Metropolis - May 2011

sobriquet “Roberta Moses” as an insult, but I see it as high praise. I don’t ride a bicycle daily, but I ride often enough to marvel at how cleverly Sadik-Khan’s DOT has stitched together enough bike lanes—some 250 miles so far—to make cycling in New York borderline practical. She has built something stunningly logical, surprisingly monumental, and genuinely new in a city where most commissioners find it hard to simply keep up with potholes. And she had the audacity to do it on a street where people with political clout live. Time for a little comeuppance.

The bike lane that’s the subject of the lawsuit runs for 1. 8 miles alongside Prospect Park, 585 luscious acres of greenery designed, like Central Park, by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted. Prospect Park West, a stretch of historic apartment houses and mansions, is Brooklyn’s answer to Central Park West. It’s a street that has always appealed to the borough’s upper crust.

Prospect Park West is also part of a larger neighborhood called Park Slope, which is, in essence, New York’s Berkeley. Park Slope is full of food-co-op–shopping progressives who raise their children in the most enlightened ways possible. It is literally where the next generation of urban bicyclists is being bred. Generally speaking, Park Slope loves the bike lane: a December survey of more than 3, 100 residents by Councilman Brad Lander’s office showed about 70 percent in favor.

Prospect Park West does not share that love. And who lives on Pros-
pect Park West? Senator Charles Schumer, for one, and his wife, Iris
Weinshall, the city’s previous transportation commissioner and a vocal
opponent of the bike lane. A former resident, Borough President Marty
Markowitz once asked, “Do we want Brooklyn to replicate Amsterdam?”
His answer, obviously, was: No! Neither Weinshall nor Markowitz was
listed as a plaintiff in the lawsuit. It was filed in the name of two obscure
organizations: Seniors for Safety and Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes.

A former Prospect Park West resident, Borough
President Marty Markowitz once asked,
“Do we want Brooklyn to replicate Amsterdam?”
His answer, obviously, was: No!

They claim that the bike lane represents a radical experiment forced on the neighborhood by a Machiavellian city agency. The suit alleges that the DOT manipulated statistics to show that shrinking three lanes of traffic to two and incorporating the bike lane reduced speeding and increased safety. The suit accuses the DOT of “colluding” with “radical” pro-bike-lane “lobbyists.” Evidence of collusion includes the assertion that “at least one DOT official is registered as ‘friends’ with pro-bike-lane lobbyists on social media sites.” In truth, the bike lane was suggested to the DOT by the neighborhood’s community board. continued on page 62

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