Bike Lane Wars Abound
The Brooklyn Paper is chock full of stories about bike lane conflict today. First up is more drama surrounding the new lanes on Prospect Park West. As you may recall, DOT’s decision to axe one lane of car traffic to make way for a two-way bike lane was done despite opposition by Marty Markowitz and…
The Brooklyn Paper is chock full of stories about bike lane conflict today. First up is more drama surrounding the new lanes on Prospect Park West. As you may recall, DOT’s decision to axe one lane of car traffic to make way for a two-way bike lane was done despite opposition by Marty Markowitz and many others in the driver camp. Now, it turns out, some pedestrians who are used to only having to look one way before crossing are up in arms. Meanwhile, down in Bay Ridge, Community Board 10 voted earlier this week against two new proposed bike lanes. “The city is bent on taking away driving lanes for cars,” said Allen Bortnick, a member of Community Board 10. “We are not going to be able to live with this comfortably.”
Minard, you’re pretty well regarded here as an obnoxious snob.
As a biker I concede that we don’t obey the rules of the road… In NYC nobody does. Joggers love running down the middle of the bike lanes with their headphones on; pedestrians never look in the direction of the on-coming traffic. They just keep walking blindly if a bike has the right of way, but no cars are coming. Cars never, ever put on their signals, love double parking, take standing in bike lanes as a birth right and live for the mid-block illegal u-turn. It’s a free for all out there, which we just have to accept.Unfortunately, bikes move just fast enough to be scary, but also give the ability for “discussion,” unlike a speeding SUV with rolled up windows. At the end of the day this city and country are blindly car centric and feel any deference, respect or public spending on walkers or bikers is a waste of money.
You could toootally take a sail boat to Buenos Aires
It’s funny that you’d make a comment to me about being untraveled and then make a reference about Argentinian people which couldn’t be any more off base.
First of all, slobs? The Argentinian men and women make Jackie O look like a slob. Wonderfully dressed and stylish people. Incredibly beautiful as well…men and women.
And while some have a hard exterior (understandable given that they’ve been through a lot and are just coming out of their economy collapsing a decade ago) Argentinians are some of the most warm, humorous and lovely people I’ve met anywhere. You just have to take the time to get to know them and not act as though America is the only country in the world.
For some folks, that pleasure might be a McMansion, driving to work, or gorging themselves at Applebee’s.
Right, but those people are total idiots.
😉
ML(or whoever): “From casual observation, it seems that most of the bike riders I see are under 35 and Caucasion, excepting messengers and food delivery people.”
Right, and messengers and delivery people magically don’t count because… ??
Sauce: flying produces incrementally more carbon per mile than driving, but the impact is large because they travel so darn far. That being said, driving to BA wouldn’t necessarily be better (less of a straight line) and other alternatives are prohibitively costly in time/hassle.
So, given an absence of viable alternatives, flying is what you have to do to get there (unlike, say going to south carolina from new york, or from frankfurt to paris, where other, less polluting options exist).
Since we assume that traveling to BA is going to happen anyway, and that we don’t wish to completely eliminate long-distance travel between isolated areas, I think we’ll have to simply aim for more efficient planes and full loads of passengers.
Planes and bicycles occupy entirely separate roles in transportation. Cars and bicycles do not. So, while I appreciate you are probably not trying to make a serious comparison, I had to jump in and point out that it’s nonsensical.
(for reference, an older article on plane pollution stats from BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/732004.stm )
11217,
I’ll keep Rob busy and away from you as you’ve got your hands full here.
People in Brooklyn Heights are notorious in Brooklyn for being obnoxious slobs.
What’s your point? It’s a stereotype. Do you believe all of them, Minard.
I’m American.
Argentines are notorious in Latin America for being obnoxious snobs.
11217, are you Argentinian?