By Daniel Katzive
Community Board 7 voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday night to ask the Department of Transportation (DOT) to analyze and report on the possibility of creating a network of protected crosstown bike lanes. The vote was a small step forward for biking advocates but came only after a change in wording that left some of those advocates frustrated.
At the Tuesday night full board meeting, members agreed by a vote of 34-2, with one abstention, to request a DOT study on the feasibility of creating a network of protected bike lanes on east-west streets in the district. The original resolution called on DOT to provide a “detailed proposal,” but, before passage, the board changed it to ask instead for a “detailed study,” as a result of the persistence of Parks & Environment Co-Chair Susan Schwartz.
The Transportation Committee co-chairpersons noted that even the original language was only a request for a plan, which would still have gone to the board for consideration. But those who pushed for a study, rather than a proposal, said the change would make it clearer that the board was only looking for information on the feasibility and consequences, rather than calling for definite creation of new bike lanes. “The purpose of the amendment is to clarify that the purpose of this resolution is to ask the DOT to come back with documents and presentations, not to come back with shovels and trucks and immediately begin work,” explained Transportation Committee Co-Chairperson Mark Diller before putting the amendment up for a vote.
Members of the public spoke overwhelmingly in favor of the lanes, with some sharing personal stories of close calls while biking on city streets or losing loved ones in bike accidents. Several pointed to a University of Colorado study which found bike lanes contributed to lower traffic fatalities and improved safety for bikers, drivers, and pedestrians. Advocates of the lanes expressed disappointment that calling for a study would diminish the sense of urgency expressed by some who spoke. “Our current streets are extremely unsettled, and people are losing their lives,” said Giuseppe Tallini, a resident of West 64th Street. “I want a plan, and a proposal, and shovels, not a study.”
Only two board members opposed the resolution. “We are helping a small group of bike riders, and that’s a wonderful thing,” said board member Barbara Adler. “However, we are disadvantaging, I believe, a much larger group,” those who rely on street parking for their cars. The other no vote was Jay Adolf, who had challenged the feasibility of crosstown bike lanes at an earlier committee meeting.
WSR reached out to the Department of Transportation for comment on the resolution and will update this article if they come back to us.
Before taking up the bike lane issue, Board Chair Beverly Donohue read the language of a new resolution calling on the city to allow no more than 84 occupants in the safe haven scheduled to open in late April at 106-108 West 83rd Street. Under the city’s plan, the safe haven would house up to 108 homeless men and women.
Board rules call for public posting of proposed resolutions before the board debates and votes. Donahue said the board will hold a public hearing on the safe haven resolution at its next meeting May 2, followed by board discussion and a vote.
That vote will come after the city’s target of late April for opening the safe haven. The Rag asked Donohue whether the new facility might already be operating with more than 84 residents by the time the community board votes on whether to recommend fewer residents.
“If the safe haven opens in later April, it is our understanding that it will be a ‘soft’ opening involving very few residents,” Donohue said via email.
There will be a point in the future where we look back and wonder why we allowed for free storage of private property on our streets. Parking on two sides of a street takes up space that could be better used for traffic, bike or otherwise.
Exactly what is the difference between whether the private property is moving or parked. A moving car is not magically no longer private property. People pay hefty fees directly tied to vehicle ownership to use the roads. Bikes, not so much. Bikes do whatever they want, blame it on others and expect everybody’s tax money to support their pipe dream of bicycle Nirvana. Sorry, not buying it. The holes in the bike lobby’s arguments are big enough to, well, drive a car through.
You do realize that car owners pay tax when they buy the car, pay fees to register cars, and pay a gas tax that is used to help maintain roads?
I’m not opposed to having some sort of a nominal fee to park in the neighborhood and make the parking pass available to those who work in the neighborhood. That way they are paying their own way more. Compromise is generally not acceptable these days but I try…
But the hoops we are all going through to make the city overly bike friendly are getting ridiculous. And it is made worse by the hateful tone of the anti-car people. Instead of spending so much energy opposing cars, perhaps make friends outside of the city – there are some beautiful places out there and they are nice to visit. And no, I do not have a car. But I also try not to covet the belongings of others.
There will be a time when we wonder why we thought bike lanes that were used by the 1% only half of the year were better than valuable space that allowed families, hard working middle class and others to come to the UWS or call it home and who depended on it for important parking. Why throw away decades of demonstrated community need to meet the demand of entitled 1% cyclists who want to have the luxury of special lanes that are completely unnecessary on slow residential streets?
The study would not be for a slow residential street, it would be for large two-way streets, such as 72nd Street. Also even though only 1% of people are cyclists, probably almost 100% of us rely on people on bicycles to bring us deliveries. They deserve safe bike paths, as it benefits all of us.
And why we allow free parking for UPS, FedEx, and people who place a Starbucks order on their phone and run into the store to pick it up, in the travel lanes. And how are these illegal but very real issues going to interact with the bike lanes?
I have friends who drive for UPS. They are heavily ticketed. I’ve never asked for details but I just looked it up.
March 22, 2019
For delivery companies, the tight fit means racking up astronomical parking fines as a cost of doing business. In 2018, for example, FedEx incurred $14.9 million in fines, according to the New York City Department of Finance; UPS, a whopping $33.8 million.
The total amount of commercial parking fines incurred in New York City in 2018 was $181.5 million, meaning the two delivery giants were responsible for about one quarter of the city’s commercial parking fines last year.
It’s from this site: https://www.freightwaves.com/
Caly,
Is your point that double parking is OK because they pay fines? I would say it is not OK because it impedes the flow of traffic. And I think the point here is that if we have a bike lane in the cross town streets and have the delivery trucks double parking there will be no driving lanes.
Gimme a break. These parking fines cost the companies nothing. They are an accepted cost of doing business and in the long run these extra costs are part of the price paid by customers.
Incurred or paid? These are heavily discounted at the PVB.
They are heavily discounted by an agreement with the City that was made under Bloomberg. The City agreed to discount the fines if the companies that received the most tickets agreed to not litigate any tickets. This agreement saves the City a large amount of potential litigtion costs.
This is one of the more misunderstood actions around.
The fact is that double parking and standing in truck zones are ok if there’s actual activity there, like a delivery or emergency plumbing call.
Before the agreement, the City would adjudicate the summonses, one by one, a lawyer sitting for the company and a PVB hearing officer, reviewing each summons and the submitted proof of activity at the scene.
So most tickets got dismissed. The rest got paid.
All the Bloomberg Admin did is average out the value of each ticket and have the companies pay that instead of going through the interminable process of one – by – one adjudication.
We allow for parking because small business owners use it, workers and visitors and those who have to drive to places not easily accessible by transit use it. The world doesn’t revolve around Manhattan and not everybody has their whole NYC lives within Manhattan or gentrified Brooklyn. You can’t squeeze car drivers by making driving more painful and squeeze transit commuters who work on the UWS simultaneously. Even though congestion pricing passed, MTA is trying to eliminate service between the outer boros and Manhattan, but virtually no one on the UWS knows about it. Do you want to build enough housing on the UWS so that workers on the UWS can afford to live here? Do you want to sacrifice historic districts on the UWS in order to do so?
There’s plenty of housing on the UWS with dozens of buildings which have been built most recently on Broadway. The fact that almost every one of them is luxury housing is because of the enormous power the real estate industry has on our city government. Rather than building what is required by a community, developers build what makes them the most profit. They have transformed NY and made it into a luxury product which has raised the cost of all housing in every borough of New York. Many of those apartments sit empty. It is only in historic districts where the cost of housing has not gone up exponentially but remained stable. This is a specious argument that destroying historic districts to build more housing would result in affordable housing-it would do the opposite. The new housing which has been built looks like anywhere USA-homogenous, bland, half empty and out of context with our communities. They have nothing to do with anything remotely affordable.
If you make driving more painful for area workers and business owners while transit isn’t getting better even with congestion pricing, eventually people who want to have the most job opportunities and work here are going to be forced to move to neighborhoods like the UWS. You can preserve historic districts and I’m not against preserving historic districts, but you can’t have your cake and eat it too, between the loss of parking, worsening of transit service between outer boros/Manhattan, resident only parking + not building more housing on the UWS so workers can afford the UWS.
Remained stable?? Ridiculous, here in the historic UWS district housing costs have skyrocketed as they have across the city.
Yes we absolutely should build enough housing on the UWS (and greater NYC generally) so that workers could afford to live here.
How many UWS residents would be willing to sacrifice historic districts on the UWS in order to do so? Is there any guarantee that you’d actually have housing that’s affordable for UWS area workers? They couldn’t even guarantee a single affordable housing unit in the SoHo rezoning in 2021.
Yes if you increased housing supply you would at least slow insane growth in rents. We’ve way under built housing relative to job growth.
You would slow insane growth but that wouldn’t bring quick enough relief to the workers who’ve had to deal with painful transit AND painful driving. Because of the gentrification and displacement happening in minority communities uptown, eventually you’re going to have to have the discussion about historic districts that no one except maybe Sara Lind is willing to touch with a 10 foot pole. Preserving street parking to allow area workers to live in affordable housing farther out where transit options aren’t perfect is a small concession to avoid having the discussions that no one wants to have on the UWS about sacrificing historic districts to increase housing supply.
How is the MTA trying to eliminate service between the outer boros and Manhattan? And what exactly are outer boros? All the others?
They are redesigning bus service in Queens and Brooklyn right now, they tried to cut bus service between the Bronx and Manhattan in 2019. What I find troubling is that when it comes to the outer boros, you pretend to not know what they are, but when the time comes that the MTA redesigns the Manhattan bus network and service is being cut and bus stops are being removed on the UWS, Gale Brewer’s office will be flooded with complaints and when Sara Lind regurgitates Riders Alliance talking points about how a bus redesign with bus stop and service losses are good in Manhattan, then you will be calling her out.
I live on 92nd. Seems to me many of the people using the street for parking are middle class. Many are teachers who work around here. Some are people from NYCHA housing who probably don’t want to spend $700 dollars a month for parking. Some people are handicapped. Some are from New Jersey who drive to work in the city. To me, “storage” connotes it not being moved. As you know it must be moved 2 and 4 times a week. As for the bike lanes, if they will be used then it is a good idea. I see very few bicycle commuters using the bike lane on Columbus and see almost none using the bike approved sidewalk north of 96th street in the park. Bicyclists seems to go wherever they want, helmet or no helmet. I think the bike lane issue is just part of a larger campaign to eliminate cars from the city.
No, the cars don’t need to be moved 2x a week. Do you live in NYC? People sit in their cars for 90 minutes 2x a week and move only for an instant if the sweeper comes. The cars go back to where they started.
We have all seen cyclists going the wrong way in the bike lanes on the avenues rather than go out of their way to get to the next avenue where the bike lane flows in the direction they want to travel. Do we really think they’ll go to the proper streets to travel east and west? If not, what is gained by adding these lanes?
There’s no reason bike lanes have to be one-way. There are plenty of 2-way bike lanes in the City. It’s not that hard to look both ways as we were taught growing up. In their pleas for a perfect world where cyclists do everything right, people doom themselves to be offended and frustrated. But they have no problem breaking every pedestrian law that exists. Phony outrage is a sport especially on the UWS.
The people using the lanes will be protected from cars. Even if some people don’t use the lane, the people who do will be much safer.
CPW lost 400 parking spaces for a protected bike lane and there were still cyclists killed on CPW.
https://www.westsiderag.com/2021/06/30/bicyclist-hit-and-killed-by-postal-truck-driver-on-central-park-west
I was in a cab yesterday, 78 St eastbound. Bike lane to the left, with a rider, going the right way. Cabbie was careful, staying away from the bike, and an idiot on an eCitibike turns at speed coming the wrong way right at the cab.
All she had to do was ride 200 feet over to 77 but she chose to endanger her life.
And this is not atypical.
If a lane one block over doesn’t encourage responsible riding, do you think a lane every 10 will?
The Bike lobby showed up in force at that meeting. It was crazy. If you heard the testimony you would think that subways, buses and sidewalks literally do not exist in NYC! As if earth’s existence depended on a protected bike lane to take them on slow residential street with almost no traffic from one park to another. Those entitled bikers have no regard for the middle class who can’t afford the already $1400/month parking garages (a price that will only go up!), and would rather see families leave NYC because they can no longer own a car… all so that they can take an unnecessary bike ride on a residential street for a few blocks. Nobody rides bikes except the crazy e-bike deliveristas terrorizing pedestrians and the occasional safe CitiBiker like myself!
“Nobody rides bikes” yet UWS Citibike stands are nearly empty most of the time. Because people are riding the bikes.
I’m a charter member of citibike, and I see what happens in this residential neighborhood daily. You are right, on nice days. Typically spring and fall, people choose the luxury of riding to work over the MTA. Lyft is too cheap to reposition the bikes so they pile up midtown and downtown. Then in the afternoon they return. So there are no bikes here from about 8:30 to 2:00 PM.
Two takeaways: 1 Lyft isn’t doing what it promised, and
2. This is a nice luxury, because the MTA has to have its equipment and employees at the ready, every day, in case it’s too cold or too hot or too rainy for the luxury of the ride along the greenway on a nice day. .
We are being asked to subsidize this luxury while also subsiding transit, and the subsidizing of the bike industry will add to the subsidies for transit, because taxpayers will have to make up for the revenues lost to biking.
If the revenues lost are that great due to increased biking, then the MTA should to rethink how much service it provides. It should find ways to decrease its bloated operating costs. Less ridership means fewer trains needed, less train cars per run, fewer station employees. It’s illogical to raise prices on at item that has less demand.
Bikes are not a form of mass transit and there’s concerns that Lyft is purposely allowing Citibike to atrophy to force the case for city subsidies.
When we had private bus companies (mostly in Queens, but one in Brooklyn, two in the Bronx and one small Manhattan company) that began getting subsidies in 1974, the private bus companies didn’t allow their services to atrophy to make the case for subsidies. In fact, the private bus companies created express bus services between the outer boros and Manhattan to help increase their profits and reduce the need for subsidy, and also subways were unreliable and unsafe and it was a way of helping keep middle and working class New Yorkers in NYC that would’ve otherwise fled for the suburbs.
On the other hand, Citibike and related bike infrastructure is seen as a tool of gentrification and displacement.
It’s also worth noting that when NYCDOT oversaw the private bus companies before MTA took them over in 2005-06, NYCDOT repeatedly wouldn’t allow them to make service improvements that they wanted to do. The whole idea was to make them look bad in order to force an MTA takeover under Bloomberg. They also had rigid expense caps which disappeared when MTA took over. I am doubtful Citibike would get the same harsh treatment the private bus companies like Green Bus Lines, Triboro Coach, Queens Surface, New York Bus Service and Liberty Lines got from NYCDOT.
I’ve exchanged comments with a Lyft spokesperson who said they want to vastly expand the number of racks and bikes here. I think their refusal to ‘reposition’ is in furtherance of this. Create complaints that bikes aren’t available; the answer of expanding the racks and adding bikes is cheaper than paying people to load them in a truck downtown and bring them back here.
And riding dangerously! No regard for red lights, riding on sidewalks and riding down streets and sidewalks the wrong way. I almost feel like walking with a baseball bat for protection.
I attended this meeting and felt this whole discussion was absurd to say the least. The voting, the time spent with the parliamentarian to clarify Roberts Rules, the haggling over words, the passionate arguing over whether Mark Diller understood (or not) the intent of the vote. It all felt ridiculously political and it left me wondering if Community Board members (on both sides) have stakes in the game. Right now the roads are a mess and people are DYING. I wouldn’t ride a bike because it is dangerous and I fear for my safety walking (while following the laws). But if they choose to ride one, don’t infringe on the rights of pedestrians because you feel your rights are violated. And stop making Deliveristas the excuse. Nobody is dying because their sushi order is delayed. Can we not pull together and find a common sense solution to all the bs? Shame on this Community Board.
For sure the people who are pushing bike lanes have stakes in the game as hedge fund owner Mark Gorton donated $10 million to transportation alternatives and founded Open Plans. Those concerned about parking are average UWS residents and area workers who can’t use transit for one reason or another.
I have been biking the streets of NYC for 60 years. I have a friend who was active in TA in the early 80s and who gave me a bike map prepared by TA when it was printed around 1983. It’s printed on waterproof, tear proof tyvek so it’s in great shape.
Here’s what TA said about itself then, before Mr. Gorton came on the scene:
“{TA} is New York’s cycling organization working with and for you to improve our cycling environment…”
The map is full of tips on how to safely ride in the City, I still look at it from time to time, wistfully.
Here’s what the TA website says now, post Gorton’s millions:
“WE RECLAIM NEW YORK CITY FROM CARS, TRANSFORMING OUR STREETS INTO SAFE, SUSTAINABLE, AND EQUITABLE PLACES TO WALK, BIKE, TAKE TRANSIT, GATHER, AND THRIVE. ”
TA is the NRA of biking, turning from an educational group to an absolutist group.
Oh, Gorton’s given a lot more than 10 million to this. He’s also paid out at least 200 million in fines and settlements for his trump-like business practices.
80th St has two lanes of free parking, one lane for driving, one lane for double parked cars, and zero for bikes. 81st St has the same lay out. 82nd, 83rd, 84th, 85th all have the same. Those five streets have 20 lanes for cars and zero for bikes. How is the group that is asking for one lane every 10 blocks the “absolutist” group?
Josh
Bicyclists proactively endanger pedestrians.
Bicycling also siphon from bus and subway.
Should not be any expansion of bike infrastructure!
Why should anyone be concerned that bicycling siphons from bus and subway? People should live their own lives. Adjust public transportation to the dynamic needs of the populace.
Which will ultimately mean that transit will be worse while the bike zealots have their 15 minute city that is expensive and is a defacto gated community.
Transit services should reflect how much demand exists. If the populace shifts to other means of transport, you need to adjust to that reality. It’s hypocritical to rail against bike lanes that might not be used all the time in every season while demanding that long trains run all the time with so much unused capacity. Public transportation should be in sync with public demand.
Sure! Let the old people wait longer for the bus.
“How to win friends and influence people,” bike rider version.
Then you’ll end up screwing over workers who work on the UWS and live elsewhere and have to cross a bridge or tunnel. How much more housing do you want to build to accommodate them on the UWS? Are UWS residents and voters willing to sacrifice historic districts for them?
I bike 84 and 85 routinely. They are safe because they’re quiet streets, and an alert rider on a bike can see everything ahead of them, hear everything behind, and anticipate issues that can arise.
I reject your continued and tiresome repetition of bikes v cars. Streets are for bikes, cars, trucks, buses, livery cars, delivery vehicles, etc. Take away the private cars and the rest of them just drive faster, and you’re no safer. That’s precisely what happened during the height of the pandemic.
BTW Mark G’s wealth/business etc has a significant “carbon” footprint.
So the climate/environment is not actually his primary concern for bicycling….
Reading the comment and my own lived experience, cities are about shared space. I think the city has actually made a lot of investments to improve bicycle travel and enjoyment. Just look at the waterfront bike trails and all the citibike kiosks. It does seem like whatever cyclists get may never be enough, there is a huge entitlement attitude with many, and hate campaign against cars is tiring. I have started to see some be more respectful of pedestrians and street lights but we have a long way to go. I can’t help but wonder if the public might feel differently towards them if they took a different more respectful approach vs my way or else. Stop blaming reckless riding on others. And get some control over those ebikes and scooters. They are more like motorcycles anyway. Enough with all the justifying of bad road behavior.
LB,
Plus incredibly TransAlt has been advocating for street closures that hurt bus riders!
TransAlt pushed for “open streets” even on bus routes therefore forcing bus detours
Why can’t they put a two way bike lane down the center of. the two way cross streets, add loading/unloading zones on the corners for delivery/pickup. Double parking could be enforced by camera ticketing.
If you could manage a protected two-way center bike lane (could be slightly elevated and curbed where a vehicle could not go over it so you would not need to do protection with cars. At each avenue cross street the elevation would go down to grade.
Meat packing they have a proposed center lane (it doesn’t look elevated though which would add the bicycle protection The first picture in the video below shows an example.
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2022/11/30/meatpacking-bid-creates-blueprint-for-more-pedestrians-and-biking
Bike lanes are a luxury for the very few who use them. Especially for crosstown protected lanes on quiet and slow residential streets.
Free parking benefits the entire neighborhood. People who work here but can’t get here via MTA can park, families and hard working middle class people who want to call UWS home, but have jobs that aren’t accessible via MTA also rely on such parking. Same with everyone who wants to come in from jersey or other places to come see the city and bring in business.
Literally every biker could just use subways or buses! They want to take away an essential need for the entire community to have this luxury of taking a bike on the occasional sunny day, less than half the year and only during daytime hours.
Parking is needed and used every hour of every day all year long. ‘
This issue is about entitlement and the bike lobby and TransAlt are showing and ugly sense of entitlement by trying to push this change through.
I could go on and on about the safety issues that bike lanes bring with e-bike riders causing even more danger than cars to pedestrians and responsible bikers as well.
We need to focus on regulating e bikes and keeping pedestrians safe while meeting the needs of the community. The community needs MORE parking not less. Several hundred spots were already taken for the CPW bike lane just a few years ago.
Parking garages are now 1400/month in some places. Removing more spots would make the UWS impossible to call home for many families, workers and would result in much less business. All for the convenience of the 1%.
When you make transit more painful AND make driving more painful, you’re screwing over the workers in this neighborhood. Will it take the loss of historic districts to build more housing to finally get people on the UWS to wake up?
Enough with the bike lanes and bike storage already. Traffic is now slowed to a crawl and cars idol for hours causing pollution. People need to store their bikes and computers in their apartments.
Unless and until bikes, e-bikes, mopeds, scooters, etc. are regulated with not just empty “rules” but with enforcement, there should be no more bike lanes built on the UWS. We have a new class of oppressed people called “pedestrians”. They can’t even walk safely on a sidewalk anymore let alone cross the street! There have been deaths and severe injuries as a result. Do you see your city government doing anything about this? Have you seen the police ever stop a moped or e-bike going the wrong way against traffic? I haven’t. In Paris they have banned E-scooters because they are a hazard and a nuisance. Imagine that happening here with a corporate company commoditizing the streets? Right. We need to protect our pedestrians before more deaths result from this Wild West of an unregulated city.
Agreed and that’s why more than 75% of Parisians voted to ban electric scooters. Unregulated conveyances are a menace because their users can not be held accountable for their bad behavior.