The money collected is nothing compared to the cost of these crackdowns, and a large number of the tickets are dismissed before the trial date.

I know that you think NYC has a corrupt government that only want's people's money, and there may be a small element of truth there. But let's think "logically" about this for a minute. If it was about collecting money, would they announce these crackdowns, with plenty of local medial coverage? Would they announce the areas and specific violations they were focused on? These announcements clearly show that they're trying to leverage PR about a crackdown to change behavior (at least temporarily) rather than actually collecting fines.

If it were about money, there wouldn't be crackdowns because they could pick just about any location and write large numbers of tickets every day, or simply instruct officers to assign a higher priority to bicycle violations as part of their general assignments.

People both in and far from NYC may rant about this crackdown as being anti bike, but it's simply an effort to keep a lid on things in a city that is very laissez faire as it relates to bicycles.