I think that Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been nothing but good for NY but that doesn’t mean I’m in agreement with all his programs or the ways they are being carried out. I speak specifically tonight about his DOT Commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan’s program to remove the automobile from NYC streets. It’s not the concept I disagree with, although it isn’t really realistic, it’s the execution, the methodology. People have to come into the city for any number of reasons. If we don’t want them to drive we must provide an alternative to the car. Busses and bus lanes are one alternative, but they are, after all just another type of vehicle and they do more to clog corners and block boxes than most cars. Adding subways would be the ideal answer but it’s obvious from the 2nd avenue disaster that such an enterprise is far beyond the technological expertise even of a species that sent a man to the moon. Practically speaking there is neither the time nor the money to dig more subways in our city. It would be nice if some genius would come up with a practical solution to move people through the air, but until that happens we’re stuck with what we’ve got. The mayor and his traffic Commissioner seeing this have come up with bicycles as the solution. They point to Paris and its successful integration of the two-wheeler into the city’s congestion. “Some say why bicycles,” Ms Sadik-Khan seems to be para-phrasing, “I say why not?”
Well Ms Sadik-Khan, for one thing, NY just ain’t Paris. The Parisians for all their rude behavior seem to have some sense of the fact that bicycles are moving vehicles and therefore must adhere to at least a modicum of that city’s traffic rules. Anyone who has been on the NY streets in the past couple of years and hasn’t been hit by a bicycle is the ultimate survivor. NY bicycle riders know no rules. They ride the wrong way on one-way streets, they zip through red lights, often going the wrong way there too. They ride on sidewalks and the ignore bicycle lanes that have been created at great expense and great inconvenience to the rest of the moving public. If Ms Sadik-Khan really wants to make bicycling work she needs to make cyclers adhere to the same laws that regulate the behavior of cars.
In one cab ride from Broadway to West Street along Prince and Charlton, this morning I counted nine cyclers going the wrong way, six blasting through red lights and three ignoring the right lane bicycle lane and riding on the left side. This is in less than ten minutes. This is chaos not solution.
Cyclers must be licensed and their transgressions must be ticketed just like cars if this program is to have any possibility of success. Just think, Mayor Bloomberg of the added revenues to the city from a ticketing blitz like that. Make your mouth water does it?