The Coalition Against Rogue Riding (C.A.R.R.) demands strict enforcement of traffic regulations for all street vehicles, including bicycles, and supports measures that will enable these regulations to be enforced reliably and efficiently.
Make the road: The way forward for e-bikes, e-scooters and their riders
Safety before ubiquity on the roads. (THOMAS KIENZLE/AFP via Getty Images)
When
they’re done calling Gov. Cuomo a sellout who’s betrayed immigrants,
those fighting to legalize throttle-powered e-bikes and electric
scooters ought to read the governor’s sane veto message.
Then,
send revised legislation back to his desk so he can sign it, and the
newfangled micro-mobility devices can be allowed on city streets and
bike lanes without creating new dangers for themselves and others.
First:
Rationally distinguish throttle-powered e-bikes from mopeds, which
require licenses and registration, or admit that the former should need
permission to be road-ready, too.
Today, New York allows three classes of moped
on its streets. Even the least powerful type need licenses and plates.
The bill opening the floodgates to the types of e-bikes that zip to and
fro across New York City streets — two-wheeled, motor-powered bicycles
that can go up to 20 mph — would categorize them as unregulated
bicycles.
This
is a recipe for confusion. Picking a lane means requiring licensing and
registration of moped-like devices, lest the streets become a
free-for-all for all manner of unregistered motorcycles.
As for e-scooters, which we like, Cuomo is right that one recent study shows head injuries related to their use have tripled in the last decade. Another,
by the Centers for Disease Control, found 271 injuries in Austin, Tex.,
from Sept. 5 through Nov. 30, 2018, nearly half of which were to the
head. (Only 1 in 190 injured scooter riders there had a helmet on.)
Foes of a helmet requirement say that could all but doom dockless scooter-sharing programs here. Sorry, but safety comes first.
Gov. Cuomo vetoed legislation that would have legalized the rogue est of the rogue riders. Hip Hip Hurray for uncommon good sense. When delivery agents ride all over the sidewalk-against the flow of traffic-through red lights and we pedestrians and fellow cyclists-and motorists are made to dance to their lawless tune-something is dead sure wrong.When someone immigrates to New York for a better life it is NOT OPPRESSIVE to require that they obey the law and contribute rather than detract
from the common good. Further the fact that a responsible bike culture was never legitimately attempted casts a grave doubt on the validity of the "visionaries" of Vision Zero.
Both Mayor Bloomberg-currently blitzing media with self promoting stuff about his high competence and level headed management-as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for
President and the current Mayor-who wisely withdrew from his campaign for the same destination-both of these stable geniuses went along with Transportation Alternatives desire to minimize enforcement against scofflaw cyclists. This to allegedly encourage more cycling. This to allegedly create safer streets. BLATHER & BOMBAST. We got bike bedlam and an increase in cycling deaths-pedestrian danger and injuries AND an increase in bike lanes. Sophistry prevailed.
What Gov. Cuomo has done is to signal that The Emperor wears NO CLOTHES. Much like Mark Gallis-Editor in Chief of Christianity Today did with his editorial calling for the removal of another
stupendous New York ego-Donald J. Trump-who successfully bamboozled his way to the Oval office. Its time that the politicians in New York City took their paws out of Transportation Alternatives pockets and their heads out of their own armpits.
Cuomo said the absence of safety measures rendered the bill "fatally flawed." (Courtesy of Tim Lee)
NEW YORK CITY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo vetoed a bill to legalize
electric bikes and scooters he called "fatally flawed," his office
confirmed Thursday.
Cuomo objected to safety measures left out
the bill lifting restrictions on e-bikes and e-scooter passed by state
Legislature houses passed in June, he said in a statement.
"The Legislature's proposal inexplicably omitted several safety measures included in the budget proposal," Cuomo said.
Those safety measures include lower speed
limits, a helmet requirement, mandatory lights and bells, and a demand
that New Yorkers not drink and e-bike ride.
"Failure to include these basic measures renders this legislation fatally flawed." New
York City has banned electric rides — riders can face $500 fines and
e-scooter seizures — since 2017 and is currently undergoing a crackdown, officials announced earlier this year.
The NYPD has seized more than 930 e-bikes in 2019, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in October.
In 2020, businesses that use e-bikes or pay workers to use them could face $200 fines, the Mayor said.
State
Senator Jessica Ramos and Assembly Member Nily Rozic, both Queens
Democrats, sponsored the bill in their respective houses.
The
lawmakers argued electric vehicle legislation would improve quality of
life for delivery men and women who rely on the bikes to make a living.
In
a statement, Rozic called the veto a "missed opportunity" to "deliver
economic justice for thousands of delivery workers across New York
City."
Even fire stations aren’t immune to this latest manifestation of Vision Zero insanity.
The fundamental justification advocates and policymakers
give for Vision Zero, road diets, and other street modifications is that they
increase safety. By shifting the focus of roadways from cars to transit, bikes,
scooters, and walking, goes the logic, we’ll reduce the number of vehicle miles
traveled and, ipso facto, improve
safety. Hey, it worked in Stockholm and Amsterdam. Sort of.
You can point them to all sorts of evidence and statistics showing
that in this country the results all too often are precisely the
opposite. You can show them the many videos
and images on YouTube and social media of emergency vehicles bogged
down on reconfigured streets. You can point out statistics like the fact
that pedestrian deaths have nearly doubled
in Los Angeles after three and a half years of Vision Zero, or to
California Highway Patrol SWITRS data revealing a nearly 10% increase in
overall accidents the program’s first 18 monthsversus the previous 18 months. You can point out that even where Vision Zero produced promising early results, such as in San Francisco, progress has reversed
over the last two years (even StreetsBlog SF has been forced to
acknowledge that the initial drop in pedestrian deaths may have been an anomaly).
You can tell them about the first responders who are nearly universal
in their concerns over road diets on major arteries. You can even point
out that many road diets, especially on those arteries, violate local
and state fire codes as well as federal guidelines. You can point to
grassroots groups resisting road diets from Queens, New York to Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
Their reaction is always the same: They slap their hands over their
ears, shut their eyes, and call you a liar. They’ll accuse you of being
“anti-bike,” which is a particularly insane bit of invective. Being
anti-bike is like being anti-springtime, or anti-puppy. They’ll accuse
you of callous indifferent to the lives of cyclists and pedestrians. At a
road diet presentation a few months ago, we were even accused of
complicity in children’s deaths. The irony is that the point of our
presentation was to point out safety hazards created by certain road
diets in Los Angeles.
So perhaps it’s no surprise that Vision Zero has come full circle:
Across L.A. bike and scooter “corrals” are replacing emergency apparatus
access zones. You can’t make this stuff up. In the name of safety, L.A.
is making it harder for first responders to do their jobs. In the name
of saving lives bureaucrats are reducing emergency apparatus
accessibility.
Can we all possibly agree that this, at last, is a bridge
too far? Alas, probably not. At that presentation, which was attended by some
30 activists from several groups, we showed a video of an ambulance and fire
engine trapped in gridlock on a road dieted section of Venice Boulevard in L.A.’s
Mar Vista neighborhood to the public outreach coordinator for one of the advocacy
groups. We showed her a picture of gridlocked evacuations on a road dieted
thoroughfare in Sunland-Tujunga during the 2017 La Tuna Fire. Her response? “Obviously
we need more bike lanes, not fewer.” Ipso
facto.
Several firefighters, speaking as usual off the record
because they’re criticizing the official line, were aghast at the corrals. “What
planners never seem to grasp with these projects,” said one, “is that seconds
and inches are life and death factors in an emergency.”
“Corrals” and other permanent or semi-permanent physical changes to
roads are particularly insidious because they impact responders’ ability
to stage emergency apparatus. This was demonstrated most clearly by a
video made by a hook and ladder crew
in Baltimore last year. Hook and ladders are all about angles: Where
the apparatus is staged directly impacts where it can reach. In the
video buffered bike lane – where parallel parking spaces are pushed out
from the curb to protect a bike lane – prevented the ladder from
reaching the top two floors of a six story building. Firefighters in New
York have related similar experiences.
Baltimore’s response? The crew received an official rebuke, and the
city council subsequently repealed part of its fire code to allow the
configuration (Baltimore’s fire code, like the vast majority of cities
and counties, is based on the authoritative International Fire Code,
meaning the city council effectively decided they knew better than the
experts). Again, you can’t make this stuff up. Cities are saying that
bike lanes used by fewer than 1% of commuters are more important than
fire crews’ ability to reach people. So if you’re on the fifth or sixth
floor during a fire on those streets in Gotham or Charm City, best of
luck. Again, these conclusions are based on scores of interviews with
firefighters, officials, and other first responders nationwide.
By altering the physical configuration of streets, “corrals”
can have a similar impact. At the very least, crews will spend precious seconds
tossing bikes and scooters out of the way.
If you park a car in a red zone, not only will you get a
whopper of a citation you’ll likely be towed, and rightly so. Yet somehow it’s o.k.
to install permanent physical bike
facilities in those same zones. Cities are even painting over the red.
Moreover, particularly in large cities fire apparatus are
customized to particular neighborhoods, even specific streets. A tower
apparatus on Staten Island, for example, is different from one in Manhattan. It’s
a lot easier – not to mention cheaper – to install corrals, buffered bike
lanes, and physical obstructions than to replace a fleet of fire engines.
Which leads to a final bit of insanity: Cities like San Francisco are
purchasing “Vision Zero fire apparatus.” The SFFD has begun replacing
its fleet with apparatus that are – wait for it – smaller. We hasten to
add that smaller doesn’t necessarily mean less effective. Rather,
Frisco’s decision reflects a broader national trend among planners in
which fire and police departments are viewed as somehow adversarial to
public safety. To its credit the SFFD has been one of the most vocal in
the country in criticizing the one size fits all approach to Vision
Zero.
It’s worth repeating: Cities and their planning and transportation
departments need to be far more transparent when it comes to these
changes. Randomly replacing emergency access zones with bicycle
amenities is not the way to move forward. Ironically, by not involving
first responders, community members, and business owners in these
decisions cities are generating completely avoidable hostility to Vision
Zero. Everyone loses under the current approach, including the very
people the program is supposed to protect.
Billionaire former mayor Michael R Bloomberg has expressed remorse for employing
stop and frisk tactics on the New York residents-primarily of color while he served 3
terms in office.
There is a complimentary or corollary issue that also deserves a belated apology.
It also undermined the NYPD. While Bloomberg and Comm Ray Kelly were
hounding the people of color they were allowing the scofflaw bike riders to go scott
free. Enabling a wildly irresponsible bike culture and undermining the authority of
the NYPD. A neat one two trick gentlemen.
And while the current mayor is at it perhaps he could start supporting the NYPD to
become the backbone of a responsible bike culture and apply consistent effective enforcement.
So cyclists protect themselves, fellow cyclists, pedestrians and motorists.
Sen Charles Schumer vowed to spend 1 trillion $ on safe streets and bike infrastructure if he becomes
Speaker of the Senate
THERE IS NO SAFETY WITHOUT A RESPONSIBLE BIKE CULTURE
Cc:United States Senate,The United States House of Representatives
Peter Goodman paints a glowing picture of cycling in Copenhagen. Justly so. We publish this
article to clearly present several critical reasons that Vision Zero -the bike build out run amuck has
created a remorseless house of cards. Hoist on its own petard.
Logistics such as street width and population and vehicular density are vastly different. Note that
bikes lanes need no restraining wall. Further the is a responsible bike culture. This has been carefully
developed and adhered to by a public that not only cherishes the ability to cycle-but walk and motor
safety. In New York the "advocates" studiously fought establishing a responsible bike culture on the
whimsical hypothesis that enforcement would depress cycling-and the more bikes the safer the streets. WRONG.The streets and sidewalks have been overrun with rogue riders who treat the
road and sidewalks as an obstacle course-with arrogance and impunity in many cases. New York
will never be vehicle free. There is NO SAFETY without a RESPONSIBLE BIKE CULTURE.
The exercise in zealotry has cost many innocent lives. Created congestion and tax.Jeopardized
emergency vehicles ability to respond. Undermined the NYPD. Blugeoned the NYC quality of
life. Its been a wretched ends justify the means chase. A case of the tail wagging the dog. A
desperate and deplorable conflating of "going green" with bike bedlam.
Let the contrast with Copenhagen-a top 20 global cycling city-with New York-nowhere near
that responsible circle- be clear and mourned.
It's not Vision Zero but DELUSION ZERO in New York City.
copenhagen dispatch
The City That Cycles With the Young, the Old, the Busy and the Dead
Nearly half of all journeys to school and work in Copenhagen take place on bicycles. And people like it that way.
Riding over the bridge connecting the inner part of Copenhagen and with the neighborhood of Christianshavn.Credit...Betina Garcia for The New York Times
COPENHAGEN — By the standards operative
on most of planet Earth, this is not an especially wonderful day for a
bicycle ride. The temperature reads 42 degrees Fahrenheit, and a
vengeful breeze forces damp chill to the bone. Sullen gray clouds occupy
the sky, dispensing an apathetic drizzle.
Natalie Gulsrud
scoffs at these details. It is nearing 4 p.m., darkness already bringing
finality to this bleak November afternoon. She has to go to the child
care center to pick up her 5-year-old son — “5 and a half,” he quickly
corrects, later. She has to stop for groceries, and then head home for
dinner.
Like tens of thousands of
other people in Denmark’s elegant yet frequently dank capital, she
pedals her way through her daily rounds, relying on the world’s most
advanced and widely used network of bicycle lanes. She does not own a
car. She does not want a car.
She
settles her bag into the front compartment of her cargo bike — a
three-wheeled contraption built for hauling children and groceries that
is something like the S.U.V. of local family transportation. She climbs
aboard the saddle, gathers her overcoat around her, and leans into the
uncompromising wind.
“People here say there’s no such thing as bad weather,” said Ms. Gulsrud, 39. “Only bad clothing.”
Image
Natalie Gulsrud parking her cargo bike with her son, Pascal Rasmussen, in it so they can go to the supermarket.Credit...Betina Garcia for The New York Times
Image
One of the busiest thoroughfares in Copenhagen.Credit...Betina Garcia for The New York Times
On the other side of the Atlantic, New York has just proclaimed intentions to spend $1.7 billion
to dramatically expand the city’s now-convoluted and treacherous
patchwork of bicycle lanes. Local leaders speak of dismantling car
culture and replacing it with a wholesome dependence on human-powered
vehicles. The mission is draped in high-minded goals — addressing
climate change, unclogging traffic and promoting exercise.
Copenhagen’s
legendary bicycle setup has been propelled by all of these aspirations,
but the critical element is the simplest: People here eagerly use their
bicycles — in any weather, carrying the young, the infirm, the elderly
and the dead — because it is typically the easiest way to get around.
“It’s A to B-ism,” said Mikael Colville-Andersen, a raffish bicycle evangelist who preaches the gospel of Copenhagen to other cities. “It’s the fastest way from point to point.”
The
bicycle is liberation from municipal buses and their frequent stops.
The bicycle spares people from having to worry about where to park cars.
The bicycle puts people in control of when they leave and when they
arrive.
Bullitt cargo bikes in a shop.Credit...Betina Garcia for The New York Times
A former neighbor operates a bicycle mortuary service, pedaling the departed to their final destinations in caskets. Mail carriers use bicycles to deliver parcels. People use bicycles to get to the airport, sometimes pushing wheeled suitcases alongside them while they roll.
Some
49 percent of all journeys to school and work now transpire by bicycle,
according to the city, up from 36 percent a decade ago. When the
municipal government recently surveyed Copenhagen’s bikers on what
inspires them to bike, 55 percent said it was more convenient than the
alternatives. Only 16 percent cited environmental benefits.
“It’s not in the morning, when you’re late for work, that you want to save the planet,” said Marie Kastrup, who heads the city’s bicycle program.
On weekday mornings, some 42,000 people traverse the Queen Louise’s bridge in central Copenhagen, bringing residents from fashionable neighborhoods in the north into the city’s medieval center.
On
a recent soggy Monday, a woman in high heels and a trench coat pedaled a
cargo bike decked out like a city taxi, her three toddlers in the front
compartment. A plumber traversed the traffic in a cargo bike, his tools
stashed in the compartment. Bicycles vastly outnumber cars.
Image
The bicycle parking area at Norreport station.Credit...Betina Garcia for The New York Times
Image
A dog being transported in a cargo bike by his owner, Katrine Marie Kragh, when they go for their afternoon walk.Credit...Betina Garcia for The New York Times
Most
of the bicycles were old-school upright varieties distinguished by
their utility and lack of appeal to thieves, whose ubiquity is a gnawing
source of worry among the pedaling class.
But on the opposite side of the thoroughfare, in a shopfront done up like a Parisian boutique, a retailer, Larry vs. Harry, displayed its sleek, shiny two-wheeled cargo bike, The Bullitt,
which sells for as much as 43,450 Danish kroner, about $6,500. Three
models are parked in the front window, green, yellow and red, glinting
like Ferraris.
Nearby at Nihola, a
cargo bike brand that is more like the Toyota of the pedaling scene, a
showroom displays compartments big enough to fit four children. One can
carry a wheelchair. Front doors swing open, allowing toddlers and dogs
to climb in.
Copenhagen’s
status as a global exemplar of bicycle culture owes to the
accommodating flatness of the terrain and the lack of a Danish auto
industry, which might have hijacked the policy levers. Trouble also
played a role.
The global oil shock
of the 1970s lifted the price of gasoline, making driving exorbitantly
costly. A dismal economy in the 1980s brought the city to the brink of
bankruptcy, depriving it of finance to build roads, and making bicycle
lanes an appealingly thrifty alternative.
Image
Bjorn
Hungeberg Pedersen fixing his bike in his living room in his
apartment. He is a bicycle enthusiast and has six different retro racer
bikes.Credit...Betina Garcia for The New York Times
Image
The popular Cykelslangen connects the area of Vesterbro with the Islands Brygge.Credit...Betina Garcia for The New York Times
The
city focused on making biking safe and comfortable, setting lanes apart
from cars on every street. As biking captured mass interest, improving
the infrastructure became good politics. When it snows in Copenhagen,
bike lanes are typically plowed first.
This was the situation that drew Ms. Gulsrud to Copenhagen from her native United States.
Raised
in the Pacific Northwest, she was pursuing graduate studies in public
policy and working to promote bicycle commuting in Seattle when she
opted for a semester in Copenhagen in 2009. She fell hard for the city,
transferred her studies here, and now teaches natural resources
management at the University of Copenhagen.
She and her husband, Kasper Rasmussen, his 9-year-old daughter, Pixie, and their son Pascal, live in a sixth-story walk-up apartment in Vesterbro,
a former warren of leatherworks shops that has rapidly gentrified,
yielding peculiar contrasts. Prostitutes trawl for customers at night,
walking past shops that sell Tibetan mandala paintings, organic produce
and essential oils.
“The other day, I heard people talking about whether their dogs were vegan,” Ms. Gulsrud said.
She
picked up Pascal in the handsome yet fading villa that is his child
care center. He balked at putting on his coat despite the chill. She
strapped him into a harness inside her compartment as he pulled on his
helmet. She zipped shut a clear plastic cover, shielding him from the
weather.
Then she rode through
puddles to the grocery store, where she scanned dozens of bicycles
lining the sidewalk until she found a spot big enough to accommodate
hers.
Image
Pascal Rasmussen riding his bike in the backyard.Credit...Betina Garcia for The New York Times
Emerging
from the market, she deposited her groceries — kale, milk, Greek yogurt
— into the compartment in front of Pascal and rode a few blocks to her
apartment. She pulled open the gate and wheeled into the courtyard.
The
walls there were lined with bicycles — the cargo bike her neighbor, a
medical student, uses to transport her three children, including her
6-month-old in a bassinet; her husband’s cargo bike, which includes an
electric engine to help with hills; and standard bicycles used by the
Pakistani immigrant family upstairs, by the Argentine-Brazilian couple
and their two small children, and by her neighbor from Sweden and her
wife and their two children.
Not long
ago, modernity felt bound for something like the Jetsons, with families
zipping around via jet packs. But maybe this is the future, a resumption
of the past, upgraded by contemporary design.
“The
infrastructure is there and it’s safe,” said Mr. Rasmussen, as he
prepared a comforting dinner of squash soup and home-baked sourdough
bread. “Why wouldn’t you bike? It’s stupid not to bike.”
Riding over the bridge connecting the inner part of Copenhagen and with the neighborhood of Christianshavn.Credit...Betina Garcia for The New York Times
