8 deadline to gather information concerning summonses, arrests and other NYPD action against bicyclists. For those of you who don't know, the suit challenges the constitutionality of recently implemented rules that require a group of 50 or more to obtain an NYPD permit before proceeding together (the "Parade Permit Rules"). The suit also challenges various other tactics that NYPD uses to target and suppress Critical Mass rides. Details on how to provide information you believe may be helpful are provided at the end of this post.

So far, we have already gathered evidence of unlawful conduct by the NYPD, including evidence which shows that:

• NYPD "profiles" suspected Critical Mass participants for selective enforcement of the law as they ride their bikes individually in the vicinity of Union Square prior to the start of the ride, as shown in this video.
• NYPD tickets cyclists during these "profiling" operations and points to them as proof of Critical Mass's lawlessness, even when the summonses were issued on evenings when no Critical Mass ride took place and/or for violations which are not relevant to bicyclists, such as "no seatbelt" [download a summary of these tactics].
• NYPD has systematically arrested and summonsed Critical Mass participants without any valid basis. The charges frequently have been dismissed.
• NYPD officers have repeatedly used excessive and dangerous force against Critical Mass participants.

As one NYPD officer candidly told a Critical Mass bicyclist while ticketing him for an equipment violation, the policy of selective and unlawful enforcement was triggered by the August 2004 Critical Mass bicyclists' protests against the Republican National Convention. We contend that such protest activities provide no lawful reasons to establish the 50-person limit on public processions, or to suppress or selectively enforce the law against Critical Mass month after month [download].

The Court requires us to collect all relevant documents, photographs and videotape by August 8, 2008. If you believe you have evidence that is relevant to the suit, we ask that you send it to us.

This is not an offer to provide individuals with lawyers or legal representation. We request that you voluntarily provide information for use as evidence in the lawsuit. If you can help, please send us a brief email describing the information you have, and including a daytime phone number where you can be reached and/or an email address, to: [lawsuitinfo] [at] [5BBC] [dot] [org]. Please contact us about the lawsuit only through this email address.

Thanks so much for your help and support.

Best regards,
5BBC

Words fail when watching this clip of an NYPD officer forcibly knocking a Critical Mass rider to the pavement last Friday. The assault was caught on video by a bystander in Times Square. Compounding the injustice, reports Gothamist, is what happened next:

A representative for TIMES UP! tells us that the cyclist in this video was arrested, held for 26 hours, and charged with attempted assault and resisting arrest.

Mark Taylor, an attorney with the firm representing the cyclist, says he is hopeful the charges will be dropped in light of the video evidence. Asked whether the NYPD plans to go ahead with the charges, a department spokesman said the matter is being investigated. Since the video surfaced, the officer has been put on desk duty.

The Reverend Al Sharpton, the family of Sean Bell, and an all-star cast of civil liberties advocates joined cyclists in Union Square last Friday for one of the more anticipated Critical Mass rides in recent memory. The gathering, which filled up the south end of the park, came three weeks after the Reverend led hundreds of supporters in an attempt to shut down major bridges and tunnels, protesting the acquittal of the officers who shot and killed Bell.

After a roster of speakers addressed topics ranging from parade rules to police violence to gay marriage, Sharpton tied up the disparate strands with a call for mutual support in the face of NYPD misconduct:

When we can come together as Critical Mass, if we can ride together, if we can protest together, we can make this city livable for everybody together. This is the picture they don't want to see -- people of all ages and all backgrounds and all races that will stand together. Because as long as they can play one community against each other, they get through the middle. It's when we gather as historically has happened at Union Square that the powers that be have to turn and buckle... When you demand the right to ride, that is all Sean Bell was doing that night, is trying to ride. And we are going to work together to have a critical mass in this city, where we can ride in justice.

The question is: What is wrong with the morals of a city that thinks there's something wrong with men going home from their bachelor's party? They're suspect. But it's the same mentality that tells us we can't gather in a square or a park, and read and talk and discuss.

After Sharpton's remarks, Sean Bell's father, William Bell, said what must have been on many people's minds: "I really came to see Reverend Al ride that bike." Sharpton didn't disappoint, eschewing a pedicab that had been reserved for him in favor of his own ride. With the way clogged by photographers, Sharpton got off to a halting start before hitting his stride and riding a circuit from 14th Street, down Fifth Avenue to 12th Street, and back up University Place to the square.

Before the event got underway, I had a minute to speak with civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, who has been involved in the Sean Bell case and in the defense of cyclists' rights. I asked Siegel what he saw as the link between the two.

"There's a huge difference between Critical Mass and Sean Bell," he said, "but there is a need for oversight of the NYPD. When the police abuse the civil rights of Sean Bell, and when they abuse the rights of cyclists, there's common ground." He outlined three steps that could serve as unifying goals: having a permanent special prosecutor for police conduct (currently, NYPD lawyers prosecute cops); putting some more teeth in the Civilian Complaint Review Board; and improving the training of police officers.

On this last point, he said: "This job is so stressful, after 10 or 12 years, you could have someone ready to explode... the cop loses it in some situations. In the Sean Bell situation, they could have handled it differently. And it's the same here. With bicyclists, they're hostile, they grab 'em. There has to be better training."

As for the ride itself, the police showed no inclination to start changing their standard approach to Critical Mass. "There were a lot of tickets given for not having lights and not being in bike lanes," said Mark Taylor, an attorney with FreeWheels, the group that organized the rally. "Those aren't real tickets."

Nicole Bell, Sean Bell's widow, addresses the crowd.

The crowd filled up most of the south end of Union Square.

Reverend Al gets ready to ride.

Video: Jen Chung / Gothamist

Photos: Ben Fried

As the City Council takes up legislation to lift NYPD rules against public assembly, cyclists and advocates will hold a rally and press conference before tonight's Critical Mass ride.

From BikeBlog:

Critical Mass participants will be joined by a diverse group of videographers, artists, activists and politicians outraged over NYPD regulatory constraints on the civil liberties of New Yorkers. Prominent speakers from the community will participate in the "Still We Speak" rally to denounce the NYPD's First Amendment abuses, including the parade permit rules which limit the number of people who can legally assemble in a public place.

In addition to the council bill, the police department also faces a suit brought by the Five Borough Bike Club. For you legal types, here is a plaintiff's motion citing arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement by the NYPD, as illustrated in the video, along with notes and summonses from the July 2007 Critical Mass. In footage to be shown at tonight's event, officers are seen roughing up and detaining citizens for taking pictures and video of police action in Times Square during the March 2007 ride.

Tonight's events start at Union Square North at 7:00 p.m.

Video: rusticumjudicium/YouTube

City Council Member Rosie Mendez has introduced a bill to overturn the NYPD's parade permit rules, which require groups of over 50 to obtain a permit before assembling. Enacted a year ago, the rules were seen as a way for the city to subvert Critical Mass rides and have been the subject of civil rights action and at least one lawsuit.

Mendez, along with Alan Gerson and Gale Brewer, were to introduce the "First Amendment Assembly Act" yesterday. According to a media release, the bill [PDF] "decriminalizes parading without a permit and allows groups that need exceptions to various laws, such as traffic laws, to obtain such for their events."

Streetsblog has posted consistently on how the NYPD seems more intent on harassing cyclists than protecting them. And just last week Commissioner Ray Kelly got an earful from citizens who are fed up with unsafe conditions for cyclists and pedestrians.

The full press release from Mendez follows the jump.

COUNCIL MEMBER MENDEZ INTRODUCES BILL TO PROTECT THE FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO ASSEMBLE

Wednesday March 26th 2008

At today's Stated City Council meeting, Council Member Rosie Mendez (District 2, Manhattan), along with Council Members Alan Gerson and Gale Brewer, will introduce a bill to balance the NYPD's duty to ensure public safety with citizens' right to free assembly. If enacted into law, the bill will override the parade permit rules adopted by the NYPD a year ago which were created without City Council oversight and require any group of 50 or more to obtain a permit. Currently, anyone in such a group without a permit is subject to arrest.

A copy of the legislation being introduced can be downloaded from the Assemble For Rights NYC website:
http://www.assembleforrightsnyc.org/files/a4r/legal/parade_bill_final_draft.doc

"Groups wishing to assemble and stay within the limits of the law should not be required to obtain a permit; the First Amendment is our permit" stated Council Member Mendez. "Larger assemblies that want the police to
assist in managing traffic along their route and ensure security should be able to apply for a permit through a fair and transparent process. This bill sets forth clear guidelines for each instance."

The First Amendment Assembly Act, based on legislation drafted by the civil rights advocacy group Assemble For Rights NYC, decriminalizes parading without a permit and allows groups that need exceptions to various laws, such as traffic laws, to obtain such for their events.

A parade permit will not be required when:
* A group believes their proposed assembly will not prevent other lawful uses of the same city public space and the expected attendance of the assembly will be less than 100, or
* The assembly is an immediate and spontaneous response to an event.

The Act also sets forth guidelines for the NYPD to facilitate peaceful assemblies even when a group should have obtained a permit but did not. Furthermore, the Act also encourages calmer resolutions to assemblies which become too difficult for the NYPD to facilitate: these guidelines include providing clearly communicated dispersal orders and reasonable opportunities to disperse before making any arrests.

The Act is similar to rules which were created to govern assemblies in Washington D.C. in the wake of mass arrests that eventually cost D.C. millions in civil penalties. D.C.'s laws have successfully reduced tensions between police and citizens there, and significantly reduced that city's legal liability to wrongful arrest civil suits, while ensuring public safety.

Assemble For Rights NYC (http://assembleforrightsnyc.org), is a coalition of over two dozen organizations dedicated to keeping free speech alive and well in New York City.

Photo: Doug Letterman/Flickr

One of the most entrenched fallacies in the congestion pricing debate has been the assertion that blue-collar New Yorkers get the short end of the stick. The claim never withstood scrutiny, but now it is facing an especially strong counterargument from Communities United for Transportation Equity (COMMUTE), a coalition of organizations from low-income communities of color underserved by transit.

COMMUTE calls for giving poor New Yorkers better access to transit by implementing extensive, inter-borough Bus Rapid Transit corridors, funded from pricing revenues and the MTA capital budget. On Monday, they hosted an appearance by former Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa, who described how he addressed what he calls "quality of life inequality" by improving public space for pedestrians and building the TransMilenio BRT system.

COMMUTE presented Peñalosa's story as a challenge to New York pols. "People want to see that pricing is going to benefit them directly," said Joan Byron of the Pratt Center for Community Development, a COMMUTE partner. "He really demolishes the argument of electeds who oppose the plan and have 20 percent car ownership and 5 percent commuting by car in their districts."

The Pratt Center's Elena Conte brought this point home when she addressed the room following Peñalosa's Q & A: 

The example of Bogotá... reveals that inequities in the mass transit system can be addressed when elected leadership has the will to place the needs of the underserved above the long-established privilege of the tiny minority who drive cars

COMMUTE! calls upon our elected leadership here in New York City to do no less.  We cannot let this opportunity to address inequities in the mass transit system slip past us because we’ve been distracted by the rhetoric of those who represent the most privileged amongst us.  The fact is, mass transit is the life-blood of our city, and access to mass transit determines access to economic opportunity, education, and vital services.

We urge the elected officials who represent our communities to lead the charge for mass transit improvements that serve the needs of those whose mobility is most severely limited by the current biases in the system. This can be accomplished by a comprehensive, citywide network of Bus Rapid Transit that fills in gaps in the subway system, is full-featured, and crosses bridges.

The event also provided a platform for COMMUTE to introduce its partner organizations:

• Centro Hispano Cuzcatlan
• El Puente
• Families United for Racial and Economic Equality
• The Fifth Avenue Committee
• The New York Immigration Coalition
• Nos Quedamos
• The Point CDC
• Pratt Center for Community Development
• Sustainable South Bronx
• United Community Centers
• UPROSE
• West Harlem Morningside Heights Sanitation Coalition
• Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice
  

With congestion pricing now before the City Council, the coalition pushing it forward shows signs of strengthening at exactly the right time. One group we'll be hearing more from is Communities United for Transportation Equity (COMM.U.T.E!), a recently-formed partnership between the Pratt Center for Community Development and community organizations in low-income neighborhoods around the city. At a press event this morning, COMM.U.T.E! representatives spoke about their strategy to lobby for congestion pricing and greater funding for BRT in the MTA capital plan. 

Their campaign will call attention to stark inequities in New York City commute times. The Pratt Center has crunched 2000 Census numbers showing that two-thirds of city residents with commutes longer than one hour earn under $35,000 per year [pdf]; and that black New Yorkers face a 30 percent longer commute, on average, than white New Yorkers [pdf]. Disparities were present, if less pronounced, across other racial groups as well. Considered alongside the transit improvements that congestion pricing will make possible, the findings again pierce the argument that pricing is a regressive tax.

The problems revealed by the report are fundamentally about "human rights and dignity, rather than dry economic measures," said Joan Byron, Director of Sustainability and Environmental Justice Initiative at the Pratt Center.

Time lost to long commutes is "corrosive to community life and family life," said Silvett Garcia, Senior Planner at Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice in the Soundview section of the Bronx. "That is time people cannot spend with their families, cannot meet with their children's teachers, cannot go to community events." She noted that bus commuters in the Bronx have to transfer twice to make a trip across the borough, which takes an hour. The same trip only takes drivers ten minutes.

Byron applauded DOT's commitment to a BRT pilot program, but noted that the scale of a BRT system would have to exceed current plans to seriously address inequities in transit access. The only way to dramatically improve transit access in neighborhoods that are currently underserved, she said, is to implement congestion pricing and significantly boost MTA funding for BRT.

"In the MTA capital plan, resources earmarked for BRT are too small compared to rail projects," she added, distinguishing between rail projects that do improve transit access, such as the Second Avenue Subway, projects that enable real estate development, such as the 7 line extension, and ones that serve a small number of mostly affluent users. "The money for the JFK-Lower Manhattan rail link -- $6 billion -- could be used to blanket Queens with BRT."

Citing the success of Enrique Peñalosa's vision for transit in Bogota, COMM.U.T.E! hopes to rally elected officials around congestion pricing and BRT as means to address inequality, analogous to campaigns for affordable housing.

"Electeds in New York have a mastery of affordable housing issues," said Byron, "but they've been out of the game on transit." 

COMM.U.T.E!'s two-pronged strategy will involve lobbying elected officials to simultaneously pass congestion pricing and influence the MTA capital plan.

"Electeds have a chance to own this issue," said Byron. "We're going to be reaching out to folks one by one. We have statistics for every district. Guys like Brodsky have captured headlines with a fake populist stance. The breakthrough that needs to be made is that people see a revolutionary change coming out of this. BRT is that revolution."

We'll hear more from COMM.U.T.E! on February 18th, when they publicly unveil the roster of elected officials and community groups who've signed on to their platform.

If you think handing out traffic tickets to Central Park cyclists or random seizures of locked bicycles qualifies as outrageous police behavior, check out what happened to Stephan Orsak when he tried to leave the Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport on his Brompton folding bicycle. He says that he was pulled over by a police officer, harassed and then shot with a Taser stun gun. He has started a blog dedicated to the case:

Immediately as I was leaving and without any warning whatsoever I was thrown off my bicycle onto the pavement. I sustained abrasion wounds to chin and arm. My helmet casing sustained a new crack, but otherwise prevented a direct blow to my head. My glasses were thrown off by the force of the impact and bounced several feet away. Officer Wingate moments later would smash them into the pavement with his boot. But first, I was jerked into an upright position, and Officer Wingate jumped to the side and ordered me Tasered by his officer in training. This, too, happened immediately and without any warning or choice whatsoever. I was then handcuffed, body searched, and luggage searched. Three additional squad cars soon arrived, including Officer Wingate's supervisor. However, my conversation with Sergeant Karsnia was abruptly cut short on the grounds that I had allegedly 'tried to take a swing' at Officer Wingate. I was handcuffed and transferred to Hennepin County Hospital, then to Hennepin County jail where I was held without charges and without bail.

This entry on the Village Voice Blog by Laura Conaway tells the story of an NYPD raid on parked bicycles last Wednesday night. When two residents questioned the officer in charge, they were arrested:

Sparks from the NYPD's circular saws arced through the night. Police, some in plainclothes, were piling cycles by the dozen in a heap on the sidewalk. At first Robert Carnevale took still pictures, then he switched the digital camera into video mode. He approached the plainclothes lieutenant who seemed to be in charge and asked for his name. Carnevale says the officer gave his name, but got annoyed when asked to spell it. "You got my name," the officer says on the video. "I did you a favor. . . . Now I'm going to lock you up."

And he did, sending Carnavale to the pokey for 22 hours on a charge of disorderly conduct. The cop also rang up Carole Vale, a nurse who happened by and asked for an explanation. Vale spent 13 hours in a cell, on the same count. In addition to the two arrests, the NYPD collared about 15 bikes. Officers, some in plainclothes, loaded bikes into unmarked black vans. "Why is domestic spying being used on non-polluting transportation?" asked Time's Up director Bill DiPaola at a press conference today.

City code does prohibit locking a bike to anything other than a city-approved rack, but there's some dispute over whether that applies solely to abandoned bikes. The rusted carcasses of old cruisers, often picked cleaned of valuable parts, litter street signs and bike racks around the five boroughs.

Transportation Alternatives reports that the East Village police precinct, the 9th, started trying to identify and tag abandoned bikes in 2005. Cyclists generally see getting rid of useless junkers as a positive, since it leaves more room for bikes in daily use. Not surprisingly, they take less kindly to having their bikes cut loose and removed with no advance notice or information afterward about how to get them back.

Civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel, representing the East 6th Street riders at the press conference today, said the raid might have been prompted by a complaint from Community Board 3. He cited a court decision from September 2005, in which a judge ruled that the city had violated the due process rights of three cyclists by clipping their locks and hauling off the bikes with no warning. "The unlawful activity here is not by the cyclists, it's by the cops," Siegel said.

OnNYTurf also covered the incident, as has Gothamist and NY1. You can view a slide show on the Village Voice Blog as well. Time's Up! is interested in hearing from other witnesses or anyone who had their lock clipped or their bike confiscated. You can email them at timesup@panix.com.

Photo: Caroline Dorn

The city's Critical Mass crackdown has apparently reduced the number of participants -- or maybe it was the weather. Either way, the spirit and ingenuity of the riders remains intact.

According to BikeBlog, rather than succumb to the scooter cop horde like "lambs to the slaughter," cyclists gathered for Friday's mass decamped from Union Square, walked their bikes to the 4 train, and regrouped on Broadway for an unmolested ride.

Ironically, the group was too small to be in violation of the new permit law, yet officers still pursued the cyclists underground with "erratic fervor" to question them as to whether they had swiped their MetroCards. One rider was reportedly issued a summons for taking his bike through an exit door.

Other than that, we were scot-free.

As we headed up Church St. towards Canal, it seemed that a lot more people knew who we were. There was a lot of friendly supportive honking from motor vehicles and crowd waving. We stayed mostly downtown and our numbers grew a little as others joined in and meet up from Union Square...I still think we were always just under 50...so we were technically legal.

It was a successful critical mass...no tickets, no arrests and no cops.

Video: Time's Up! and Team Spider via BikeBlog

Up to 200 cyclists gathered Friday evening for the first Critical Mass since the city law took effect limiting unpermitted bike rides and other public events to fewer than 50 people. With all the professional and citizen journalists on-hand to witness the "showdown" between cyclists and the NYPD, one wonders if the restriction might be extended to the media.

Though arrests were few, by all accounts the ride was significantly disrupted. WNYC reported the number of cyclists as "about 200," and said "many riders only got a block" before running into an NYPD barricade on Park Avenue.

Newsday says three cyclists were arrested and 47 were issued summonses or violations. The NYPD told the paper that two of those arrested were charged with disordlerly conduct and obstructing governmental administration, while charges were pending against the third. Bikeblog (via Gothamist) said summonses were handed out "to people who did not have a bell or a light or some other law on the books that is enforced about as frequent as someone driving on a cell phone."

Despite incorrectly referring to Critical Mass as an "organization," CW11 filed a favorable story, which included an interview with this woman before her arrest. Said reporter Arthur Chi'en: "We did not get the impression she was a rabble-rouser."

Will at onNYTurf says "Freewheels, which provides legal assistance to arrested cyclists, speculated that arrests were likely low as mass arrests might jeopardise the City's defense in the 5 Borough Bike Club case ... Mass arrests could make the NYPD look unreasonable." Will notes that City Councilwoman Rosie Mendez, who rode along in a pedicab, "was not touched by the NYPD" -- a "good move on their part."

The Village Voice pointed out that "[F]or all of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's bluster about there being a new law in town, none of the Critical Mass riders were actually ticketed for parading without a permit. "Rather," the Voice continued, "the cops hit people up for a host of minor traffic violations like failing to keep to the right, not having a headlight, or not riding in the bike lane -- even though there is no bike lane on Park Avenue."

Photo: Seth W. via Flickr

Announced on the Five Borough Bicycle Club's website:

On March 27, the 5 Borough Bicycle Club and several other affected parties filed a lawsuit in Federal court, asking a judge to stop the NYPD's new rules that would let the NYPD ticket or arrest any "recognizable group" of 50 or more cyclists that ride together without first obtaining a parade permit from the Police Department.

Suing city government is not one of the ordinary roles of the 5BBC. But organizing group bicycle rides is. The NYPD's parade rules essentially outlaw large bike rides, under the dubious claim that bicycle rides are a danger to public health and safety.

We looked into applying for permits for our rides, but found that it was a bureaucratic nightmare. The rules for parades are totally inappropriate for bicycle rides. For example, 5th Ave. on a Sunday is prohibited, even though most of 5th Ave. is an official NYC bike route. The width of every roadway in the route must be listed in the permit, and the 5BBC would have to appoint a "Chief Officer" for each "parade" who would be "Responsible for the Strict Observance of all Rules and Regulations of Said Permit."

You can download the case files and keep track of the 5BBC's progress on their website.

Photo: Justin Shockley/Flickr

R.A. Whitworth, whose Maryland-based company conducts highway safety research for attorneys, insurance companies and even government agencies, discovered a few years ago that federal regulators were collecting the global coordinates of fatal accidents and linking them to its database, known as the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, or FARS. The database is one of the most important kept by the federal government.

Almost by happenstance, Whitworth discovered on the agency's website in 2004 the geographic coordinates of fatal accidents. He immediately saw the value: He could create maps of accidents, providing insights into where they were occurring on any given day and under what conditions.

He downloaded the data to his computer, but a few days later it was gone from the website. He called the agency and explained that the data had disappeared and he would like the agency to repost it. Officials called the posting a mistake and said he should erase it from his own computer, he recalled.

Whitworth waited until the following year, to see if the agency would again mistakenly post the data. This time, it did not. So he filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the agency in September 2005. The request was denied.


The rejection letter said that "the disclosure would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." Exactly how a set of coordinates would invade a dead person's privacy was not made clear. Police routinely release the names of fatal-accident victims....

Whitworth appealed the decision in November 2005, but never heard back from the agency.

What did he learn from the 2004 data that he downloaded? Among other things, he discovered an alarming number of crashes of sport utility vehicles occurred on hot days on Interstate 15 in San Bernardino County, as Southern Californians headed to Las Vegas. That interested him, because he is doing research for attorneys suing Ford Motor Co. for rollovers involving Explorers equipped with Firestone tires.

"Is there a disconnect between where the money is needed to curb fatal accidents and where it is actually going?" Whitworth wonders. "I don't know, but I am not satisfied with the answers I am getting."

Reported in the New York Times:

Chad Marlow, who represents the New York City Pedicab Owners Association, said the association agrees with much of the legislation, but plans to file a lawsuit challenging some elements of it. He said it believes that the Council was within its rights to impose a cap as the city does with taxis, but that the restriction on electric motors and the provision giving the police the power to ban pedicabs from Midtown run afoul of the law.

Four council members abstained from yesterday's vote, raising objections to the restriction against electric motors.

At a council hearing before yesterday's vote, Councilman Alan J. Gerson, who supported the original legislation but removed his name from the current version of the bill, said, "They're nonpolluting, they're quiet; why should the city care if they are electric assist or not?"

AMNY reports:

The City Council is poised to put the brakes on New York's freewheeling pedicabs, prompting hundreds of their drivers to say the regulations would devastate a pollution-free way to get around town.

"They say we are causing traffic congestion," said pedicab driver Mega Martinez, 43, at a protest Tuesday. "How can that be? We are the only ones who can get around the traffic."

In addition to capping the number of pedicabs at 300, the City Council bill would completely ban those pedicabs that use electric-assist motors. While most of these motors use less power than a hair dryer, Comrie said the council considers them motor vehicles, subject to state laws.

A vote on the pedicab regulations is scheduled for Feb. 28.

Photos: Bill DiPaolo