From work.

Biking home is a dream. I get to take the 9th Ave separated bike lane to the Bleecker Street lane which, while not physically separated, is curbside so you don’t have to worry about car doors. The care that went into this stretch is evident everywhere along it (see 9th ave slide show). Separate lights regulate cars wishing to make left turns through the bike lane; striping continues through intersections so that cross traffic anticipates bicycles; where cars might be tempted to infringe on the bike lane, like around curves, the bike lane is painted green. The lights even seem to be timed at the speed of a fast bicyclist – something like 20 mph. Apparently a small number of parking spaces on Bleecker had to be sacrificed to ensure this continuity (view slideshow), and boy is it worth it. All the way from 23rd and 9th to Bleecker and Bowery – 2 continuous miles – the biking is smooth and feels safe. Then there is a 0.8-mile period of no-good-options from Bowery and Bleecker to the Williamsburg Bridge, then a safe 1.5 miles over the Williamsburg Bridge, then a tolerable mile in slow traffic down Driggs and Lee.

While my ride features mostly really well designed bike lanes, there is a glaring flaw in the area around the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge. If you continue along the bike route, you will take a left on Bowery and go a half block out of your way north to E. 2nd Street, and take this to Allen Street, and then take that to Delancey, which is murder. The bike map suggests you take Houston to Suffolk, which seems stupid to me because Houston is a terrible street to bike on.

One solution might be to have a separated bike lane on Delancey from Allen to the current entrance to the bike lane, at Clinton. I like this idea because I think it asks too much of bicyclists to immediately find a side street as soon as they exit the bridge. Knowing you can head in the direction of the bridge and you’ll find the bike lane, as you would if there was a lane for a few blocks along Delancey, rather than expecting to find a dangerous maze where there is one entry point makes it a lot more user-friendly, especially for new bicyclists. Then Allen could be striped with a buffered lane. It currently has a lane, but it is needless narrow, fading, and as you can see in the picture, populated with buses more than bicycles. You’ll still have to go out of your way to take 2nd Street, but at least it will be for a better purpose.

Another option would be to create a separated bike lane on Christie Street along Sara D. Roosevelt Park from Houston to Canal St. This would be great for anyone who uses the Manhattan Bridge, and it would also be useful for Williamsburg Bridge Riders. Of course, then Williamburg Bridge riders would need a bike lane along Delancey all the more.

Improvements Coming to Williamsburg Bridge Entrance.

Today I spied this upcoming project on the NY DOT website. Estimated to be completed in late March or early May, it attempts to address the unfriendly conditions bicyclists traveling over the Williamsburg Bridge face upon arrival in Manhattan (PDF). If you are not familiar, the area around the entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge is a nightmare – the bridge lets bicyclists out on the middle of six lanes of aggressively moving vehicles on Delancey. Sidestreets are mostly one-way and routinely dead-end.

The solution to this is clearly to create a separated bike lane on Delancey for at least a few blocks to give bicyclists a chance to choose a north or south bound route that is comfortable and not too confusing. By creating a separated bike lane on Delancey, bicyclists could follow car directions to the Williamsburg Bridge, and wouldn’t have to consult the bike-map to figure out how to connect up with a safe bike route. It would be intuitive and minimize the need for bicyclists to go out of their way to ride in bike lanes.

But that apparently isn’t on the table. Instead, the DOT has decided to install bike lanes and route markings on Clinton Street north to Houston and south to East Broadway. The project involves converting a portion of Clinton below Delancey from one-way to two-way traffic. Depressingly, this section only gets class 3 route markings – no actual bike lane. The portion north of Delancey to Houston is nice enough; it is curb side and painted green, but it dead-ends at Houston, which is an unsafe and pointless place to end, notwithstanding its bike-route classification. Hopefully improvements on Houston are planned for the future.

So am I right in seeing this as a small, perhaps meaninglessly small, step in the right direction?

Bikes and trees

I think bikes and trees have a lot of the same interests – trees clean the air of ozone and particulates for bicyclists, and provide shade in the summer, and often smell nice – but all too often I see bicycles damaging trees by locking to them. This may seem like a minor complaint, but bicycles can really damage trees by scraping their protective bark away and creating a source for infection. If you look for it while walking around in New York, you can’t help but find a lot of trees whose growth has been affected by such injuries. Most of the time it doesn’t kill the tree (or maybe I just don’t see those examples because they are removed) but it makes them sort of scraggly.

I feel like bicyclists are generally tree-loving people and I can’t imagine that a bicyclists, knowing the risk they putting the tree in, would continue to lock their bikes to trees. That is, I think it is ignorance that is mainly to account for the occurrence. (A lack of racks is also often to blame.) With this in mind, I am starting an educational campaign to end the practice. My plan is to make cards warning of the risk to trees and to carry them around with me and stick them on offending bicycles when I see them. The card is below, and the text of the card is based on the Parks Department website.

I feel a little namby-pamby about this – telling people what they ought naught do – and I worry about bicyclists reacting in a “fuck you, I’ll do whatever I want” type of way. I remember all too well the time I tried to leave leave little notes around to remind my college roommates to clean up after themselves and how that educational campaign failed. So I am trying to make the text as non-offensive as possible.

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

Thanks for riding a bike!

Please don’t lock your bike to trees.

Chains and locks can damage the protective bark and the cambium (inner skin) layer of a tree. The cambium layer transports sap, the lifeblood of trees, and is the most delicate part of a tree. Chains and locks can also leave a permanent scar on the trunk and leave an opening for parasites and fungus. Be tree-friendly and don’t lock your bike to one!

- from the NYC Parks Department website.

If there’s no parking close by, request a bike rack from the NYC DOT! Just call 311 or fill out the form online: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/rackfrm1.shtml

Thanks! The tree would thank you too, if it could talk.

So, do you think this strikes the right chord? I thought NY Parks had a nice statement on their website and I figure quoting them suggests that this is a real problem.

Sticker Contest!

I need a calling card, and this blog needs some publicity, so I going to get some stickers made and remedy the situation. But deciding on a sticker is harder than it sounds. I thought I had a great statement for a sticker,

I thought it was funny and would allow every person that put it on their bike to invest a little piece in the blog, but the more I look at it, the more it looks really morbid and not so funny.

So back to the drawing board I went. I tried to think of provocative statements that lots of bicyclist might agree with, such as:

or

or even, appealing to the Reaganites,

And that is a cause that is close to my heart, but the sticker comes out a tad too exclamatory or something. It also seems a little irrelevant. So I tried to get more inspirational and less pushy and that’s how I came up with this one:

Which seems true, but a little passive for a sticker.

Then I decided maybe I would get provocative and educational at the same time. Here’s a statement a lot of people could nod their heads to, that I hadn’t heard until recently (the statement is paraphrasing something the former mayor of Bogata said on a streetsblog video):

After all this thinking, something basic is more and more appealing:

So what do you think? Any of these seem ok, or do you have an idea for one?

Update: I have another entry:

Some less timely links.

As I pay more attention to bike-related issues, I keep hearing mysterious tales about a brief foray into separated bike lanes in New York in 1980s. At first I discounted the rumors – they just seemed inconceivable. But the other night I had the pleasure of talking with someone who actually lived in New York at the time and he confirmed the rumors were true. I decided to do some research.

The story goes like this: in 1980, following a visit to Beijing, then-Mayor Koch was inspired to direct the city to invest $300,000 ($846K in 2007 dollars) in bicycle projects on Broadway, 5th, 6th, and 7th. Unfortunately, due to a confluence of poor design, poor education, and chicken-and-egg issues, the lanes drew loads of criticism. Pedestrian-Bike conflict was actually perceived to increase because crowded pedestrians took over the bike lanes. Koch himself bemoaned that bicyclists didn’t use the lanes.

The assistant commissioner of the DOT at the time makes the argument that the problems could have been overcome with an education campaign and by giving people time to get used to the lanes. But criticism of Koch was overwhelming, and he decided to back down. The story of how Koch disarmed his opponents by admitting failure has become a case study in how admitting a mistake can be politically expedient. Just months after being installed, the separated bike lanes were removed. Koch went on to become such an enemy of bicyclists that he tried to ban bikes from mid-town.

So I can’t decide: is this just depressing story, or is there some uplifting moral to be taken about the importance of change being gradual and grassroots-based?

Read More:

Mobilizing the Region – On Ninth Ave., Ghosts of Bike Lanes Past?

New York Times Editorial. Rolling Thunder Written in 2006 by the DOT assistant commissioner at the time.

Charles Komanoff-led protest of shutting down of Queensboro Bridge bike lane in 1991. (Gothamist)

In the news…

I set up some RSSes, and now I am going to try a new feature on the blog, periodically linking to articles that might be of interest to bicyclist in New York. Streetsblog sort of has this covered, so I am not sure whether this is worthwhile. Nevertheless, it takes precious little work, and some readers may find it useful. So, for today:

Dates Set for Cross Erie Canal Bike Ride I am not a big riding-in-groups bicyclist, but I would like to explore upstate some time. The ride travels from Buffalo to Albany, two  cities which were once incredibly beautiful and where you can now buy houses for the equivalent of a year or two’s rent in New York.

Museum of the City of New York has a Lecture Thursday entitled, Spotlight on Design: Innovation in New York’s Streets, with people from The Design Trust for Public Places, the NYC DOT, and some other organization with which I am not familiar. I think it sounds fun. And it is free if you follow the instructions at the link.

Registration opens for the 5 Borough Bike Tour. This is your one chance to bike across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Need I say more?

Bike Messengers are threatened by competition with machines.  You know, like computers and stuff.

New Maps Page!

In an effort to lure readers to the site, and to take advantage of the problems Transportation Alternatives is having upgrading their website, I put up a new page listing area bike maps today. It’s not as complete as the old TA page, but the links work. Let me know if you have any suggestions for additions or anything to say about the accuracy or usefulness of the maps listed.

Visit: bikelaneblog.wordpress.com/maps

Anything Portland can do, we can do better.

After reading the NY Times article about Portland’s daring and groundbreaking construction of multiple “bike boxes”, I was surprised to see one right in my own neighborhood of Greenpoint.

The box is part of the segment of lane painted last fall connecting West St. to McGuiness, allowing for a more seamless route to the Pulaski Bridge. These lanes take up a provocative amount of very narrow streets, and as you might expect, cars don’t respect them too much. (See picture)

The box allows bikes to wait in front of cars at the light. This means that cars turning left (a large number of them) are less likely to cut off bikes going straight. Unfortunately, the box asks cars to stop farther from the intersection than they are used to, and no doubt because they aren’t used to it, they don’t show much respect for it. (See pictures.)

Update: I guess drivers in Portland don’t know what to make of these either. Portland is starting an ad campaign to educate drivers and prevent “encroachment.”

Focus on the Pulaski Bridge.

It’s a shame Brooklyn and Queens don’t interact more. There are a number of reasons this might be – the fickleness and infrequence of the G-train is probably paramount – but one way to bring the two boroughs together is to improve their connection at the Pulaski Bridge. There is much opportunity for improvement both on the bridge and on its approaches.

On the south side, in Greenpoint, bike lanes should be added to McGuiness Blvd. This is going to cost at least one vehicular lane, but there is really no way around it. Right now McGuiness is extremely dangerous. Two narrow 30 mph lanes in each direction are continuously filled with trucks and other traffic cutting through the neighborhood on their way to Masbeth or Bushwick or the BQE. For lack of a better alternative, bicyclists use it anyway. This traffic contributes nothing to the neighborhood and constitutes a pedestrian nightmare as well, as it bisects a multi-generational Polish neighborhood. I am always tempted to suggest removing parking spaces in favor of a bike lane, but in the case, the neighborhood would benefit more if two lanes of moving vehicles were removed. The uncomfortably narrow sidewalks could be expanded slightly, and bike lanes could be installed.

The New York City DOT seems to have sensed that access to the Pulaski was troubled and recently painted bike lanes on Eagle and Freeman between West St. and McGuiness. This appears to be a means of encouraging bikes to access the bridge from Franklin Street. But this fails as a reasonable route for all those who live east of McGuiness, being two long blocks out of the way, and isn’t such a great route even for those for whom it isn’t much out of the way. Franklin is not a very good street to bike on, despite the “shared roadway” signs and markers painted on the roadway – cars are fast and pushy, and the lanes are narrow.

On the Pulaski bridge, for some inane reason, there are three lanes going each direction. On either side cars are confined to two lanes, but for some reason the designers felt they would let cars loose for a brief period on the bridge. This temporary freedom allows drivers to get accustomed to speeding just before entering residential Greenpoint, or striving-to-be-residential Long Island City. Meanwhile, the pedestrian/bicycle walkway is only wide enough for two to walk abreast. Bicycling is technically prohibited, a totally meaningless prohibition, and passing pairs of pedestrians requires attracting their attention and drawing a precise path around them. This is not how to treat pedestrians and bicyclists, especially not when such lavish treatment of cars is occurring just feet away. Clearly, even without changes to McGuiness, a lane in each direction should be removed from the Pulaski. Just putting up cones would be a huge improvement, as far as the safety of pedestrians and bicyclists on either side of the bridge is concerned.

On the Queens side there is perhaps even more to do. Ideally, routes would lead three directions: to a waterfront route along Vernon Blvd., to the Queensboro Bridge via Jackson, and to Sunnyside via 49th. Jackson is a street with much the same problem as McGuiness – fast trucks, little local traffic. But Jackson has more room to work with, and I think you could probably put bike lanes in without removing and vehicular lanes. I am not familiar enough with the other two streets to comment.

Have any suggestions for the Pulaski bridge and its approaches?

A Cure for Fixed Gears: Secure Bike Parking

Fixed gear bikes are a scourge on the streets of New York. They threaten pedestrians with their inability to stop and thereby engender resentment among pedestrians, bicyclists’ natural allies. It can be assumed that their popularity will wane as the novice and fashion-motivated riders who buy them lose interest in cycling or discover the many ways in which they are inferior to geared, fly-wheel bikes. But if we want to speed up the process of their abandonment, we would do well to focus on secure bike parking.

One of the few good arguments in favor of fixed gears, and to a lesser extent single speed bikes, is that they minimize the potential for theft. There are no derailleurs to worry about, and there need not be brakes. The back wheel is commonly affixed to the frame by a second set of screws to allow for precise tightening of the chain. If the front wheel and frame are locked up, all that is exposed are the handle bars and seat, two items that are not especially tempting to thieves.

In most other ways fixed gears are considerably inferior to traditional fly-wheel geared bikes. While they speed up quickly, they can’t go very fast because one can only swing ones legs so fast. While they are well suited to some inclines, the necessity of choosing one gear ratio means that they are not ideally suited to most. They complicate going over bumps because the rider has to time where there legs will be to slightly lift themselves out of the saddle.

The proper function of fixed gears is to train competitive cyclists to get used to pedaling continuously at a fast cadence. Watching riders in New York it is slightly humorous to see how far their popular use differs from this ideal. Currently, the least able to ride bikes are riding the hardest to ride bikes, and causing all kinds of trouble along the way. By addressing the problem of secure bicycle parking, we could neutralize fix gear riders’ one rational argument for doing so, and make it sure that the fad rested fully upon its one flimsy central motivation – fashion.