[*BCM*] Re: NY CITY BLOWS $2 MILLION ON HOT AIR AND NONSENSE

[Tom Revay]

Jeff Rosenblum <rosenblum.jeff at gmail.com> wrote:

> NY CITY P.D. SPENT $1.32M TO SUPPRESS BIKE RIDES
> 
> -> In a Nov. 16th Streetsblog article, Charles Komanoff wrote,
[...] 
> police and other agencies spent $1,320,000 harassing and arresting
> Critical Mass riders from September 2004 through August 2006.
[...] 
> "During the same two-year period the city spent less than $700,000
> planning, engineering, and installing bike lanes in the five boroughs.
> Thus, over the past two years New York City spent twice as much
> suppressing two dozen bicycle rides as it spent creating a safe
> bicycling infrastructure that hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers
> could be using every day. 

Oh, so Critical Mass uses bike lanes now?  <smirk>

Anyway, Charlie Kominoff understates New York's waste and misappropriation by more than 50%.  That's because neither he, nor any other junk-science researcher, has ever been able to show that a stripe of paint creates a "safe bicycling infrastructure."

That $700,000 would be better spent training the cops on what the laws regarding bicycle transportation really are, and then requiring their enforcement on behalf of cyclists who ride in the City of New York.  Doing that would help every cyclist, whether or not there happen to be any bike lanes on the roads we choose to ride on.

Tom Revay
... who notes that New York is one of the few states that *requires* bicyclists to use bike lanes, if they exist on the street you happen to be on -- and that's reason enough to be against adding more.  

And it also seems that the in-line skaters really like this Broadway door-death-zone lane enough to recommend their members ride in it with you, at http://www.skatecity.com/nyc/nyc_pix.cgi?p=broadway_02 ... "Hey!  Hey you with the headphones!  HEY!  HEYYYY!"