published in New York Times, November 10, 1985
To the Editor:
In your article about New York City bicycle messengers and stepped-up bicycle regulation by the police traffic division (Oct. 26) you quoted professional advocates, a travel executive and a messenger-service owner, but not a single messenger. My trade was presented as a social ill without a context.
Not that there is no minority of irresponsible messengers, but though you have in the past given ample coverage to city traffic, the all-time high number of cars entering Manhattan - 800,000 compared with 50,000 bicyclists (your figure) - the flood of private commuter vans and buses in midtown, near-universal disregard for traffic signals and the deterioration of the city's roadbed, you failed to mention these on this occasion. Nor did you step into your own lobby, where messengers deliver a large part of your advertising.
Aside from speeding communications in a city whose wealth is based on service industries and whose postal system is notoriously inefficient, the messenger industry offers a decent day's pay in return for a very hard day's work - to minority teenagers as well as aspiring musicians and actors.
We are abused by pedestrians, sandwiched between buses, sideswiped by taxis, editorialized against, and we must inhale diesel exhausts. The "bike lane" offers collisions with pedestrians, pushcart vendors and car doors. The intersection of Avenue of the Americas, Broadway and 34th Street is terrifying; the biker's traffic light is simply an invitation to get hit.
Like the Jews of medieval Europe, messengers make an objective contribution to the local economy, but are viewed as utterly foreign, existing tenuously on official tolerance punctuated by specific harassment. Some of us on the margins of traffic are from the margins of society as well, lacking tact and communication skills, and would not otherwise be in corporate midtown - or decently employed. We, was well as pedestrians, deserve better peripheral vision.
Seth L. Amgott
New York, Oct. 26, 1985
| main | articles | laws | zines | report | 10-9 day |
If you have comments or suggestions, email me at messvilleto@yahoo.com