For years the DOT's bike lane expansion has threatened to tear NYC apart, pitting motorist against cyclist, cyclist against pedestrian, pedestrian against cyclist, cop against cyclist, rich people against change, and media against accuracy, but today the Wall Street Journal, of all places, reports that the war is OVER. Sports columnist Jason Gay surveys the scarred battlefield and finds that suddenly "New York City isn't freaking out so hard about bicycling." Hark, are those the sounds of angels' clarions? Gay writes:
Spring was a little shrill and embarrassing. There were crazed media furies about bike lanes, non-stop reports of police crackdowns, hyperbolic worries that the city was transforming into an effete Euro village. If we didn't defend our streets, the cyclists would overtake Manhattan. Mayor Bloomberg and Department of Transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan would open a leg-shaving station in Union Square.
One day you'd walk down to the harbor and see the Statue of Liberty sausaged into tight shorts, sipping a Stumptown espresso and thumbing through Velonews. But then a funny thing occurred. It got warmer, more people started riding, and the mania was eclipsed by reality... For every Spandexed obsessive tucked on a $3,000 carbon fiber frame you'll see 100 people of every imaginable background just trying to get to work, do their job, have fun with their kids, safely spin from A to B.
In the end The Wall Street Journal—which just so happens to be owned by the same guy who owns the stridently anti-cyclist New York Post—concludes, "The biggest mischaracterization about the infamous New York Cycling War is that there's a war at all. Look all around you. The bikes have won, and it's not a terrible thing." Tell that to Steve Cuozzo. And while you're at it, maybe tell former DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall, wife of Chuck Shumer and resident of Prospect Park West, where a bike lane has driven her and her neighbors downright batty.
Today Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes—the group that Weinshall essentially runs from behind the scenes—will appear in Brooklyn Supreme court for the first hearing in a remarkable lawsuit filed against the DOT, accusing the department of using phony data to ram the PPW bike lane down Park Slope's throat. Coinciding with today's hearing, Streetsblog has published a thorough investigative report on Weinshall's machinations against the hated bike lane, obtaining e-mails through the Freedom of Information Law. It's a great read, and here's the sterling takeaway:
Regardless of the outcome, the Prospect Park West bike lane opponents have already affected the shape of New York’s streets, if not the one in their own front yards. By inserting cherry-picked numerical arguments and false claims about the public process that preceded the PPW project into their lawsuit accusing NYC DOT of acting in bad faith — accusations that have been picked up repeatedly in the press despite the ease with which they are rebutted — they have made it much harder for the city to roll out street redesigns that are proven to encourage bicycling, prevent injuries, and save lives.
...The NYC DOT bike program, which had expanded the network of bike lanes at a clip of 50 miles per year since 2007, has drastically slowed, with only a handful of projects on the construction calendar for 2011. Bike projects that had already won community board votes in favor have been scaled back.
Iris Weinshall probably won’t go anywhere near Brooklyn Supreme Court tomorrow. She will keep her distance from any press covering the lawsuit that she is ostensibly not a party to. But the story of the lawsuit can’t be told separately from the story of Weinshall’s campaign to eradicate the Prospect Park West bike lane.
