PPW Bike Lane Apparently a Big Success
Sorry, haters, it looks like the Prospect Park Bike Lane is working out pretty darn well, at least from a safety perspective. According to an article this morning in The Brooklyn Paper, DOT data shows that accidents are down since the controversial bike lane was installed last summer. More specifically, the number of crashes fell…
Sorry, haters, it looks like the Prospect Park Bike Lane is working out pretty darn well, at least from a safety perspective. According to an article this morning in The Brooklyn Paper, DOT data shows that accidents are down since the controversial bike lane was installed last summer. More specifically, the number of crashes fell to 25 in the past six months from an average of 30 during the same period in the prior three years; crashes that caused injuries were also down from 5.3 two, and injuries to pedestrians dropped 21 percent. Also, before the installation of the bike lane an accident was twice as likely to cause an injury. And there’s still room for improvement: Still to come to the bike lanes are raised pedestrian islands, bike markings at intersections, and narrowing the buffer between Union and Montgomery. In the words of DOT spokesman Seth Solomonow, “Projects don’t get much better than this.”
Photo by Steven Vance
In June 2005 my new next door neighbor newlywed pro-bono lawyer Liz Padilla was killed on 5th Ave as she swerved her bike into traffic to avoid a trucker’s door swinging open. She was riding within the “suggested” bike lane. Rather than waste efforts (licensing) that discourage bikers, let’s be bold and promote 24/7 bike-only avenues. The bike-only lane along PPW has substantially decreased all types of accidents – slowed traffic and did not rob car owners of precious parking spots. Biking is good for your health and the environment – a no-brainer Marty Markowitz! Fuhggedaboutit! Somehow emulating European Social Democracies with respect to bike-friendliness is seen as un-American. I suppose the image of the fixed-gear anarchist biker in black frightens a small band of Marty’s constituents. I propose we make the southbound side of 6th Avenue bike only. To pacify car owners create community owned vehicle parking permits as is done in Boston.
It is tiring to hear people complain about great improvements to the city, like this bike lane. There is no pedestrian safely issue, the facts show that. the bike lane makes everyone safer! Any New Yorker with half a brain knows that you have to look both ways when you cross any street, even the “wrong” way. I was taught this as soon as I could walk, and I grew up on Madison Avenue.
If you cannot deal with this, and other realities of living in a crowed city, then move!
I also don’t believe statistics. For example, global warming is a hoax, because I’m cold right now.
(rolls eyes) Yes, I’m sure she’s lying about the stats.
A less gibberish complaint is it’s a fairly small sample. And you can just assume i’ve rehashed whatever arguments I’ve made in the past about how haters are ridiculous.
Licensing, if it’s done the same way as other places I’ve lived, isn’t a big deal. $15 or $25 once and that’s it, enforcement spotty if at all (I’d assume they’d go after messengers and deliverypeople… and since deliveryguys are the most common salmon I see in brooklyn, fine with me.)
And dibs, NYC is a pedestrian-centric and mass-transit-centric culture. Not car-centric either.
I also believe everything that comes out of the Dept of Sanitation.
NYC is NOT a “bike-centric” culture. If you believe that you’re living in some sort of netherworld.
I find it hard to believe that anyone actually believes the stats that come out of Sadik-Khan’s mouth and department. I’m sure they are just as accurate as the ones the DOT has issued attesting to how all the traffic now much moves much more swiftly in Manhattan as a result of the Times Sq/Herald Sq pedestrian malls. Sure hasn’t been my experience when I ride the buses there. And those Bloomberg/DOE statistics about how student performance has improved over the past 9 years with Klein at the helm. I would take them to the bank any day!
If people are too scared to ride the streets of Brooklyn without dedicated bike lanes, then perhaps they should only ride in the park lanes when all cars are banned. And if you, koalition, love the bike lanes and highly bike-centric culture of your native country, I have a suggestion: MOVE BACK HOME.
brooklynbrowngal, how is a 5-year public involvement process, a request by the Community Board in 2007, a positive vote from them again in 2009, and about a half dozen public meetings equivalent to “barely…any involvement from the residents who live there”?
What more could they possibly have done?!
And your dig about licensing and registration is completely besides the point.
I am alternately a pedestrian, a bicyclist, and a motorist. It would help a lot to educate cyclists that they are required to obey traffic laws. Education should start at age 14, when you are required to ride in the street, as opposed to the sidewalk. What grade is that?
I watch motorists do crazy stuff all the time. Practically EVERY vehicle on Eastern Parkway is speeding. It’s a gold mine.
wait…you mean to tell me that the bike lane the city installed that they barely got any involvement from the residents who live there, who in turned complained..who in turn sparked the pro bike laners to complain that there were complaints, and the whole mess wound up on the news on every channel…had positive research results?
no!, you don’t say!? Is this like Bloomberg’s purchase of the last election overturning voter willed term limits with the useless city council? Since everything is going so well, I’m sure none of the bikers will have a problem with every bike being used as a transport method in the bike lanes being licensed and registered.
Fine, but more than six months of getting used to? Let’s get real. That’s not why they’re whining.