Photo: Gothamist

"Access-A-Ride drivers are instructed to observe all restrictions on parking and standing. However, due to traffic, drivers are often challenged to find safe locations to either pick up or drop off customers."

How many holes in that statement do you count?

Gothamist is taking submissions for an end-of-year photo gallery of egregious bike lane blockers. Here are a couple of recent candidates that leap to mind.

A reader sends this photo of a huge rig using Kent Avenue's new protected bike path as its own, highly illegal shortcut. Our tipster says the trucker was bearing down on him at a rapid clip for several blocks before slowing down enough to hear an inquiry through the window: "What do you think you're doing?" The driver's response was unenlightening and filled with obscenities, we're told. This shot was taken after the confrontation.

The last time we checked in on the Kent Avenue project, which converted the street to one-way flow, truck traffic was the burning issue. The 90th and 94th precincts are supposed to keep trucks off streets where they don't belong. From the looks of it, police need to send a stronger message.

See the head-on view of the rig after the jump.

Since he didn't see a bus coming, the gentleman in the picture above sincerely couldn't understand what the problem was. But his co-worker, also pictured below, was incensed, screaming at the woman and, indirectly, at me, for taking photos. He was angry and aggressive enough that the guy above asked him several times to calm down.

After about 10 minutes, the third man returned (they had stopped so he could use an ATM), and they drove off, honking as they went.

This woman, who could easily be someone's grandmother, is tired of the indignities that too often accompany city bus travel ...

... and this guy publicly berates her for sticking up for herself.

It'd be nice to see this Euro design elsewhere -- though I wonder if it might be slippery when wet.

We've received a few reports in the past week about construction work on the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge. DOT's press office says six bike ramps are being installed, and we hear from observers on the ground that construction is largely complete as of this morning: The bridge approach at Delancey and Clinton Street has three new curb cuts, as does the raised median at Suffolk Street. Now cyclists can get on and off the bike path without having to dismount or hop the curb.

The volunteers at Adopt-a-Bike-Lane have been pushing for a safer ride to the Willy-B since last fall. Together with Allen Street's ongoing livable streets makeover, this new, smoother approach is bound to whet appetites for a protected connection to points west.

This time, we were looking for pictures of cars and other motor vehicles hogging space. And boy, did you deliver. We had dozens of submissions to consider, coming from as far away as Russia.

Here's a look at what you all are seeing out there on the car-choked streets of America -- and the world:

Many thanks to Streetsblog Network members Bicycle Fixation, Portlandize, Project for Public Spaces, Cyclosity, Cyclelicious and Bike San Diego, as well as all the rest of the contributors and everyone who participated.

Here's your next assignment: We'd like pictures of bikes at work. Cargo bikes, delivery bikes, bikes that get the job done -- whatever the job may be. International submissions are welcome.

Send them to me at sarah [at] streetsblog [dot] org, or tag them with "streetsblog" and "workbike" in Flickr.

Keep those pictures coming.

Streetsblog regular Glenn McAnanama sent in a flier from Columbia University police [PDF] alerting faculty, staff and students to a recent bike theft.

Video stills like the one at right appear to show a man -- pictured more clearly on the flier -- walking away with a bike after removing the front wheel. (Hal would probably give that lock job an "F.")

This is not a huge deal, but as Glenn points out, it's nice to see campus security treating bike theft as an actual crime worthy of its attention. "This is the second one of these [fliers] I've seen in as many weeks," he writes. "Imagine if NYPD were this concerned."

Of course, prevalence of bike theft also raises the issue of secure parking, or lack thereof, on campus. Any Columbia-affiliated folks care to weigh in?

We've posted many times on NYPD bus lane abuse, so it's nice to have this reader-submitted shot. This scofflaw driver was tagged Monday evening on E. 57th Street between Madison and Fifth -- just in time for bus passengers to witness a rare act of traffic law enforcement.

With new MTA chief Jay Walder citing bus lane blockage as a top priority, hopefully we'll be seeing a lot more of this. Who knows, maybe there's even an order of concrete on the first 100 days' agenda.

Many thanks to Bike Portland, Cyclelicious, Portlandize, Bike by the Sea, Bicycle Fixation, the NYCDOT, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia and all the other contributors.

We've squirreled away some of what you sent for future slide shows on other themes.

Speaking of which, here's what we're looking for next: We all know that cars take up a lot of space. A lot more space than any other form of transportation. We want your photos of cars hogging space in your communities -- graphic examples of how they crowd out other users.

We know you see this stuff every day. Shoot it, send it to us, and we'll share it with all our readers.

Send JPEGs to me at sarah [at] streetsblog [dot] org. If you want, you can tag submissions with "streetsblog" on Flickr, but it's still a good idea to send me an e-mail to alert me to what you think are your best shots.

Can't wait to see what you've got!

A reader sent in this photo from Park Slope, where restaurateur Irene Lo Re has been railing against the Fifth Avenue bike lane.

It is in Aunt Suzie's window now, along with the sign for free bike air.

Is this just another salvo in AAA's war against people-friendly city streets -- or maybe a small token for taking up the cause? There's no way to be sure, but it might call for raising the profile of the Bike-Friendly Business awards.

This was the scene at Seaman Avenue and 207th Street in Inwood at around 6:15 p.m. Wednesday. It appeared that the cyclist -- a white male in his 40s or 50s -- was doored by the driver of the Toyota 4Runner. The cyclist was elevating his hand, which was bleeding pretty heavily, before medics arrived. Police on the scene were talking to the woman in the photo after the jump, so I assume she was the driver. I'm no lip reader, but she looked none too thrilled with being held up, or having her picture taken.

I never saw the cyclist emerge from the ambulance, which departed after about 20 minutes. While I was trying to get a clear shot of the SUV, the bike disappeared from the street. Once NYPD and FDNY left the scene, the woman walked south on Seaman, leaving the SUV parked.

I called the 34th Precinct this morning to verify that the cyclist was transported and to ask if the driver received a summons. The officer I spoke with first told me I would need to come down to the station if I wanted information, then said no one on duty during the day would know anything about an incident that happened in the evening. This is typical of how the 34th Precinct interacts with the public.

Seaman Avenue is a pretty busy cycling street. If anyone saw what happened, please let us know in comments. And if you're the cyclist, we'd love to hear how things turned out.

Clarence sends these shots from Kent Avenue, where the striping and painting of the city's first two-way, on-street parking protected bike lane is currently in progress. This is the view looking north from the vicinity of Clymer Street. The project will be completed in two phases. According to DOT's project presentation [PDF], the current work, stretching from Clymer to Broadway, will be complete in mid-September; the second phase, from Broadway to North 14th Street, is slated to wrap up in about a month. Below is the view looking south toward Clymer.

Photos: Mike Noble

Also: How is a bike chained to a sign post a threat to pedestrian safety or a "security concern"? We have a message in with DOT to see if the city is indeed involved.

Update: A DOT spokesperson says the agency is not aware of action by the city to regulate bike parking at Rockefeller Center.

A reader sends this photo taken on the west side of Union Square this morning. You're looking at a temporary installation of a Bixi bike-share station. Bixi is one of three bike-share providers that have set up short demos this month at DOT's invitation -- the other brands are Eco-Trip and BCycle.

You can't get the full bike-share experience without a whole network of stations, but if you want to see how the check-out mechanism works and get a feel for how these Bixi bikes ride, today's demo will be open until 8 p.m. There are more Bixi and BCycle demos on tap for this week, including sites at Saturday's final Summer Streets installment.

Bixi gobbled up a big slice of the urban bike-share market last week, when London and Boston both announced they would use the Montreal-based operator for their respective systems. If New York follows the lead of those cities and makes a serious commitment to bike-share, you may see thousands of these bikes on the street in the not-too-distant future.

After the jump: Guys in shorts set up the demo.

It's pretty sad when a bus lane-blocking truck with a ticket on the windshield is news. Yet here we are. This one was spotted during the Wednesday evening rush in the Bx12 Select Bus lane on 207th Street in Inwood. The driver was nowhere in sight.

Neither was the agent who presumably issued the violation, parked a couple of blocks east.

There's a fresh coat of asphalt on the Sands Street bike path, and guys on the construction crew say this long-awaited approach to the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge should officially open for riding next week. Still to come: pavement markings and fencing.

Streetsblog's offices are just a short walk away on Water Street, and I figure it's not often that you get to show a piece of heavy duty bike infrastructure round into form, so here are a few more pictures showing the progress since last week. To appreciate how much this project will improve commutes for cyclists, check out the "before" pictures from last September.

The crew works on the section between Navy Street and Gold Street.

This signal, at the intersection of Sands and Gold, is for cyclists.

This is the barrier separating the bike path from auto traffic. The silver markings are there to guide installation of a fence.

Thanks to BicyclesOnly for posting this shot from yesterday morning's commute to the Streetsblog Flickr pool. By my count, we've got six people riding bikes here on a one-and-a-half block stretch of the Eighth Avenue protected path, with two or three others farther back, in the shade. As far as I can tell, everyone is riding in the right direction. If I was an Eighth Avenue merchant, I'd start agitating for more bike parking in front of my store.

More recent highlights from the Flickr pool (tag photos with "streetsblog" to contribute) after the jump.

Also from BicyclesOnly: The Lafayette Street bike lane on Tuesday morning.

From darkpilot: The corner of Fourth Avenue and 9th Street in Brooklyn is getting a bigger sidewalk. This is one among dozens of intersections targeted for pedestrian improvements in the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project.

Soon, you won't have to ride in car traffic on the Sands Street approach to the Manhattan Bridge.

The long-awaited Sands Street bike path, a protected approach to the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge which took a few years longer than expected to go through New York City's construction bureaucracy, looks tantalizingly close to completion these days. It's not there yet, but you can start to picture how this critical addition to the city's bike network will appear when finished. The Department of Design and Construction tells us the whole thing should be paved by the end of the week, weather permitting, and the path should officially open to cyclists next week, after some fencing is added.

Above is the view looking toward the bridge entrance from the north side. Here's how it looked last September:

More pics after the jump.

Here's the view looking in the opposite direction -- toward the BQE overpass -- from the same spot. Fencing will be added along the concrete barrier.

The view from Gold Street looking toward the bridge. The path will carry two-way bike traffic from here to the bridge.

Between Gold Street and Navy Street, the path runs between Farragut Houses along both sides of a center median. The surface for bikes is raised above the surface for autos. To allow for free pedestrian movement across the street, there is no concrete barrier.

This was the scene at Herald Square yesterday afternoon. It's full of people doing what the Times' Susan Dominus finds so un-New York: sitting down. Some of these loafers are actually putting their feet up, right in the heart of our fast-paced, cutthroat city. It's like they've never even seen The Sweet Smell of Success.

Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson sent this photo and some others he snapped while shooting footage of the new Broadway. Before we get to those, a few Independence Day weekend notes.

• First, a reminder to tell John Liu that you support the Bicycle Access Bill. This is a big one.
• Second, the Macy's fireworks are switching rivers this year, so instead of the ultimate car-free event on the FDR, we'll have a car-free Route 9A and bike-free Hudson River Greenway. Starting at 4:30 on July 4th, the bikeway will be closed from 14th Street to 68th Street. It's expected to re-open in the wee hours of July 5th, after the cleaning wraps up.

Enjoy the weekend everyone. We'll see you back here on Monday. On to the pictures from Clarence...

Clarence, who is something of a giant chess aficionado, says he's never seen such a large crowd for a match.

You can now see some of the new street surfacing at Times Square.

A future performance area?

This is what the reverse side of a meter receipt looks like now.