Plans to add more biking lanes to the streets of Williamsburg became an unlikely flash point in early September ’08 when the Hasidic Jewish Community of Williamsburg crossed swords with NYC Department of Transportation over the plans to make Kent Avenue more biker-friendly.
In April 2008, Community Board 1 of Williamsburg and Greenpoint decided to become a part of the Brooklyn Greenway Long-term Vision, a project that is supposed to transform the borough into an ecologically cleaner and safer place to live by creating a greenway with biking lanes along the East River waterfront. It would reduce the volume of traffic in the area and encourage more local people to switch to alternative means of transportation.
Actually, bicycles are old news in the area where bohemian and eco-friendly residents are the majority, and the idea of creating additional biking lanes in Williamsburg and Greenpoint found many enthusiastic supporters. According to the plan, there would be no parking allowed on Kent Avenue and the biking lanes would takeover current parking spaces. The data presented by DOT justified the measures: only 50 percent of the parking spaces on the avenue are used on weekdays and 30 percent on weekends. At the same time, bicycle traffic was high: 330 cyclists on weekdays and 610 cyclists on weekends use Kent Avenue.
DOT’s presentation was followed by many bicycling activists who came to support the project. However, the Hasidic community sees bicycles not as environmentally-friendly and economically-wise vehicles but rather as a direct threat to their safety. ”People of [our] community are scared for children; they are terrified,” said Mr. Pearlstein who came to the meeting to oppose the bike lanes. “We have 8-9 kids in every family; there are many school buses on Kent Avenue.” He added that the research by DOT did not present correct data and that, in fact, “Kent Avenue is very busy with vehicles.”
The meeting left the issue of biking lanes on Kent Avenue unresolved. According to Simon Weisser, an activist with the Hasidic community and a Community Board member, the NYC DOT agreed to visit Kent Avenue and study the traffic patterns and review the Hasidic community’s concerns before making a final decision. ‘We are not saying to eliminate [the plan]; we are saying to divert it into another avenue, not so busy,’ said Mr. Weisser. Perhaps, there is an immediate solution for the residents of South Williamsburg terrified by fast-riding bikers who sometimes tend to neglect the traffic laws. Maybe they should ask the NY PD for more traffic control in their community. Maybe they could transfer this New York’s finest to the area to control biking traffic.
—The notion that bikes are a bigger danger to pedestrians than cars is preposterous. It requires a complete lack of understanding of mass, momentum, and several other basic concepts of physics.
—Furthermore, I have driven in this neighborhood, and I can tell you that driving habits here are aggressive, even by New York City standards. If you don’t believe me, ask the school bus drivers, who instead of simply pulling to the side and deploying their stop signs, loop wide and then turn back to park diagonally across the street to prevent cars from speeding around them.
—It really is insulting for someone to see bicycles as a terrifying threat in a neighborhood where SUV’s whipping in and out of lanes is the norm.
Doug, I am with you 98% of the way. As a bicycle commuter who spends a lot of time on the road on two wheels, I feel we have to admit that many bicyclists do practice very unsafe and impractical riding, with little to no concern for pedestrians, thus the worries of the Hasidic community are not entirely unfounded. On the other hand, you’re absolutely right that due to significant differences in size and speed, cars, especially the huge SUVs that are driven unnecessarily and dangerously in our city streets, present a significantly greater potential danger to the average pedestrian and cyclist alike. It is obvious that the opponents of these bike lanes are coming from a driving rather than a biking population. They need to pay more concern to the environmental impact of their transportation habits and consider getting on the green wagon.
This was awesome. I can’t help but picture two gangs shaking angry fists at each other: On one side you have the extremely cautious Hasidic community and on the other, a hundred of these hipster clones wanting to ride their fixed gears. Frankly, I don’t know whose side I defend.