Anti-car, pro-bike propaganda in the NY Times

In the NY Times last week, a story that could have been written by the Bicycle Coalition. 

It's another example of what I wrote about earlier this year, the crude opportunism of the pro-bicycle/anti-car movement taking advantage of the national emergency to implement its agenda:

Covid-19, the street protests that followed the killing of George Floyd, the need to provide safely-spaced New Yorkers more outdoor breathing room and alternate ways to move around town, all combined to provoke what has the makings of a bureaucratic reboot — or at least, for the moment, combined to force a few hands at City Hall...Now is the time...

"Alternate ways to move around"? Guess which "way" the writer favors? Yes, bicycles! The story cites a study that supports an aggressive bike agenda for New York:

The Regional Plan Association, a not-for-profit pillar of the planning establishment, recently released a report that points a way forward. It lays out a master plan for 425 miles of interconnected, high capacity, protected bike lanes in the five boroughs. Last summer, the city issued its own proposal, called Green Wave, in response to an alarming spike in the number of bicyclists killed.

Why are more cyclists killed in New York City? The story linked in the paragraph above tells us:

Cycling has exploded in New York as Citi Bike, the bike-share program, has expanded and growing frustration with subway and bus delays have pushed more commuters to take to two wheels. About 460,000 bike rides take place in the city every day, up from about 180,000 bike rides in 2006, according to the city.

The answer: more people riding bikes means more people killed and injured. The bike lobby hates to admit that riding bikes has any downside, which is also why they don't like to talk about helmets. It's supposedly simply a green, win-win deal for everyone.

The writer of last week's NY Times story invokes Robert Moses as an exemplar because "he knew how to get things done." Like President Trump lamenting his lack of a Roy Cohn, the NY Times wants to know where's their Robert Moses to get things done for the bike lobby?

Who was Robert Moses?:

Moses is blamed for having destroyed more than a score of neighborhoods by building 13 expressways across New York City and by building large urban renewal projects with little regard for the urban fabric or for human scale...

Moses's critics charge that he preferred automobiles over people. They point out that he displaced hundreds of thousands of residents in New York City, destroying traditional neighborhoods by building multiple expressways through them. These projects contributed to the ruin of the South Bronx and the amusement parks of Coney Island, caused the departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants Major League baseball teams, and precipitated the decline of public transport due to disinvestment and neglect...

That's what the bike lobby wants with this boost from the NY Times: someone to bull and bully the way through all those NIMBY neighborhoods and local governing bodies. 

Parking on the street for their wicked cars? Fuggedaboutit! What you really need is a bike lane through your neighborhood! (Like San Francisco bulled those bike lanes through neighborhood opposition on Masonic Avenue that few cyclists use.)

People in New York---and San Francisco---are shunning public transit because of the obvious danger of infection with the coronavirus on crowded buses and streetcars. 

Instead, they're going to turn to bicycles? If they can afford it, they will switch to cars, not bikes, since they provide door-to-door transportation, insulation from infection, and more safety than riding a bike.

The SFMTA is doing its opportunistic part with its Temporary Emergency Transit Lanes: Protecting Muni Customers During COVID-19. As if the buses just went faster it would "protect" passengers from infection!

Those "temporary emergency" bus lanes will of course end up being permanent, taking away more traffic lanes from those wicked cars and making traffic in the city worse than it has to be based on poor planning and wishful thinking.

See also More Vision Zero failure, and Vision Zero failing in SF, New York, Los Angeles, Portland...