Freshly painted cycling infrastructure repurposed within hours
Reporting brought to you by Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
Cyclists Note That The Dedicated Lane Is Dedicated Primarily To Stationary Vehicles
NEW YORK, NY — The city celebrated the opening of a new protected bike lane this week, a triumph of cycling infrastructure that was immediately and comprehensively filled with parked police vehicles, delivery trucks, and idling cars, leaving cyclists to navigate around the obstacles in the lane built specifically to protect them from obstacles.
“We are proud to deliver this protected bike lane,” announced Transportation Commissioner Patricia Hwang at a ribbon-cutting, standing beside the freshly painted lane that would, within hours, be entirely occupied by parked vehicles. “Cyclists deserve safe, dedicated space.” By the following morning, the dedicated space was occupied bumper to bumper by police cruisers, delivery vans, and double-parked cars, with cyclists forced to swerve into traffic to avoid the vehicles parked in their protected lane, which protected them from nothing.”
The Repurposed Lane
According to the Institute for Urban Mobility, the immediate appropriation of the bike lane followed a familiar pattern. “New York bike lanes have a tendency to become parking lanes,” explained Dr. Wei Zhang. “The paint dries, the lane opens, and within hours it fills with parked vehicles, particularly official ones. Police cars, in particular, seem drawn to bike lanes, treating the protected cycling space as convenient parking. The lane built to keep cyclists safe becomes an obstacle course of stationary vehicles, forcing cyclists into the very traffic the lane was meant to shield them from. It is a reliable phenomenon. Build a bike lane, and it will fill with the cars it was designed to exclude.”
Cyclists expressed weary frustration with the appropriated lane. “They built us a protected lane,” said cyclist Maya Goldberg, 33. “And now I cannot use it, because it is full of parked police cars. So I have to ride in traffic, around the cars parked in my safe lane, which is more dangerous than if there were no lane at all, because now I am weaving between the parked cars in the bike lane and the moving cars in the street. The lane protects no one. It is a parking lot with bicycle symbols painted on it. I would be safer if they had never built it, because at least then I would not have to dodge cars parked in my own lane.”
The Enforcement Question
Officials acknowledged the parking problem but noted complications in addressing it. “We are aware that vehicles sometimes park in the bike lane,” said Hwang. “And we take this seriously. The difficulty is that many of the vehicles parked in the lane are police vehicles, and the police are responsible for enforcement. So enforcement of the bike lane would require the police to ticket themselves, which presents certain challenges. We are exploring solutions. In the meantime, we encourage cyclists to be patient and to navigate carefully around the vehicles parked in the space we built to protect them from vehicles.”
Experts noted the irony of the enforcement situation. “The bike lane is blocked primarily by the vehicles of the agency responsible for keeping it clear,” said Dr. Zhang. “The police are supposed to enforce the bike lane. The police are also the ones parking in it. So the enforcers are the violators, and asking them to enforce the lane means asking them to ticket their own vehicles, which does not happen. The result is a protected bike lane protected by no one, blocked by the very people charged with protecting it, a perfect circle of dysfunction in which the solution and the problem are the same agency, parked comfortably in the lane meant for bikes.”
The Cyclists Adapt
Cyclists have developed strategies for navigating the obstacle-filled bike lane. “You learn to treat the bike lane as a suggestion,” said cyclist Andre Williams, 27. “It is not a place you can actually ride. It is a place where bikes are theoretically supposed to go, decorated with parked cars. So you ride in the street, like always, and you glance at the bike lane as you pass, full of police cruisers and delivery trucks, and you remember that the city built it for you, and you appreciate the gesture, even though you cannot use it. It is the thought that counts. The lane exists. You just cannot ride in it. That is New York cycling.”
Experts noted that the cyclists’ resigned adaptation reflected a broader truth about urban infrastructure. “The city builds the lane, declares victory, and moves on,” said Dr. Zhang. “The lane then fills with cars, and the cyclists are left exactly where they started, riding in traffic, with a useless painted lane beside them as a monument to good intentions. The infrastructure exists on paper, in the ribbon-cutting photographs, in the official statistics of bike lanes built. In practice, it is a parking lot. The gap between the announced infrastructure and the usable infrastructure is filled, quite literally, with parked police cars, and the cyclists navigate the gap as they always have, on their own, in the street, around the obstacles in their dedicated lane.”
The Protected Lane
The new bike lane remains officially open and almost entirely occupied by parked vehicles, a protected cycling space protected from cyclists by the cars that fill it. “We will continue to invest in cycling infrastructure,” declared Hwang, beside the lane in which several police vehicles were parked. “Safe, dedicated space for cyclists is a priority.” The cyclists, riding in the traffic beside their occupied lane, swerving around the parked cruisers and delivery trucks, navigated the city as they always had, the protected lane beside them serving its true function as convenient parking, a painted monument to infrastructure that existed everywhere except in the one place it was supposed to: in the actual experience of the cyclists it was built to protect. For genuine background, see the NYC Department of Transportation, and for further detail, the City of New York covers the real subject.
More nonsense at The Onion.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/