By Margaret Gordy

Newsday, July 23, 1987
 

The Bicycle Problem [and the pretend that there is no car problem - M]
 

	Incidents	Injuries	Deaths
Collisions with   pedestrians	640	668	3	both cyclist and ped injuries but all deaths peds - M
Collisions with   vehicles	2953	2594	9	all deaths were cyclists - M
*Collisions betweeen   vehicles/peds	?	15000	about 250	all deaths were peds -M

 *[Note: There is no record of how many of these incidents involved messengers or who was at fault, but of course Police opinion blames messengers. Also this article carefully excludes the numbers involving collisions between pedestrians and motor vehicles. The greatest threat to pedestrians is motor vehicles but no ban was considered for them. - M]
 

Bicycle Lane  Bicycle Riding Prohibited

The city will ban weekday bicyclists from three midtown avenues in a three-month experiment aimed at protecting pedestrians from speeding bike messengers, Mayor Edward I. Koch announced yesterday.

The pilot program, starting Aug. 24, "will test whether restricted bicycle access in heavily congested areas improves safety without impairing the ability of bicycle messengers to earn a living," Koch said.

There were 640 collisions between bicyclists and pedestrians in New York City last year, injuring 668 people and killing three. There were 2,953 accidents involving bikes and vehicles, resulting in 2,594 injuries and 9 deaths.

Police and traffic officials say the majority of those pedestrian injuries were caused by bike messengers, of which there are an estimated 7,000 in the city.

The problem is becoming more acute, they say, because increasing numbers of messengers are riding brakeless bikes and because they are riding the wrong way on oneway streets in an effort to cut travel times.

The new restrictions will apply from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays on Park, Madison and Fifth Avenues from 59th to 31st Streets. That area has been the site of 51 pedestrian-cyclist collisions in the first five months of this year, according to the Police Traffic Enforcement Division  -  more than half of all such incidents in midtown.

Violators will be subject to fines.

The plan was immediately condemned by bicyclists as ineffective and unenforceable.

"What we are seeing today is a diversion," said Roger Herz, of Bicycle Transportation Action, a group of 62 civic and community leaders. "As far as I know, it has never before been done in any American city, and I believe it is of doubtful legality."

The plan has won full support from city Transportation Commissioner Ross Sandler, who acknowledged that "there is irony here, because I am often a recreational bicyclist."

But it won only grudging support from Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward, who is assigning 20 officers to enforce the new rules. "If it works as well as the mayor's last experiment, then we'll abandon it after three months and go on to something else," Ward said dryly.

The city's last attempt to reroute bike traffic occurred on Oct. 15, 1980, when the city installed concrete-and asphalt barriers creating separate, 6foot-wide bike paths on Sixth Avenue and Broadway from Central Park to 8th Street. The paths became troughs filled with trash, broken bottles and brackish water, increased traffic congestion and attracted only 1,700 of the city's 20,000 weekday bike commuters. The barriers were removed after 29 days.

[****(Appeared in NS edition)    Since then, the city has advised bicyclists to keep to separate lanes on Sixth Avenue and Broadway, but Ward said the rule is often ignored by both bike riders and motorists.

On the three midtown avenues where bicycles are banned, DOT surveyors will check the number and distribution of bike accidents and whether there is "excessive displacement" of bike traffic onto Lexington, Third, Second and First Avenues.****]

In response to community complaints, the Police Department has almost tripled the number of summonses issued to bicyclists last year, from 6,578 in 1985 to 19,148 in 1986. But only 11 percent of those violators ever responded to the summonses, according to a recent survey by City Councilwoman Carol Greitzer (D-Manhattan).