Shame on You Brooklyn Marriott

I know I'm always harping on this, but come on!

According to the Marriott web site, the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge boasts "1,100 indoor parking spots" - so why don't you use them instead of allowing the bike lane that is the most direct access to the Brooklyn Bridge for cyclists to be abused?

In a neighborhood already overrun by 'special' parking permits for the local, state and federal courts, do we really need 'protected' livery cab parking?

On the other hand ...



With bike lanes like this, who wants to ride in them anyway?

Why I Hate Bicycling in NYC

At least they said please.

I actually love bicycling in NYC. Just as long as I don't have to stop - anywhere, for any reason at all.

Don't go shopping, don't go to the bathroom, and god forbid, don't try to go to work.

They won't let you in.

Watch For Cyclists

This is my new favorite sign.

The bicycle exit ramp off the Manhattan Bridge is so confusing and dangerous that the city just put this gigantic construction sign up at the intersection of Canal and Bowery to warn car traffic coming off the bridge to 'watch for cyclists'.
I'm not sure that it's working quite the way they thought it would.
I'm still getting honked at, cut off and sped by.
Maybe the sign should blink between "Watch For Cyclists" and "Then Don't Hit Them."

but hey ...

It's the thought that counts, right?

Bike Path Shame

Today was a perfect day for a ride, and Brooklyn was the place to ride - as evidenced by the endless stream of cyclists pouring off the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Bloomberg Administration has worked hard at changing the perception of this city from that of one big traffic jam, to an environmentally and athletically friendly place.

They even took the time to put together a cycle-specific tour of the waterfalls, which judging by the crowds, a lot of bicyclists are taking advantage of.

How sad is it then that two of the major bike thoroughfares in Downtown Brooklyn/Brooklyn Heights, are perpetually unusable.
This scene is the norm for the Henry Street bike path, and the Adams Street bike path is even worse.



(That's a Prius on the end, by the way)

I have lots and lots of problems with the bike paths in NY, but one of them is NOT that they exist.

That after decades of struggle by cycling advocates, they exist to be used as parking for the First Presbyterian Church and the Marriott Hotel, - that is a problem.

Sunday Riders

I haven't been on my bike since the 5-boro due to an injury, so even though the weather looked a little questionable, I hauled my out-of-shape self onto my bike and headed out for a spin.
Like any good urbanite, I try to avoid certain key, congested areas when I travel from place to place. These are dependent on weather, season, day of the week, time of day, and like a London Cabbie, 'the knowledge' is a source of pride amongst those of us who make this city our home.
So today, I decided to bike to Harlem for brunch with a friend - and promptly regretted it.
Why? Well, my schedule has been a bit bizarre recently so I forgot one very important fact.

Today was Sunday.

And Sundays are for Sunday Riders.

Sunday Riders in NYC fall into three distinct categories:

1. The Date or Family outing.
Riding hybrids or cruisers, these cyclists will do anything to avoid riding in traffic including riding on sidewalks and going the wrong way in bike lanes. They ALWAYS ride abreast, never in line and are impossible to pass.

2. The Tourist.
Riding rental bikes, these daring adrenaline junkies are found only on the West Side Bike Path doing no more than 8 mph and can most often be seen stopped in clumps checking to make sure that they aren't lost. (Hint - It's a bike path, not a bike maze, it goes in a straight line.)

3. The Weekend Warrior.
These lycra bedecked athletes are out in force once the weather warms up, time trialling up the Hudson with their heart rate monitors and handlebar mounted GPS.
I don't actually have a problem with most of these guys. Hey, we all gotta pay our bills, and for most of us, that means no play time during the week.
The ones I have a problem with are the headphone wearers.
I get that music makes a work out easier. It's motivating. But given the crowds on the path on the weekend, cyclists wearing headphones make me homicidal.
We've already got the power walkers, joggers, and roller bladers wearing headphones. As cyclists, you've got to have experienced the insanity of trying to pass someone on a crowded path who's meandering all over the place and can't hear you behind them. Add deaf cyclists doing anywhere from 10 to 20 mph into the mix, and it's just hair raising.

Now, I'm not advocating something like this:



It's called a "CyFi" and quite frankly, I hope if you get one of these, you ride where I don't. But at least you might hear me when I tell you that I'm going to pass.

Cyclists Get Bridge Path. Now, How to Get to It?

(Quoted from the New York Times)
By ANDY NEWMAN

New York City's bicyclists love the newly restored bike and pedestrian pathway over the Manhattan Bridge. Really, they do.

But in the five weeks since the path opened, most cyclists have concluded that reaching it from the surrounding streets ranks somewhere between a headache and a nightmare -- even worse than the gnarly Brooklyn-side approach to the Brooklyn Bridge, which requires crossing as many as 15 lanes of traffic.
...
Cyclists riding south on Bowery toward the bridge have no direct approach to the entrance, and on Friday, a crossing island was also cut off by illegally parked police officers' cars.

Mr. Primeggia said that while difficulty reaching the bridge was not ''identified as an issue'' during construction of the path, the agency was investigating after complaints from Transportation Alternatives.
...

My favorite thing about this article?
It's publishing date...

August 6, 2001


To read the complete article, go to The New York Times Archive

Manhattan Bridge Update

CYCLIST'S TRAGIC TURN
BROOKLYN BREWERY FOUNDER'S SON KILLED



This is the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge Bike Path from the Brooklyn Side. Once you find this and cross it, it's a breeze. There's a fancy new on-ramp, and the North side is (technically) only for cyclists.
Of course, this street is the entrance to the BQE in one direction, the Brooklyn Bridge, in the other, and, if you'll notice, cyclists are asked to ride in the cross walks because they couldn't engineer a safe route onto and off the bridge that allowed us to ride as vehicles.
This means that you have to merge into traffic from the sidewalk.
The Manhattan side is much worse.
I've been riding the newly re-opened North side for a month now and I still can't figure out how to safely and legally get on and off the bike path.
It's great that the path is open, but this trend of patchwork bike paths and lanes with no thought to how cyclists access the routes is going to get more and more people hurt and killed rather than making it safer to ride.
If we are in traffic, then we are traffic.
Making cyclists unpredictably ride to the left, to the right, on sidewalks, and then merge with traffic is a tragedy that isn't waiting to happen. It happens every day.

I was posting only yesterday about my ride across the Manhattan Bridge.
My use of the word 'suicidal' was meant to be ironic, but in light of what happened to Sam Hindy, it's not a joke.
Sam encountered a different issue from the one I'm describing, but I think they are all connected.
Traffic patterns that make no sense lead to accidents.



By JOHN DOYLE, ERIKA MARTINEZ and LUKAS I. ALPERT
(Quoted from the NY Post)

A DAD GRIEVES: Devastated father Stephen Hindy (left) says son Sam was an avid cyclist. The 27-year-old was killed when he fell from the upper deck of the Manhattan Bridge yesterday.


November 18, 2007 -- A man whose father co-founded the Brooklyn Brewery was tragically killed in a freak bike accident on the Manhattan Bridge when he fell more than 20 feet from the upper roadway onto the lower section of the span, police said yesterday.
Sam Khaled Hindy, 27, and a friend were headed to Brooklyn when they accidentally rode their bikes onto the upper part of the bridge reserved for automobile traffic at 11:50 p.m. Friday.
When they realized they were in the wrong lanes, they turned to go back to the entrance of the lower roadway on the Manhattan side, where bicycle and pedestrian paths are located.
But as they made their way back, Hindy struck a barrier, sending him flying down onto the lower roadway through a split in the bridge, landing next to a car, police said.
"A bicycle hit the right side of my car. I didn't see the guy. I thought it was garbage bags. He didn't hit my car, he hit the street," said Joachim Romage, 62, who was driving his 1995 Toyota Avalon across the bridge at the time.
"I was so shocked. How can someone riding on the upper level flip over?"
Hindy was rushed to New York Downtown Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 12:30 a.m. yesterday.
...
Noah Budnick, of the cycling advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, said the entrance to the bridge's bicycle path has long been a problem because it is not clearly marked.
"The traffic is so thick around the bridge and the street grids are so confused that without a map or experience, it's understandable how someone could be misled and end up on the roadway," he said.
Stephen Hindy said his son - who had recently moved back to New York from Boston and worked as a computer engineer for the Internet advertising company DoubleClick - was an avid bike rider who frequently rode between Brooklyn and Manhattan, although he usually went across the Brooklyn Bridge.
...
to read the complete article go to the NY Post
Or see related articles: Bicyclist Killed in Fall on Bridge
Son of Brooklyn Brewery owner dies in accident

The Green Half Mile Parking Zone

I'd like to give a shout out to the First Presbyterian Church just past Clark street, in Brooklyn Heights, for guaranteeing the failure of the city's experimental bike lane paint job.



Throughout the week I find the lane blocked by occasional parked cars making drop-offs or pick-ups from the church, but it's on Sunday when they really shine.



After all, who in their right mind would want to use a bike lane on Sunday morning?
I guess if I'm not in church I must not count.

Almost perfect, Prospect Park

This was going to be an entry about how beautiful today was. How much I love this weather. How great it felt to get back on my bike for the first time since the century. But instead, it's back on my soapbox I go.
Today is Saturday, right?
There are no cars allowed in Prospect Park on weekends, right?
Saturday is considered part of the weekend, right?
So how come every single time I turned down onto the East Drive I got passed by a car?
Now, don't go blowing this picture up to report the license plate on this car. This one was just unlucky to get caught on camera by me. It was the other 8 or 9 that got me steamed.
The first one, ran right up the asses of these two kids on BMX bikes and honked at them to get them to move. Another one honked at me as it blew by doing about 30 mph. The others just scared people who didn't expect them to be there.
There is a special place in hell reserved for motorists who honk at cyclists.
I can hear you, OK?
I am not the one who is hermetically sealed in a metal box with air-conditioning running, a radio blaring, and my face permanently attached to a cell phone. Before you ran up behind me, I was enjoying the quiet sound of the wind and the click of my wheels.
I don't want to be in your way any more than you want me there. I will move over as soon as it is feasible. You do not see the pot hole on the shoulder or the glass in the road.
If you have come up on me too fast for me to react, then surely blowing an airhorn at my back and surprising me, will make me more capable of getting out of your way.
Give me one good reason why it is OK to honk at a group of kids who have the right of way in a park?

Green, huh, Good God Y'all...

What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again...




I always thought this was a protected parking lane that belongs to the Brooklyn Marriott on Adams Street - and apparently I'm not the only one.
I have never once seen this clear of cars and never once seen anybody trying to do something about it. Until they painted the damn thing puke green, I never even knew it was there.

To read up on the Adams Street bike lane, go to the Transportation Alternatives Magazine Archive
Here's an edited selection of what you'll find.

Dear Brooklyn Marriott:
I travel for business about twice a
month, and whenever possible, I stay at
Marriott Hotels. When I am not travelling,
however, I commute every weekday to my
Midtown office by bicycle via the Brooklyn
Bridge. This takes me past the Brooklyn
Marriott every morning at about 6:30 am
on the new Adams Street bike lane.
Frequently, taxis and car service limos
are parked illegally at the curb directly in
front of the Marriott; meanwhile, the Mar-
riott driveway is almost always empty. This
forces me and other cyclists to swerve out
into traffic as we pass the hotel. This is
extremely dangerous, exposes Marriott to
liability...




The Marriott replied:
Thank you for sharing your concern
regarding bicycle safety, particularly the
Adams Street Bike Lane.
Since the Bike Lane opened in late
1998, the hotel has been addressing the
problem you have mentioned.
...the New York Marriott Brooklyn has been
attempting to keep the appropriately
designated areas in front of the hotel as
clear as possible. However, our staff has
encountered verbal and attempted physical
abuse as we attempt to police the area...

Ken Schwartz, GM
NY Marriott Brooklyn


"staff has encountered verbal and attempted physical abuse as we attempt to police the area"

Whoa. How about the lone bicyclist who is trying not to get killed?



I've got a radical idea ... How about the Police police the area?

Before you get too excited about the fact that the Marriott and/or NYC is attempting to address this issue, keep in mind that the pictures were taken today...
and the letters were written in 1999.

Nuff said.

The Green Half Mile

Daily News - Riders say abrupt end to bike path on busy road is dangerous
Brooklyn cyclists are seeing red over a new bright-green bike path in Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill.
Bikers and advocates said they have no problem with the brightly painted Henry St. path itself, which they said makes the lane stand out better and helps keep cars from parking there.
But they charge the popular new lane abruptly ends at Amity St., just south of Atlantic Ave., where Henry St. becomes too narrow for a car to safely pass a bike.

Brooklyn Heights Blog
..."why is the bike lane on Henry Street being painted such an awful shade of green? It’s hideous, and it seems more of a distraction than a safety aid. What gives?"

Kermit’s Bike Lane

hideous!!! and what precisely would make a driver think: green=cyclists?
it’d be so much clearer & safer if they just bother to actually repaint the bike-lane signage with fresh (& reflective) coats every now & then.
instead, idiot bureaucrats let the paint coats deteriorate & fade away, then decide (genius) to splatter the whole of Henry St in puke-green.

I haven’t gotten around to seeing it yet, but I am curious how slippery it will get when it rains (or is the paint not that thick?)


- I've been seeing so much stuff about this recently that I figured I might as well share a penny's worth of what's on my mind.

I hate the green bike lane.

(and here comes the other penny)

The flat all-over color makes it almost impossible to identify the many obstacles that they've arbitrarily painted over, like - manhole covers, inset utility access holes, and potholes. It's like navigating an obstacle course with night-vision goggles on.
It's slippery when wet - and not in a fun Bon Jovi way either.
The color hasn't changed motorist's driving (and illegal parking) habits in any way. By far the worst offenders stop in front of the First Presbyterian Church just past Clark street, and painting the lane hasn't given them pause.
For some reason, every Tom, Dick and Harriet, Yellow Rat Bastard T-Shirt wearing, we're too cool for helmets, cruiser rider, feels like the green lane should allow them to ride the wrong way down the street on it.

And finally, now that it's dirty, it's just FUGLY.

The scariest part of the Daily News Article?
"The green path is the first of its kind in the city. If successful, other bike lanes also will be painted, officials said."

Argh.

Doored

...or why I hate riding on Manhattan's East Side.
I must be eligible for some sort of prize as of today. I think it would be called "most failed attempts at riding the periphery of Manhattan by one individual". I just can't make it work, and I don't know why.
Well, I sort of know why...
I feel like I know where I'm going when I'm in Manhattan, so if I miss a turn or two, I'm never that worried. "I'll just catch the next entrance", I say to myself. Only, I'm wrong.
Whenever I try to ride completely around Manhattan, I screw it up.
According to the Official NYC Bike Map, there is a (basically) unbroken line that goes around the island. This is a lie.
The West side of the island is quite lovely to ride on until you hit (Pet Peeve Alert), the parking lot of Fairway Supermarket at 125th street. After a little deadly intersection detour, it becomes one of my favorite stretches of bike path in the five boroughs. It passes through Riverbank State Park and then Ft. Washington Park (with a little detour to the Little Red Lighthouse), up along the Hudson into Inwood and the Cloisters.
It was a lovely day for a ride. Sunny, but cool, a little too windy for comfort - I almost got blown over a couple of times, but that's always the downside of riding near the water.
I got to portage my bike on the Henry Hudson Drive to get around some construction. I was impressed to see the workers set up on either end to help bicyclists heft themselves and their bikes over the barriers and across the highway - it was a happy bicycling high point of the day.
The low points followed in quick succession from there.
I followed the greenway signs across Dyckman to the Harlem River Drive Bike Path which quickly disintegrated into a broken glass covered on and off road excursion. Somewhere near Jumel Terrace, I picked up St. Nicholas Avenue and instead of turning left, I went straight.
This is not a disaster. Manhattan is very narrow, so when I figured it out, I turned. My best guess is that this is where I screwed up. Like little red riding hood, I strayed from the path.
My original plan was to go over the Triboro bridge into Queens and then ride down to Brooklyn, but somehow, at 125th street it all went wrong.
125th street is the bane of my bicycling existence. On the west side, it's where my happy, traffic - less riding ends. On the east side, it's where I ALWAYS get lost. Crossing on it is like attaching your mouth to the exhaust pipe of a bus.
The last time I tried it going north, I ended up in a sanitation storage yard where they store sand in enormous piles. And I don't mean that I left the bike path - the bike path ends in the giant pile of sand. The time before that, I ended up accidentally going over the Willis Avenue Bridge into the Bronx. This time, I was sure my plan would work.
I rode to the entrance of the pedestrian walkway of the Triboro and stopped short. It was gated shut with a sign that read, "Closed. Please use the walkway on the North Side." I crossed 125th street again (and the 6 lanes of on ramp, off ramp bridge traffic). The pedestrian walkway was gated shut with a sign that read, "Closed. Please use the walkway on the South side." Umm, WTF?
Is the Triboro closed to Bicycle traffic right now? Or is it my 125th street juju that makes it impossible for me to figure this out?
I sighed heavily and set off along the East Side of Manhattan.

Now some parts of the path are quite nice. And the sections in the North are fairly empty of pedestrian and bike traffic. But trust me, it may look like a path on the map, but it's not.
First of all, it's made of hexagonal concrete tiles, very bumpy on road tires. Second, though parts of it are quite beautiful, they end abruptly in flights of stairs that you have to carry your bike up or down. Third, when heading South, the section from 55th street through 34th street runs on 2nd Avenue. Not next to 2nd Avenue, not marked with a bike lane, just follow the NYC greenway signs straight to the bus lane.
So I was cranky and possibly not concentrating as hard as I should as I swung off onto Sutton Place and promptly got doored by the passenger side door of a car parked at the edge of the bike lane. I did a nice little slide on my elbow between the idling car and the moving traffic, leaving a bit of myself embedded in the road, but my bike seems ok and the rest of me is just slightly more bloody and banged up than normal.
I hate riding on the East Side of Manhattan.

Thanks for the door.
What do you do when you get doored?

Less than a month...

I just figured out that the NYC Century is in less than a month. I know this comes as no surprise to people who
a: have been training for it, or
b: can read a calendar, but I, apparently don't fall into either of those categories because it came as a shock to me last weekend when I realized how little time I had left.
So in classic Bike Dummy form, I chilled out on the pier for a while with my dog and a friend, had some coffee, read the paper - and then decided to go for my 'long ride' of the week.
It's hard for me to plan rides. Everyone in the NYC area seems to go on the training ride up to Nyack on the Jersey side of the Hudson. I'd love to do that sometime, but my schedule's sort of crazy and I don't know any other cyclists who want to do distances, so at the moment, that means going alone.
The thought of cycling by myself through unknown parts of Jersey freaks me out. It's like traveling to a foreign country where I don't know the customs and can't speak the language. At least in most of NYC, if I run into a problem I can hop on the subway and get myself home. Once I cross the George Washington Bridge and start heading north I get visions of dark misty roads, with me holding my crooked wheel in one hand, a flickering flashlight in the other, calling out softly into the dark..."Hello?...Is there anybody out there?..."
So I decided to go the other way.
My first stop was Red Hook. I've been reading a lot about how quickly the IKEA is going up on the waterfront down there and decided to take a look at the 'progress'. Without starting a blog war about development, I will say that I wish as a city we would look to our own historical examples of expanding the beauty and enjoyment of our extensive waterfront, ie. the west side promenade and bike path or the Bay Ridge shore parkway promenade and bike path, instead of forgetting the examples of our waterfront failures, ie. the west side promenade's 125th street detour under the highway to avoid the Fairway Supermarket, or the shore parkway's ignominious end in the parking lot of Kohl's department store just before it reaches Coney Island. Can't we make a plan for public use of the waterfront BEFORE we give it all away to big box stores? I'm not arguing against IKEA, I'd just like to see the possibility of continuous public loops around the waterfront. Every new store that builds at the water increases the probability that the greenways of the city will remain isolated from each other.
OK, stepping down off of the soapbox.
So, Red Hook. I went down around Fairway and tried to get up near the IKEA, but there were roadblocks and the streets to get around the other side are all cobbles, so I decided to leave that for another day. For those who don't know, Rocky Sullivan's, the long-lived east side Irish bar lost its lease and has moved down to Red Hook.
If any of you thought you still might find a real estate 'bargain' down there, I suggest you revisit that. Red Hook has been bought and paid for.
It's a great neighborhood, but possibly better for walking than biking. The street surfaces are way too uneven for it to be pleasant on a road bike.


Next stop, across the mouth of the Gowanus and onto Third Avenue.
Third Avenue is pretty gross to bike on and normally I would avoid it altogether, but it's the quickest way between Red Hook and Bay Ridge where I was going to pick up the shore parkway bike path. The saving grace of Third Avenue is that you are riding under the Gowanus Expressway, so on a hot day it's shaded.
I didn't see much visible damage in Sunset Park or Bay Ridge from the tornado that touched down earlier this week. They've done an amazing job of clearing most of the downed trees and branches already.
The view from the Veteran's Memorial Pier in Bay Ridge is one of my favorites and on Saturday it did not disappoint. The refinished (until the bridge) bike path is smooth and usually uncrowded. Even with the headwind, it's a great place to let rip for about 2 miles before the surface gets crappy again. The next 3 miles are cracked, bumpy, narrow and occasionally covered in broken glass, but the view is lovely, and the alternate would be Cropsy Avenue (which bites).
The end of the shore parkway bike path is an example of one my favorite urban planning snafus - greenways that end at malls. On Saturday, it was the site of some kind of indeterminate demonstration that involved some megaphones and people milling about.

I went online after I got home and discovered this:

DATE: SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2007 NATIONAL MARINA DAY
TIME: 11:30 A.M.
PLACE: Bay Parkway and Gravesend Bay (near Kohl’s
Shopping Center): The entrance to the Bensonhurst
Promenade along Gravesend Bay

PROPOSED WASTE PLANT CHURNS UP THE FIRST EVER
FLOTILLA IN BENSONHURST ON NATIONAL MARINA DAY

ASSEMBLYMAN WILLIAM COLTON VOWS TO FIGHT THE PROPOSED
SOUTHWEST BROOKLYN WASTE TRANSFER STATION BY LAND AND
BY SEA WITH LAUNCHING BENSONHURST=92S FIRST EVER
FLOTILLA PROTEST SPECTACLE

AS BOATERS WILL CONVERGE IN THE WATERS OF GRAVESEND
BAY IN A SHOW OF UNITY, PROTESTERS WILL GATHER ON LAND
OVERLOOKING THE BAY TO CONDUCT A SIMULTANEOUS
DEMONSTRATION OPPOSING A PROPOSED WASTE TRANSFER
STATION SLATED TO OPEN IN BENSONHURST

Point#1 - Who knew there was a national marina day?
Point#2 - I must have blinked, because I totally didn't see a flotilla of anything.
Point#3 - I'm sorry that I did miss the flotilla, because it was probably really cool.

To see my route, click on the map to go to bikely.com.
For part two of the ride, tune in tomorrow.