Last month's Critical Mass bike ride ended in 34 arrests. Even the New York Times, no big fan of pesky bike radicals clogging up midtown traffic, has begun to notice that something has gone extremely wrong with the NYPD's approach to the once-peaceful monthly ride. Perhaps that's because this month Times reporter Colin Moynihan got roughed up, jacked against a car trunk and cuffed. His crime? Conducting an interview on the corner of E. 6th Street and Avenue A.

It was refreshing to wake up on Saturday morning and see the newspaper of record finally putting a name and a face to the inept and unlawful police crackdown: Assistant Chief Bruce Smolka, former boss of the disgraced and disbanded Street Crimes Unit, the cops who put 41 bullets in Amadou Diallo. The Metro section carried a prominent picture of Smolka in action, roughly dragging a young woman off the street by the collar caveman-style. If it's the same woman described in the news story, she is being arrested for trying to walk away from Union Square with her legs straddling her bike, her feet on the sidewalk. According to Smolka, that's illegal.

Just imagine all the arrests he could make in Portland, Oregon.

My friend Clarence Eckerson recently returned from a trip to Portland, and it sounds like his next visit may be on a one-way ticket. It would be a shame for New York City to lose Eckerson, one of the best bike advocates we've got. Fighting the colossal government bureaucracy, powerful corporate machinery and profound cultural inertia that keeps the city's automotive apparatus rolling (albeit slowly and with much horn-honking), can really run a man down, make him bitter, cynical, angry. Just look at me. Eckerson, however, is like Prozac on wheels, perpetually enthusiastic and making things happen. In his spare time he produces BikeTV, a bi-weekly program that airs on public access channels in New York City and around the country. (Wednesdays on Manhattan Neighborhood Networks channel 57, 9:30 p.m.)

Tonight's episode of BikeTV features Eckerson's Portland trip. He was blown away by what he found over there, especially the "bike boulevards." These, according to Portland City Bike Coordinator Roger Geller are "neighborhood streets with low traffic volume that generally work well for bikes but have been redesigned and engineered to work even better." Bike boulevards are "traffic-calmed" to force motorists to drive more slowly or avoid them altogether. In the places where bike boulevards intersect with busy arteries, the city installs special bicycle traffic signals, extends the curbs, and generally takes extra care to ensure that cyclists and pedestrians can cross streets safely. Portland puts so much love and attention into its bike infrastructure, the city workers who paint the bike lanes started adding funny hats and hair-dos to their cyclist stencil. What do you think the New York Post would have to say about that? The New York City Department of Transportation would have those guys fired by lunchtime the next day.

Geller describes the features found on Portland's bike boulevards as "just simple things." Yet, many of his DOT counterparts here in New York City would consider bike boulevards to be impossibly complicated to set up. So, how does Portland do it?

"We integrate all modes of transportation into every project that we do," Geller says. "Even if someone is working on a traditional roadway project they are still incorporating bike designs into it."

In fact, Oregon state law mandates that every road project include designs for pedestrians, bikes and transit users. The state has even set aside a special fund to pay for it. Not only is this unimaginable for Albany, of the 4,257 employees at New York City's DOT only four are dedicated to working on bike projects. Far from being fully integrated into the agency, they are ghettoized.

Eckerson's camera lingers lovingly at a bike lane that crosses directly in front of a busy highway on-ramp near downtown Portland. The spot is reminiscent of the BQE on-ramp below the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn where Transportation Alternatives' bike project coordinator Noah Budnick had his disastrous crash a few weeks back. Rather than forcing cyclists to ride a circuitous route away from the on-ramp as is done at the Manhattan Bridge, a high-visibility blue bike lane and large signs warn motorists not to speed onto the highway without first yielding to bikes. It works, and not just because Northwesterners are ridiculously polite. There is enough bike infrastructure and cyclists using it that Portland motorists have learned to look out for and live with bikes.

"Look at New York City," Eckerson says. "Our DOT puts cars first. In Portland, their DOT clearly goes through a thought process that puts pedestrians and cyclists first."

12:21 PM | Link |