In 1997, Transportation Alternatives issued the first report card on New York City cycling conditions and the efforts of public agencies to improve them. The first time around, the overall state of cycling conditions in New York City was awarded a D+ because of dangerous driving and poor cycling conditions citywide. Public agencies earned a C+ for their efforts, based on a slew of new bike lanes and the publishing of the Bicycle Master Plan. The grade could have been a full grade higher but for the surprise closure of the Queensboro Bridge bike lane during rush hours and the continued absence of police traffic enforcement. The City Department of Transportation’s bike program got a pat on the back for getting in a raft of new bike lanes.

That was last year. The big news this year is that after years of neglect, the cops have kicked their traffic enforcement into high gear, and for the first time, the public seems aware of the 30 mph speed limit. Increased police traffic enforcement has produced a noticeable difference on some major bicycle routes. Unfortunately, speeding and reckless driving deter to many would-be riders, and police harassment of everyday riders has soured the cycling community’s appreciation of the crackdown on dangerous drivers. Still, this profound change in how the government and police view driving crimes matters to cyclists and marks a gigantic step forward.

The report assigns two grades to seven categories that comprise the “Bicycling Basics” of city cycling. The first grade is for the overall state of the bicycling basic in question, the second is for the combined efforts of the various public agencies to improve those conditions in the preceding 12 months.

Overall, progress remains agonizingly slow. A huge network of car-free greenery paths is heading towards completion in the next five years, and the East River bridges will be finished within the next ten years. The nagging reality is that frightening near-misses are common and the joy of cycling is too often quelled by the menace of motor traffic and the frustration of poor parking and bridge access.

Good news: A new two-way, 6.3-mile lane on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn and a nice new lane in Manhattan on 2nd Ave. between 14th and Houston that serves as a southbound partner to the Lafayette Street lane. Bad news: University Ave. in The Bronx has sunk into a mysterious quagmire despite being approved by The Bronx Borough Board. Let’s not forget the demise of the Sunset Park Connector in Borough Park, Brooklyn. This lane was canceled by the Mayor after an irrational assault by some Hasidim who variously claimed that cyclists in lycra would create a “sex show” in their community or run down children crossing the street. This farce starred City Council Transportation Chair Noach Dear, who pledged to stop the lane at all costs, and seems to have been rooted in the desire of local residents to keep their privilege to double park. Other bad news was sporadic police bike lane enforcement despite heavy pressure from T.A.

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Not much has changed except that the bridges are one year closer to completion and the anger caused by the surprise November 1996 peak period bike ban on the Queensboro has dimmed a bit. Cyclists on the North Outer Roadway of the QBB are subject to a lengthy detour to access the Manhattan side of the Bridge and still must suffer the shuttle service during the PM peak. Misguided “Dismount” signs have sprung up on the QBB and Brooklyn and serve as yet another excuse for the police to ticket cyclists. Cyclists were excluded from City plans to redesign the Manhattan approaches to the QBB and the Brooklyn Bridge, despite a long history of involvement. The DOT’s Bureau of Bridges, which was cited in ’97 for a “head in mud” approach to the public, equalled its previous performance despite the sincere effort of outreach person Jennifer Dee, who was stuck serving as an apologist for the bureau’s engineers. A potentially good thing is that Parks Chief Henry Stern seems interested in re-opening the High Bridge Crossing between upper Manhattan and The Bronx.

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Consider this: at a City Council hearing in 1993, then-Police Commissioner Ray Kelly adamantly insisted there was no dangerous driving problem in NYC and then proceeded to provide the wrong speed limit when questioned by a Councilmember.

Now, after years of denial, the City of New York has finally admitted that dangerous driving is a serious problem. The Mayor deserves credit for ordering the police to crack down on dangerous drivers and for dramatically raising the profile of speeding and reckless driving as a public safety and health crisis. The “Zero Tolerance” week in March showed what city streets could be like if the cops dealt with lawless drivers. For at least that week, traffic calmed down to the point where even major avenues were transformed into acceptable cycling habitats. The installation of hundreds of 30 mph speed limit signs is also a welcome step.

Unfortunately, despite record-low pedestrian and traffic fatalities, NYC streets are still filled with speeding, reckless driving and absurd behavior. A massive crackdown on speeding is needed as are hundreds more red-light and speed radar cameras. Shamefully, D.A.s continue their lenient treatment of killer drivers. A crisis is brewing in the taxi industry as the police hound poorly paid cabbies, ironically encouraging higher turnover and more inexperienced drivers behind the wheel.

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With between $30 and $60 million in ISTEA funds committed to greenways in the planning and design stage, the future for greenways is very bright. The vision of a city-wide network of car-free paths is an enticing one (despite the inevitable conflicts with dog walkers, sleep walkers, novice skaters and little kids). Unfortunately, skeleton crew staffing at the Parks Department has made planning deadlines hard to meet. The rumor is that the backlog is clearing, but some completion dates have been repeatedly shoved back. A bright spot is the completion of the portion of the “East Side Bike Way” which stretches along the East River from Canal Street to near Wall Street.

Other good news is that, judging from a completed segment, the State DOT’s Route 9A bike path, between 59th Street and the Battery, is extremely well plotted. The path promises to be the most heavily used in North America, and the State DOT deserves credit for the design. Planning work is underway to close gaps in the City’s portion of the greenway between 72nd Street and 155th Street, which should be completed by 2005. With this in mind, it is imperative that the Parks Department get at least a temporary path built alongside Trump City (60th to 72nd Street), rather than let the fate of the path there remain mired in uncertainty.

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DOT’s CityRacks program remains a poor stepchild plagued by overly restrictive siting guidelines, a dearth of common sense, and a crippling lack of internal and external political support. Racks are still not being installed on heavily cycled thoroughfares like upper 6th Avenue, or on side streets in Midtown and the Garment District, where bikes are still seen locked to mailboxes, trees and on top of bus stops. According to cycle courier companies, DOT has installed racks at only a tiny portion of the hundreds of locations where they have been requested.

Elsewhere, the number of parking garages offering bike parking is shrinking, as the City continues to show no interest. Offering some encouragement, Metro-North is interested in offering secure parking at Grand Central Station. Also, Councilmember Adolfo Carrion (D-Bronx) has introduced a bill requiring buildings equipped with a freight elevator to allow bicyclists access to it.

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Cyclists continue to enjoy the immense benefits of unrestricted legal access to the NYC subways. Neither rain nor mechanical failure can stop a cyclist equipped with a MetroCard. A recent blot is the insistence by the Transit Authority that passengers with strollers and bicycles wait in line at the token booth to get through the service gate.

The MTA deserves a high grade for introducing daily, weekly and monthly passes and thus massively boosting ridership, and hopefully drawing people out of cars and taxis. Better transit leads to fewer cars, which means better biking.

Other pluses include the merging of the Metro-North and LIRR bike passes into one systemwide pass: a bureaucratic feat that was said to have taken the effort of numerous transit officials. The LIRR also boosted the number of bike trains during summer months and eased some restrictions on the number of bikes per train. PATH did away completely with permits (good for them) but still prohibits bikes during peak periods. A solid record of transit achievement which would be better still if the MTA provided secure parking at Grand Central and Penn stations and parking of any kind at suburban rail and major NYC transit hubs like Union Square and Queensboro Plaza.

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In this case “overall” means public and governmental attitudes toward cycling. To some degree, a greater public awareness of dangerous driving has supplanted anger towards wayward cyclists. Hysteria over cyclists on sidewalks and general anit-cyclist vilification seems to have peaked. However, the popular image of the NYC cyclist still seems to be more outlaw than virtuous citizen, an impression that is reinforced by the City’s many sidewalk and wrong-way cyclists. The fallout from last year’s firestorm of public opprobrium towards cyclists is two-fold. First is the crippling lack of support among elected officials and community boards for new cycling initiatives. Second is the overwhelming and oppressive police ticketing campaign against cyclists that has discouraged safe and courteous cyclists with massive fines.

One of the biggest disappointments in 1997 was the retreat of the NYC Department of Transportation’s Bicycle Program into a shell of silence. DOT bike-o-crats refused to speak with T.A.’s staff, respond to letters or even answer the most basic questions. Their unproductive and sadly immature approach deprived the cycling public of a voice in critical issues like future access to the City’s bridges and the status of bike parking. DOT’s Bike Week promotion spoke volumes about how out of touch the agency was with everyday cyclists. Besides offering an extremely weak slate of events and keeping them secret until the last second, the agency’s selection of the cartoon figure “Ziggy: The Lovable Loser” as the City’s posterboy for cycling promotion verged on insult for cyclists faced with tough conditions and little public respect. Lovable Loser? Not quite the image cyclists crave.

In contrast to DOT’s seriously misguided policy of isolationism, the Department of City Planning’s bicycle program continued to promote an open and public approach to decision making. Fortunately, there are signs that the new DOT commissioner will change things for the better. Commissioner Wilbur Chapman is an enthusiastic bicyclist who enjoys riding with his daughters on the bicycle lane near his home in Queens. Chapman has pledged his commitment to a more cooperative relationship with cyclists and has endeavored to provide the public with more information and opportunities to contribute.

Chapman’s positive attitude is encouraging and will hopefully open doors at DOT that have long been shut. Among the steps the commissioner should take is creating “Technical Advisory Committees” like those employed for Department of City Planning studies, for key DOT bicycle issues, including bridges, lanes, parking and Bike Week. These would provide an organized forum for public comment that would allow the DOT to benefit from the vast experience and expertise of the cycling community and build support for DOT cycling efforts.

A C- grade for “overall cycling environment” means barely tolerable enough to keep the average cyclist in the saddle for a long time to come. Our improved-but-still-poor grade reflects two positive developments: first, the big increase in police traffic enforcement; second, the continuing increase in cyclists’ numbers. Both of these developments make the overall cycling habitat better. T.A. has documented an increase in cycling activity from about 75,000 daily cyclists in 1993 to 105,000 in mid-1997. The more cyclists there are on the streets, the greater awareness and respect motorists have for them. No one knows the exact correlation between cycling levels and motorist behavior, but countries with high cycling levels have a lower cycling accident rate. This calls for more respect for cyclists from motorists. The relatively good grade for “Agency Efforts” is the result of the police traffic enforcement push, good transit news, continued solid work by the Department of City Planning and the continued overall incorporation of bicycling into the projects of area transportation agencies. If not for the secrecy and unproductive stance of the City DOT bike program, this grade would be even higher. The B- agency grade is earned in recognition of the lack of high-level political support the transportation bureaucracies have received for their bicycling efforts, and that many transportation bureaucrats have persisted working for cyclists despite an absence of such support.

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