In a 760-word op-ed, Post critic Steve Cuozzo outlines all the reasons why he vehemently hates bike lanes, the bike share, urban cyclists, DOT commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, and pretty much everything that has to do with riding a bike in the city. A new proposal to extend the Columbus Avenue bike seems to be the catalyst for his rage, and so as not to distort the magic of his words, here are a few of the most over-the-top lines:
On the city's biking data: "The city's claim that New Yorkers in the zillions have taken to cycling is baloney: Again, stand on any corner and count."
On how he feels about Sadik-Khan: "Sadik-Khan will be gone in a mere (?) 13 months, at which time our next mayor ought to roll back her reign of terror."
On Bloomberg and Sadik-Khan: "All [streets with bike lanes] are victims of two streetscape-tinkerers wholly out of touch with the way most of us move about in the city: Mayor Bloomberg, who travels by limo and helicopter (and the token subway ride to work), and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, who bikes everywhere except when she relies on motorized wheels to get out of town."
On bike-advocacy groups: "The small-but-strident bike-advocacy brigade [...] won't be happy until there's a bike lane on every street in the five boroughs."
On biking in Central Park: "[The inner loop] is increasingly inhospitable to a cyclist who doesn't pedal at 40 mph — which is why I haven't ridden on it in years. It's grown much worse now that the DOT has emboldened cyclists to regard themselves as untouchable. Sure, there's now a traffic signal in the road near East 85th Street where many park-goers and joggers cross to reach the reservoir. But the city could close its budget gap simply by ticketing every sociopath on wheels who whizzes through the red light.
On the bike share: The whole concept is wrong, but its details are insane even on the scheme's own terms. [...] How irrational is this, at possibly the single location in the whole city least conducive to biking — in Midtown's congested heart, hemmed in by dense traffic on all sides and remote from any bike lanes that a cyclist might conceivably want to use?
· The Bike-Lane Cancer [NYP]
Photo by Philip Shane/Curbed Flickr pool
Loading comments...