Streetsblog New York City

Streetfilms captured highlights of Enrique Penalosa's appearance with COMMUTE.

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

A map produced by the Pratt Center [pdf] shows neighborhoods with a high concentration of low-income commuters with long commutes.

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.

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

An article in the LA Times (reg required) details how the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has systematically withheld information on fatal accidents from the public, even going so far as to deny Freedom of Information Act requests from researchers.

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.
Read more...

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."