The long fight over the Prospect Park West bike lane finally erupted into a lawsuit earlier this month, with lane opponents requesting its removal on the grounds that the Transportation Department put out misleading information about the lane's safety. This week New York Magazine devotes many pages to the bike wars and the work of Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes. Where does the organization of lane opponents get its conviction that the DOT has exaggerated its statistics? From a hidden camera set up by Louise Hainline, Brooklyn College dean and anti-lane activist: "In October, she purchased an expensive spy camera; after attempts to film the lane from her own apartment ran into technical difficulties, she moved the rig to the house of a neighbor....Hainline often sits in her office listening to her Pandora stations and counting the number of cyclists passing by with a handheld clicker." Hainline's clicker count suggests bike ridership hasn't actually tripled and accidents haven't actually decreased, contrary to DOT stats. Uh oh?now it's really on.
Mayor Bloomberg adviser Howard Wolfson fired back with a memo...full of bike lane statistics. Among the numbers: 54 percent of New Yorkers support bike lanes, bike lanes reduce the number of accidents, and 66 percent of bike lanes don't affect parking or the number of lanes for cars. So, uh, everybody on the same page now?
· Is New York Too New York for Bike Lanes? [NYM]
· Now, City Hall Defends Bike Lanes, in Detail [NYO]
· Bike Lane coverage [Curbed]
Filed under:
Loading comments...