From the NY Post:Freewheeling food deliverymen are giving Upper West Siders indigestion, riding their bikes illegally on sidewalks and mowing down pedestrians who get in their way, residents griped yesterday.
"I've almost gotten hit a bunch of times. Out of nowhere they'll come flying," said Stewart Marvin, 50, a marketing consultant. "They have a total disregard for safety."
The problem has become so rampant that members of Community Board 7 are threatening to withhold their much-needed support for sidewalk and liquor-license renewals to restaurants with menacing cyclists who ignore bike-safety measures.
The Department of Transportation mandates that commercial cyclists display business names and phone numbers prominently on their shirts and carry ID cards with the business name.
Restaurant owners are asked to keep a log of deliverymen and trips, and to post signs with safety procedures.
Board manager Penny Ryan said the problem has been brewing "for a long time . . . We've been getting complaints from pedestrians that a delivery bicyclist came near them or hit them."
Dena Berlin, 55, a pediatric nurse, said she "got hit by a bike only last week. He came out of nowhere, whizzing by so quickly.
"They're out all hours of the day and night, and they don't abide by any of the rules. They're so reckless."
Ryan blames the increase in bicycles on takeout habits in the city. "If you live anywhere where there's deliverymen, you know what I'm talking about," she said.
Also from the Post:
Bikers get away with murder, and it's worse since Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan made clear the city's priorities are with them, not with pedestrians or motorists.
Her "pedestrian plazas" are mainly loitering grounds for tourists.
Her bike lanes have taken away precious parking spaces all over town. Except, that is, on East 79th Street: I've yet to see a lane in front of Mayor Bloomberg's house, even though the street, a gateway to Central Park, would seem to be a prime candidate.
While CB 7 wants restaurants to "enforce" DOT rules for bike deliverers, the whole mess is mostly the DOT's fault.
By promoting mass bicycle ridership in a city singularly unsuited for it, and by shoving aside opposition to ill-conceived bike lanes, the agency effectively authorized all bikers to laugh at the DOT's own rules.
Cops got the message. They wink at cyclists who ride on sidewalks, speed, run red lights and go the wrong way on one-way streets. Officers I've alerted to maniacs who nearly ran me down showed no interest.
Are they lazy -- or has Bloomberg so empowered Sadik-Khan even Ray Kelly's afraid of her?
16 comments:
Those upper west siders should learn to cook -- problem solved!
i thought LINO went to Siam on vacation. isn't that him on that bike ?
i drove in to the Broadway/Crosby street section on friday.the gridlock from broadway south to kenmare /bloom street was the worst i have ever been in.it is the west bound route to the Holland Tunnel.
the west bound side streets are one lane ,because of the bike lane. only political idiots would allow this obstruction of the flow of auto traffic in Lower Manhattan at rush hours.3:00 to 6:00 PM.
Those upper west-siders should learn how to use umbrellas and walking sticks to accidentally defend themselves by placing these objects in the spokes as the bikes pass by.
Get off my lawn too!
Yeesh, the Post is such a shitty rag.
Delivery bikers give all bike riders a bad name - but I still don't get all this anger over the creation of protected bike lanes. Just putting lines down on the pavement doesn't work in NYC, it becomes a haven for double parking and how does the Post call NYC not ideal for biking, it's probably the most ideal - flat, wide streets and homes and businesses in close proximity in all boroughs.
So sure, go ahead and enforce the rules for all bikers, but stop the hate on bikers.
So sure, go ahead and enforce the rules for all bikers, but stop the hate on bikers.
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Mr. Newbie Tower Person:
Welcome to NY. We are nice people, but have a deserved rep on being tough as nails when the situation warrants it.
We pay taxes and it goes to your developer.
We suffered a lot in the '70s and are scorned and invisible as far as the electeds are concerned.
You trust fund babies show up, whine on missing a nights sleep because you are too stupid to understand what a train yard does at night, and they pee their pants.
We try to make ends meet sending our kids to parochial schools because the public ones are underfunded and suck and they shut them down.
You get bike lanes.
Our hospital bed ratio is that of a third world country and the pols ignore us.
You get marriage equality and all their attention.
Your neighbors
Archie and Edith
If you are going to bicycle around in the city, you should be required to have a license plate affixed to your vehicle!
This way if some biker breaks the law he can be properly reported and fined.
Do you want to be taken seriously?
Then face the music like motor vehicle drivers have to...carry registration and license!
Lino's illegals delivering his "crap" food again...
In Flushing people walk in the street:( and ride their bikes on the sidewalk:( ASSHOLES!!!!!!!
Congratulations... brilliant commentary by all! Now we have a coherent plan to fix the problem - remove all cyclists and pedestrians from the city to make it safe for drivers. Couldn't agree more!
Ah, it's Mr. Sarcasm again. He failed on the other post, so he thought he'd try here. Still no good at it.
That bicycling boob comments again!
LICENSE AND REGISTRATION FOR ALL CYCLISTS!
Yeah...if remove irresponsible bike babies NYC will be a lot safer for pedestrians you butt plug!
I don't know if Michael is a trust funder or not - unlike others, I don't presume to read another person's entire life history out of a couple of lines on a blog - but I do know this: he's right about New York being potentially and ideal city for biking.
I was in Seattle for a few days last month. It has a reputation for being just about the best city in the United States for biking. And, indeed, I saw plenty of bikers while I was there. Even though - and I didn't know this before I got there - Seattle is built up on a bunch of really big hills. It was exhausting just to watch bikers power up them. Yet that's the biker paradise. Why can't it be New York, I wondered. It's much flatter - sure, we have a few hills and the Williamsburg Bridge is a bear - but it's mostly easy riding. I guess it's just a matter of what one expects and takes for granted; guy I talked to at a Mariners game was astonished that NYC buses don't have bike racks.
What the Post fails to mentions it that what this city IS singularly unsuited for is swarms of private automobiles. While they're going to have a place in our transportation system for the foreseeable future we have plenty now and we should probably have fewer. The goal of our transport planning should be, as far as is practical, to make them unnecessary. Bikes can't do that by themselves but they can and do help so their use has to be encouraged.
"What the Post fails to mentions it that what this city IS singularly unsuited for is swarms of private automobiles."
That's because the article is about bikes on sidewalks, not automobiles.
I was in Seattle for a few days last month. It has a reputation for being just about the best city in the United States for biking.
Seattle, along with Portland, are also SWPL paradises(http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/):
Seattle Demographics: The racial makeup of the city in 2004 is:
67.1% white
16.6% Asian
10.0% black
1.0% Native American
0.9% Pacific Islander
2.3% from other races
3.4% from two or more races.
6.3% of the population is Hispanic or Latino of any race.
Portland Demographics:
433,172 78.6% White
36,036 6.5% Asian
35,246 6.4% Black or African American
7,629 1.4% American Indian, Alaska Native
"Within white culture, your choice of transportation method says a lot about you. For example a Prius says you care about the Earth, a bicycle shows you REALLY care about the earth, and a bus shows that you are probably not white."
What do you expect???
Animals come here from savage nations and you expect them to follow rule and understand courtesy??? Not going to happen.
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