Streetsblog New York City

Via Twitter, here’s Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer and crew gearing up for Bike to Work Day in Queens this morning.

Don’t forget to share your pictures of today’s commute by adding the “Streetsblog” tag on Flickr or emailing us at tips@streetsblog.org.

Any other electeds make the ride to work today?

DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan announced bike-share’s Memorial Day launch date at last week’s budget hearing, but Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer had some news of his own: He had joined thousands of New Yorkers in becoming a Citi Bike member.

“I want to say proudly I am one of the 8,000 people who have signed up for bike-share,” Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer said, joining Brooklyn Council Members Steve Levin and Brad Lander in becoming a bike-share member. Like Lander, Van Bramer’s district isn’t even located in Citi Bike’s initial service area. “We really want bike-share in western Queens,” Van Bramer said.

In the week since Van Bramer’s announcement, the program’s membership rolls have grown from 8,000 to more than 10,000. Are any other council members awaiting key fobs in the mail?

Streetsblog has inquired with other council members in the service area to see if they are Citi Bike members or plan to join. Letitia James told Streetsblog via e-mail that she plans on becoming a member.

We’re waiting on word from Gale Brewer, Margaret Chin, Dan Garodnick, Jessica Lappin, Rosie Mendez, Christine Quinn, and Albert Vann. We’ll let you know if we hear any updates.

Update: Council Member Chin’s office said that while she is “very supportive of bike-share,” she will not be joining because does not know how to ride a bike, although she plans to learn how to ride in the future.

Update 2: Council Member Garodnick is not a Citi Bike member and does not know if he will join in the future, according to a spokesperson.

This morning, with constant horn honking and engine noise in the background, Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer called on DOT to study and implement traffic calming improvements along Thomson Avenue in the wake of the death of 16 year-old Tenzin Drudak, who was standing on the sidewalk when a driver jumped the curb and plowed into a group of pedestrians on Monday.

Van Bramer was joined by students from LaGuardia Community College, area high school students, Community Board 2 Chair Joseph Conley, and Transportation Alternatives.

“We cannot risk our lives to come into school any more. Please do something,” said LaGuardia Community College student government president Shah Amanat.

Last July, nearly 500 LaGuardia students signed a petition asking DOT for more signal time to get across the street. In November, DOT replied, saying that the signals were functioning properly and that it would not adjust them.

“We should never, ever, ever in this city sacrifice lives or put lives at risk in order to move cars faster. That is wrong,” added Van Bramer, who called on DOT to immediately study Thomson Avenue from Van Dam Street to Skillman Avenue for traffic calming, signal retiming, and additional bollards.

In the last few years, DOT has added safety improvements to other bridge approaches, including Delancey Street near the Williamsburg Bridge, on the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge, and nearby, at Queensboro Plaza and along Queens Boulevard – but not on Thomson.

DOT said it is in the process of evaluating curb extensions at the intersection where Drudak was killed. ”The agency was already working with LaGuardia Community College to improve pedestrian safety and access at this location as part of the college’s planned expansion,” said spokesperson Scott Gastel. Streetsblog asked DOT if the agency has a timeline for implementing traffic calming measures but has not received a reply.

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This morning, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca, and council members Jimmy Van Bramer, Stephen Levin, and Leroy Comrie joined street safety advocates in calling on Albany to pass legislation allowing a speed camera demonstration program in New York City.

“Speeding is the number one cause of fatal crashes in New York City,” Quinn said in a statement. “Speed cameras are a smart detriment that will reduce speeding and help save lives.”

The push comes as Speaker Sheldon Silver has included speed cameras in the Assembly’s budget. The measure could be enacted if it survives budget negotiations with the Senate over the next week, followed by Governor Cuomo’s signature.

A majority of the New York City Assembly delegation supports the speed camera bill, sponsored by Assembly Member Deborah Glick. An accompanying bill is expected to be introduced soon by State Senator Andrew Lanza, a Staten Island Republican. Previous automated speed enforcement efforts have stalled in committee, but advocates hope the swell of support will put the effort over the top this year.

“We’re closer than we’ve ever been,” said Transportation Alternatives Legislative Director Juan Martinez.

The program would be limited to no more than 20 cameras in operation at any given time, with a cap of 40 cameras deployed citywide. Fines would not exceed $50 for driving 10-30 mph over the speed limit, and not more than $100 for speeding more than 30 mph over the limit.

In a press release today, Transportation Alternatives included supportive statements from Assembly members representing a broad swath of the NYC region: Jeffrey Dinowitz and Luis Sepulveda of the Bronx, Richard Gottfried, Micah Kellner, Dan Quart, and Linda Rosenthal of Manhattan, Alan Maisel of Brooklyn, Araella Simotas of Queens, and Harvey Weisenberg of Nassau County.

Council Member Van Bramer has a resolution dating to 2011 that urges Albany to pass speed camera legislation. His office expressed confidence today that the resolution will pass the council soon.

Yesterday in Van Bramer’s district, 16 year-old Drudak Tenzin was killed on the sidewalk by a driver who jumped the curb. Police say he was speeding through the intersection, but will not face charges.

With the first phase of new bike lanes set to go before Community Board 2 this fall before being installed in the spring, DOT has a new survey asking western Queens cyclists where they’d like to see bike lanes come next.

The survey is the latest step in months of outreach and feedback with members of Community Board 2, Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer and western Queens residents.

“Our district has a special responsibility to ensure safe cycling,” said CB 2 transportation committee member Evan O’Neil, “since we are the access point to the Queensboro Bridge.”

Dana Frankel, district services manager for the Long Island City Partnership, was also supportive of the new bike lanes planned for the neighborhood. “We’re excited that bike-share is coming to LIC,” she said. “The bike lanes will help make our streets safer.” She also mentioned that the area’s first StreetRack bike corral at MoMA PS1 has been well-used. “We are happy to help connect property owners and institutions who may want StreetRacks with DOT,” Frankel said.

The first round of bike lanes, which will bring nearly 10 lane miles to Long Island City and Sunnyside, were identified at community meetings with DOT in March and July [PDF]. They include critical connections such as 11th Street between the Pulaski Bridge and Queens Plaza South; 39th Street between Northern Boulevard and Greenpoint Avenue; and Skillman and 47th Avenues in Sunnyside.

The first phase will not include Greenpoint Avenue itself, which community members identified at a March workshop as their top priority for bike lanes. Greenpoint Avenue has a dangerous history: In July, a cyclist was killed in a hit-and-run near 39th Place, after a cyclist was killed in April at the intersection with Borden Avenue. Bike lanes on Greenpoint Avenue would connect to the avenue’s bridge across Newtown Creek. DOT had proposed buffered bike lanes on the bridge, but backed off in the face of opposition from nearby companies that operate trucks across the span. The proposal has not seen much public progress since.

“Long term, it’s pretty clear that protected lanes like the excellent new infrastructure on Queens Plaza North should be the standard,” O’Neil said. However, the bike lane projects being considered by DOT are restricted by the department’s promise not to eliminate any parking.

The online survey will help DOT identify phase two projects for next year, as part of a four-year plan for bike lane expansion in the area.

Last Thursday, City Council members held another press event on electric bikes. A bill introduced by Dan Garodnick would double the fine for riding an e-bike on the sidewalk from $100 to $200, according to a DNAinfo report, while the penalty for running a red light would go as high as $900.

The city does not keep data on electric bike summonses or crashes. So like another bill from Jessica Lappin, introduced in February, the Garodnick proposal rests on anecdotes and complaints.

“There are a lot of seniors in this neighborhood,” said McCallian, a Community Board 2 member. “In one case a senior was knocked out of her wheelchair.”

Sunnyside residents and elected officials said that they had seen a significant increase in the number of those bikes in the neighborhood in the past few months.

“They just zoom by,” said another resident Leonore Lanzillotti. “And no one expects that on the sidewalk.”

Local councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, who is one of the bill’s sponsors, said that the e-bikes “have become an epidemic of reckless driving” in his district, which includes Sunnyside, Long Island City and Woodside.

Residents in several neighborhoods are clearly distressed by sidewalk e-bike riders, and no one should expect electeds to ignore their safety concerns. But the problem here is much bigger than electric bikes.

For perspective’s sake, here is a sampling of documented, quantifiable four-wheeled vehicle violence that has taken place just since last Thursday’s e-bike presser: Two drivers collided with sufficient force to send one vehicle through the wall of a Long Island City building; a cabbie struck an 87-year-old woman outside Port Authority, putting the victim in the hospital; a nanny barely saved herself and her 4-year-old charge from being crushed by a sociopath who stole an SUV and crashed it onto a sidewalk in Greenwich Village; and an 18-year-old cyclist and a 42-year-old pedestrian were slain within the span of an hour by two hit-and-run drivers in the Bronx.

In attaching higher fees to the misuse of a certain type of vehicle that (for whatever reason) is illegal in the first place, the City Council is trying to drain the ocean with a thimble. The problem, as always, is a general lack of enforcement. Sadly, dangerous drivers offer dozens of opportunities every day for council members to demand that NYPD institute much-needed reforms to reduce the carnage on city streets, beginning with the enforcement of existing traffic laws and full-scale investigations of crashes involving serious injury and death.

If council members want to put their appetite for media attention to its highest and best use, the next traffic safety presser will be at the site of the next horrendous traffic crash.

Many cyclists in Queens feel theirs is the forgotten borough. Though it ranks first in size and second in population, Queens ranks third behind Brooklyn and Manhattan in bike lanes. And the existing bike lanes too rarely link up, cyclists say, discouraging bicycle use for commuting to work or for recreation.

With the goal of improving bike travel in their borough, Queens residents met with city Department of Transportation officials Saturday for some bottom-up planning. The idea was to get the people who know their streets best to provide initial input for new bike lanes.

Convened by Queens Community Board 2, the meeting was the first of its kind for the city, said Hayes Lord, who directs the DOT’s bicycle program.

CB 2, which includes the western Queens neighborhoods of Long Island City, Sunnyside and Woodside, is strategically located to improve bicycling for Queens residents. It is home to the Queensborough Bridge, an important route for cyclists commuting to work, and with a burgeoning collection of cultural institution, it is increasingly a destination unto itself. ”We definitely see that there’s a great deal of excitement for cycling in Queens and we want to be able to support that,” Lord told the roughly 50 attendees.

Cyclists gathered in groups around large maps showing existing bike lanes and conferred about traffic trouble spots.

The Queens side of the Pulaski Bridge into Brooklyn was described as “atrocious,” by Helen Ho, who often bikes that route to commute between her Astoria home and office near Union Square in Manhattan. ”To get to the bike lane on Vernon Boulevard you have to go across some really scary intersections,” she said.

Some participants urged the creation of a continuous east-west route. Jonathan Dunn, a former investment banker, said he regularly uses that thoroughfare for his one-hour, forty-minute recreational jaunt from his Sunnyside home to the Rockaways. “But you have to be very careful along Queens Boulevard,” he said.

“Queens Boulevard is the big ask — the dream,” said Astoria resident Ian Hardouin. “It’s a major thoroughfare and connects to many other neighborhoods.” Hardouin noted that a Queens Boulevard bike lane would be a heavy lift because the boulevard is home to many stores, restaurants and other business that depend on street parking, some of which could be lost by the creation of bike lanes.

Lord had another concern: whether Queens Boulevard bike lanes would be safe. He said DOT would like to look at a possible parallel route.

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I think Al Roker's Brompton ride to victory last week pretty much sealed the deal: Bike to Work Day has never been bigger. In San Francisco, where they observed the occasion last week, bikes accounted for 75 percent of morning rush hour traffic on Market Street, and most of the legislative and executive branches of local government rode to work. Tomorrow in the nation's capital, Rep. Earl Blumenauer and several high-level federal officials will ring in Bike to Work Day at Freedom Plaza.

Here in New York, one of the local politicos getting re-acquainted with cycling is freshman Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer, who bought a new bike today from Spokesman Cycles, a shop in his western Queens district. Van Bramer told us it's been a while since he owned his own bike, and he's into the fenders on the new Jamis. "It's a hybrid and has really cool rims on the front and back," he said, "which I know it really helpful in terms of water and bad weather, but I kind of like it because of its retro look and feel."

After a ride around his district this afternoon with staffers and volunteers from Transportation Alternatives, he seemed pretty savvy about the local bicycle network. "I like what DOT has done in terms of bike lanes and I think that we can continue to work with them to make sure that there are sufficient connectors," he said, "because we have some terrific bike lanes in Sunnyside going down into Long Island City, but there are parts of the district where they sort of terminate and then pick up again."

The forecast for Bike to Work Day is clear skies and warm temperatures. If you happen across some nice bike traffic scenes tomorrow and have a camera handy, you can add your pictures to our Flickr pool. The tag to use is "streetsblog."

For all the pit stops, rides, and special event happening tomorrow, check the Bike Month calendar.

Noah Kazis contributed to this post.