by Rick Hampson
USA TODAY, December 16, 1997
NEW YORK
As she walks up Second Avenue, Fran is surrounded by danger: three restaurants -- Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese -- plus a pizzeria and a drug store, all of which deliver by bicycle.
This year Fran was hit by a fast-moving order of chicken teriyaki while standing at a crosswalk. Now she fears that another bicycle deliverer will turn her into chop suey.
In congested places like Manhattan, where bicycles provide quick delivery of legal documents, Chinese food and other urban essentials, pedestrians are learning the hard way to look both ways. What Fran calls the ``delivery daredevils'' have become the scourge of walkers in New York, Boston, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco and other big cities.
Although it is against the law for commercial cyclists to ride on sidewalks, through red lights or against traffic on one-way streets, many bike messengers and food deliverers do so. A few also yell, curse or spit at the pedestrians they startle or hit in the process.
But cyclists say they're the real victims.
They complain about aggressive motorists who drive them from the street; pedestrians who, not hearing a motor, step without looking off the curb; and a system that forces them to take big risks just to make a little money. Above all, they resent those who call for their heads while calling for their services.
``The same people who complain about bike messengers turn around and want their package across town in 10 minutes,'' says Shawn Blumenfeld, a courier in Washington for 11 of his 27 years.
New Yorker Alice Reponni, who was grazed by a food deliveryman's cycle last month, admits she still calls out for restaurant delivery.
And she adds with a laugh, ``It better be hot when it gets here. It better be crispy.''
Battle heats up
The clash between bikers and pedestrians has intensified recently:
- In New York, a 68-year-old man was killed last month when a Chirpin' Chicken deliveryman rode into him and knocked him to the sidewalk near the Museum of Natural History. The cyclist was ticketed for riding on the sidewalk but has not been charged with a crime.
Now Mayor Rudy Giuliani, known for busting squeegee men and three- card monte dealers and looking for new worlds to conquer after his re-election last month, has turned his sights on rogue cycle couriers. He calls them ``a big quality-of-life problem. It may be the thing that was most mentioned to me when I was campaigning.''
Police, some on mountain bikes, have set up traps for cyclists who run red lights. They have seized bikes from those caught riding on the sidewalk.
City Council members say they'll introduce a bill to hold business owners liable for their couriers' misdeeds.
- In Boston, a Federal Reserve Bank vice president was critically injured when he was hit by a bicycle messenger on Oct. 30 while crossing the street near his home. The cyclist was fined $220 for driving without a commercial license and invading the crosswalk. But he was not charged with a crime.
The incident has tapped a vein of resentment against what Boston police spokeswoman Margot Hill calls ``a form of bicycle road rage.''
The Boston Globe demanded action to ``save Boston's streets from descending into anarchy.''
Chamber of Commerce members are boycotting unlicensed couriers.
And, as in New York, police are promising stricter enforcement of commercial cycling rules (bikers must wear vests with license numbers), and officials are considering ways to make businesses who use couriers responsible for them.
Fighting back
In New York, Fran is fighting back: She hunts scofflaws on bicycle wheels.
Fran is a middle-aged professional dog-walker who doesn't want her real name in the newspaper. ``I see these people every day,'' she says of the delivery cyclists, ``and I don't want them to know where I live.''
Most days when she leaves her apartment, she takes along a bunch of yellow fliers on the city's commercial bicycle law. Stealthily, she sticks them into the baskets of delivery bikes chained to parking meters outside restaurants.
Sometimes, when she spots a food deliverer riding on the sidewalk, she'll politely ask him to get off.
Or she resorts to subterfuge: ``I'm new in the neighborhood. Can I have one of your menus?''
Other times she'll covertly tail the cyclist to his destination, grab one of the menus he's left behind in a apartment house lobby or hallway (``I know the doormen'') and mail it to her city councilman, who has a thick file on Fran.
Bicycle advocates say pedestrians such as Fran ignore their real, common enemy: the motor vehicle. Each year in New York City, motor vehicles kill about 250 pedestrians and injure 13,000. Bicycles cause one pedestrian death and 415 injuries every year. And not all of those involve commercial bikers.
Although they often are lumped together, bicycle messengers and food deliverers make different kinds of trips and pose different kinds of problems. Messengers, who deliver packages and letters in office districts, usually drive longer distances at higher speeds. They're trouble for jaywalkers (and sometimes for those in crosswalks) but have little use for the sidewalk.
Food deliverers, in contrast, typically cover shorter distances at slower speeds and might find it quicker and safer to stay on the sidewalk as they move from restaurant to apartment house.
Food deliverers often are illegal immigrants with a weak grasp of English and bicycle laws. Messengers are part of a native rebel subculture that dresses in everything from neon Spandex to hockey pads, speaks its own slang and often discounts safety.
The couriers blame their bad image on a system that pays by the package and according to urgency.
Usually the drive from the White House to Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., takes Shawn Blumenfeld 15 minutes. But he can do it in as little as four minutes if he has a rush delivery or needs to get on to the next job.
``The reason messengers go so fast through traffic is because we're paid so little,'' says Blumenfeld, who is self-employed. ``Every red light you go through, your risk goes up. It's all about how many chances you take.
``If you don't ride unsafely, you're not going to get paid enough.' '
Most couriers make between $3 and $6 a delivery, which adds up to about $300 to $700 a week. Most get no health insurance, workers' compensation, liability insurance, vacation or sick time.
``We're not the problem,'' Blumenfeld says. ``It's the boss who says, `If you don't go 30 miles an hour through traffic, you don't get paid.' ''
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