If you think the bike share debate is entertaining when the tabloids and heartless websites who utilize cruel strikethroughs in their headlines are involved, you need a bracing taste of Local TV News. This morning FOX 5's Rosanna Scotto and Greg Kelly had bike advocate and attorney Steve Vaccaro debate Pyrric NIMBY Advocate Jeffrey Barr on the issue of Citi Bike for six minutes. Vaccaro had just dismissed the argument that cycling was inherently dangerous when Kelly chimed in with an important point: He and Rosanna once rode around the studio on a Citi Bike! Do we have footage of that we can roll, Phil? We do? Ha ha great!
FOX 5 should let producers take the rest of the day off after staying up all night to think of that segment. Barr, who represents the residents of 99 Bank Street in the West Village (he adds "And I'll also will be representing some other buildings," which, of course) had to actually verbalize the tardy, trite arguments that Citi Bike's opponents have invoked.
"It's a cobblestone street…so people are gonna use the sidewalk. It's only ten feet wide, and it's used by old ladies and children, it's the only access to 99 Bank Street," Barr says. Other patrons of Bank Street's sidewalk include one-legged, vase-juggling orphans; those clowns on stilts who get knocked over during chase scenes in action movies; tiny families who are now invisible to the naked eye because the patriarch's experimental shrinking ray misfired; two guys carrying a giant, spotless rectangular glass pane, etc.
"The CitiBikes have big fat tires, balloon tires, they're called, that make it very comfortable to ride over cobblestones," Vaccaro says. "This is a street like any other street." Oh, and the machines that the Citi Bike stand replaced are considerably more dangerous to pedestrians.
The argument that seemed to gain the most traction with the hosts was the mythical "3%," the percentage cited as the portion of the population who actually chooses to ride these Death Chariots. "Bicycle riding is not a safe activity…I've been in two bike accidents myself my son was mowed down by a lawyer in the park, it's not a safe activity," Barr says.
Vaccaro calmly explained that the figure represents people who commute to work every day using their bike. "There are 500,000 in NY who bicycle several times a month," Vaccaro said, citing census data.
"Steve, you actually rode your bicycle to our studio today," Scotto asks, as if she is looking at the biker from Raising Arizona. "Any problems?"
Ahh, that's the stuff.
