Upper East Side Manhattan residents banning bike lanes because they think it's unsafe
 

The other day I saw a ghost bike on east 85th street near Madison avenue that seemed to be a relatively recent sight, so I did a search and found out a 28-yr old woman on Citi-bike was killed there by a big rig last July. Here is the report:

NYC Citi Bike rider, 28, fatally struck by tractor-trailer, cops say

The reports says the bike rider "fell for unknown reason", but from the picture it looks possible the truck hit her and knocked her over, as the truck seems to be slightly turning toward right in the picture). (Granted, I would avoid getting so close to a truck at any time)

Here is the context: the local residents had protested the DOT plan to install bike lanes in the neighborhood, soliciting the city congresswoman Maloney to call for banning bike lanes there, because it makes them feel unsafe.Other related articles mentioning the bike-lane ban:

Woman Killed In UES Truck Crash Identified As Yorkville Local: Police

Ban Cars Near Schools, Says Mom of Slain Biker Carling Mott


I live in this neighborhood and until now was totally unaware of all this. No wonder there have been no bike lanes on the east 84th and 85th streets.

Why do those residents think it's unsafe for school children if there are designated bike lanes, when they are perfectly OK with cars and illgal tractor-trailers driving in the neighborhood? (That monster tractor-trailor that killed Ms. Carling Mott was not supposed to be running on that small residential 85th street--seems the driver faced no charge)

https://nypost.com/wp-content/upload...088.jpg?w=1024


https://nypost.com/wp-content/upload...087.jpg?w=1024

To see what kind of a residential street it was that the tractor trailer killed the Citi-bike rider:

https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/23...7141147638.jpg

There is a lot to know about when cycling in a busy city. Many cyclists, especially inexperienced ones, are too clueless to even know what to worry about, or just put their lives in God's hands and don't worry about it anyway. No amount of paint on the tarmac will save all of them.

That's a crazy narrow street with so much congestion, there's no way I'm Frapping on that street. I'd ride right down the middle. What's the average speed vehicles do on that street?


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I'm a former NYC resident and have ridden quite often in the City (albeit many years ago). The issue is that the bike is faster than the cars. You can ride down the middle but you will likely not go anywhere so the issue happens when the bikes bypass the vehicles on either side to get ahead and to the intersection. I will admit, anecdotally at least, that a lot of the carelessness often does reside on the cyclists shoulders. Most are not as experienced as cyclist and are using bikes to get from point A to B and often bike shares.

Just a wild guess here. Could this have more to do with upper economic class NIMBY-ism than safety?

Certainly seems to be the case.

A woman died in Manhattan 2 years ago, stop the presses.

Which picture shows that?

This is what I think is the case. Maybe I posted too much about that accident, but it's upon reading about that accident that I learned about the neighborhood rejection of bike lanes, which is the main issue I'm focusing on. I think some of the reasons of the residents protesting bike lane installation are: generalization of careless cyclist behaviors (but they forgot that cyclists themselves are also at risk and can become victims of vehicles, and cyclists and pedestrians are not mutually exclusive--the same person can be both at different times), illogical thinking, and entitlement (notice the private school relevance).

Just my 2 cents from a Floridian...:D

I think they are using those other excuses to save their parking spots.



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The concept of dedicated bicycle lanes is illogical. Either bicycles are vehicles and are legally entitled to share the road with cars, or they are not. In law enforcement I encountered drivers who cyclists hit on the roadway, and said that the cyclist should have been in a bike lane or on a bike path. A large percentage of drivers today still don’t believe, or don’t want to believe that cyclists have as much right to use the roads as they do.

Tokyo is a remarkably safe place to ride, despite the fact that it is much larger, and is far more densely populated than New York CIty. Tokyo has virtually no dedicated bike lanes or paths, but that doesn’t prevent some millions of daily bike commutes in the city.

Unlike New York, drivers in Tokyo are made aware of the right of cyclists to use the roadways (partially because pretty much everyone in Japan has ridden a bike on the road). And, unlike New York, if a car or truck hits a cyclist, the car or truck driver is legally at fault, even if the bicycle technically caused the collision. In New York the penalties resulting from collisions are minor, and insurance companies shield you from serious financial consequences. In Japan the penalties are severe, and rather than a mere citation and your insurance company paying for any damages, you face arrest and possible imprisonment for causing injury or death.

Don't know what an "illgal' tractor trailer might be, but if you were smart enough to read the side and notice that it is standing still you'd realize it's there delivering food! That street sure isn't double wide but the neighborhood is clearly not all residential.

The motorist is the individual who gets to tell their version of what happened after a collision with a person on a bicycle. The LEO taking the report will naturally have a bias toward the driver of the vehicle over the low status cyclist.

There is a sense with drivers that they own the road and that there is no need to share it with a person on a bicycle. In rural areas I have witnessed motorists getting angry when having to slow down for cyclists and the driver leaning on their horn. Had the motorist come up behind a slow moving farm tractor they would not have become so incensed and would not have held their horn button.

Bike lanes that go alongside parked cars are never safe for cyclists but a way for city officials to pretend that they are concerned. Much safer to bicycle on streets with lower levels of motorists and minimize encounters and hope that the drivers are actually watching the road ahead and not focused on their cell phones.

I find it ironic that there is a very large percentage of the population that find cyclist “rich elite snobs that think they are better than us”.

The investigating officers usually only get the motorists version of events as the bicyclist is either dead or on their way to the ER at a hospital. Drivers are highly unlikely to admit blame and risk the liability issues. Honesty is highly provisional and the higher the stakes the more often people will lie.

Back to the OP focus on Bike Lanes in New York. As someone who works in NYC every day, I see important factors that could be "idiosyncratic" to NYC that must be recognized here. In this city, bike lanes are slowly transforming into Mad Max. It's no longer the domain of ordinary cyclists, calmly making an environmentally friendly commute from point A to point B. Thousands of e-bike food delivery guys fly up the bike lane faster than 25mph. E-scooters transporting riders in full kevlar and full-faced helmets. E-unicycles swerve off the bike lane, onto the sidewalk, and back to the bike lane like freestyle snowboarders. Bicycles are now the minority of bike lane users. Red lights seem optional. Pedestrians are getting hit frequently (sometimes their own fault), but since no one is dying, it's just not a priority for law enforcement. Motorized vehicles don't belong in bike lanes. So, maybe it is a NIMBY situation, but who on this forum would want this? I can appreciate the "micro-mobility" movement, but the Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again. So a neighborhood with narrow streets says "no, we don't want those." Shocking.

My understand of the comment you quoted was (at least it's my thought, too) that some of those UES residents protesting against the installation of bike lanes regard themselves as upper/elite class, and the bike riders lower.