Former Mayor of Bogota stated " a white line does not equal a bike lane" on his visit to NYC

sashae, if you can, get a picture, plate number, time / location and email it to me. Next week I'm gonna be forwarding over a couple of sets of these to the civilian complaint board as well as the relevant precincts to see if it'll do anything.

cc: your CM, CB, commanding officer for the precinct and Borough.

hey, let me know if you get this going. i usually ride up allen in the morning and then down 2nd ave at night heading home and there are always tons of cars & trucks in the bike lane. i could very easily take tons of photos, and they're all time/date stamped.

I have an idea.

Get on a unicycle... and ride it past them. They may try to ticket you, but a unicycle is not a bicycle. It is not a vehicle. So you can ride it on the sidewalk. You can ride it just about anywhere a person can walk. However, if you ride it on the road, you maybe jay-unicycling..... I don't know if there is a ticket for that one... lol =)

If a sign says " you skateboarding, rollerblading, or bicycling " .. you can still ride a unicycle there... because it is none of the above.

Just rub it in their face.

[QUOTE=wangster]some of those people walking on b bridge should be fined too then. I'm constantly yelling at people to move and it's just a dangerous bridge to go across because you never know when a tourist will decide to walk across for a photo op, right into your path./QUOTE]

+1

I hit a pedestrian on the Williamsburg bridge last year, and it sucked (totally wasn't my fault, by the way).

what about ticketin them baistarts what are walking on the wrong path on the manhattan bridge! between those people and them chicanes that path is starting to get downright dangerous.

and i bet the mayor of bogota knows a white line when he sees one.

shsishi i don't think i saw you yesterday. i love that orange bike of yours and would have noticed it. anyway holla if you see me. i have a metallic grey bike that looks pretty much like yours, steel nitto stuff up front, dura doodads etc

oh, wait, you said…

Bogota:

* Latin America's largest network of bicycle ways, 150 miles long (250 km)
* A world-class Bus Rapid Transit system of dedicated bus lanes called TransMilenio
* The world's longest pedestrian-only street, spanning 10.2 miles (17 km); and hundreds of miles of sidewalks, many through the city's poorest neighborhoods
* The planet's biggest Car-Free Day, during which private vehicles are not allowed to enter the entire city of 135 square miles (35,000 hectares)

former mayor turned that **** around.

Peeps,

in regards to posting pictures of vehicles parked in bike lanes, just wanted to tell you ... already on it. After being immensly frustrated at the amount of times I have had to bike around people parked in the bike lane, or dodge drivers using the bike lane as a turn lane, I decided that I was going to build a site to photodocument these parking violations. I have already registered mybikelane.com and am well under way into some development (gave me a good opportunity to do some web dev work on the side as well). I hope to launch a pretty rough version of the site w/in the next 2 to 3 weeks, though my schedule is hardly set in stone given I am working on this in the evenings and on weekends, and only then when I am willing to sit inside at a computer (much more fun to be out on the bike).

In any rate, I am building:

- multiple city sites: nyc.mybikelane.com, sf.mybikelane.com, etc. (will launch w/ a limited set and add more as demand calls for) that all live under the main www.mybikelane.com
- ability for members to upload a photo, description, location (crosstreets), city, and license plate of offending vehicle to the site
- ability to see a nice google or yahoo map of where violations have occurred
- ability to see a map and list of infractions by a given license plate
- eventually, I would like to add in ability to immediately kick off a complaint to: police, FedEx/UPS/DHL/etc (to ***** about their drivers), MTA, etc

I have already started taking pictures of cars/trucks/buses/cops parked in the bikelane, and let me tell you, nothing moves them out of the way faster than a biker taking a picture of their car parked illegally. When I ask people to move, they cuss me. When I take their picture, they take off (most of the time).

Anyhow, if anyone has some web design experience and wants to help me out w/ this, I would love to hear from you (PM me). I want this to be a free resource to photo-document the BS we have to put up w/ in commuting/biking in the city.

greg

**** yeah! and I am moving there in 2 months! Hello ciclorutas!

Does it count now, considering 6th ave has been repainted and the bike lanes have mysteriously disappeared? Or should I wait until it gets repainted again (ha ha ha.)

boneless. and why are u moving to colombia. i'm just jealous. i haven't been there since i was 14, and at that point there was no electricity or running water. ahh good times, good times. i was thinking of taking my track bike when i visit in december, but i've had my nike's stolen off my feet while i was walking in them. and back to the bike lane debate. u are all so right about the people walking the bridge expecially the couples that have to walk next to each other so i can't get by at all. really boils my balls.

For real, just stay off the brooklyn bridge. Every other tourist in nyc ends up walking over that bridge, and they are all totally clueless. The manhattan bridge is so close and so mellow,even with a couple peds on the bike side, and the occasional bag of bum ***** it's paradise compared to the brooklyn.

mrRed and gwalin, great idea. I could probably take a dozen photos a day of people parked in bike lanes, and would be happy to.

there were so many cops waiting to ticket cyclists on 7th ave this morning, it was nuts. i ran thru a yellow turning red parallel to a cab and an interceptor chased and actually followed me the wrong way west up 46th street (once i realized they wanted me to stop). i lost them, but seriously... wtf? i hit the YELLOW with a CAR parallel to me and they chased me.

all this has taught me is to look behind me at least once per block.

Definitely watch your back, the bastards hide sometimes, behind trucks or vans you can't see around. They got me once that way, on seventh ave actually.

Do what I do and slap an EZ Pass to the handlebars and go through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. As for taking pics of illegally parked cop cars, be careful cuz the cops were hassling TA fotogs (or Times-Up, I forget) around the Chinatown station for doing that.

than they can harrass me as much as they want.

I'm moving to teach English. I've heard the crime situation is much better now but def. not Disneyland. Look me up when you visit and we can go riding.

I lived in Bogotá when I was really young and spent all my summers there until I was about 16 years old. I still have most of my family there and go back from time to time. Not sure if dylandom, was kidding or if he just happened to go to some smaller town, but Bogotá has had electricity and running water longer than most of us have been alive.

Not sure if they still do this, but when I was a kid, on Sundays they would close down huge stretches of La Septima (7th ave) for cyclists, walkers, rollerskaters (not rollerblades yet), etc. It was awesome. I turn 35 in a few days so that should give you guys an idea of how long ago I am talking about. This former mayor, Peñalosa, did a great job, but a lot of it started before him. Cycling was *huge* in Colombia during the 80's.

As for the crime, I have always felt that it is a bit overblown by the press, though admittedly it is not, as you said, Disneyland, but then again neither is NYC. I am not sure where you are from or what you look like, but the best thing in my opinion to do while you are there to keep yourself safe is to not do anything that screams out GRINGO, if you know what I mean. Good luck with your time down there.

Not hijack this thread, but since other mentioned Bogotá, I thought I would provide this article which admittedly is old, but does provide some interesting ideas that I would love to see implemented in NYC.
Car Free Bogotá: the response to the transportation challenge by Oscar Edmundo Díaz

Matthew, isn't the Brooklyn Bridge a social program not strictly called for in the constitution? What the **** are you doing riding on it?

That's probably why Hincape's father got him all up into the cycling world. And I think Fast Freddie is Colombian as well

there's **** like this in portland, too...someone got hit and hurt by a bike a little while back, and police waited on a downhill slope to find bikers speeding. i'm sure they ignored many drivers speeding while handing out bike tickets. and how many people do cars kill a year? i'd like to see the numbers of fatalities caused by bikes, cuz they're sure to be mighty slim. and one thing goes wrong, and bam! everyone's a target.

the most recent numbers i've seen for automobile deaths are 2002. 41,000. and how many stings do we see there?

cops picking on an easy target, that's what we see here and elsewhere.

Freddie Rodríguez's father was indeed Colombian. Perhaps that also influenced his starting ofFast Freddie Coffee, though the story there does not mention it.