In the 19th century, Brooklyn earned the nickname “Borough of Churches,” but these days
it seems that “Borough of Bicyclists” might be more appropriate. That, at
least, was the gut sense I had a couple of weekends ago while I went down to
Grand Army Plaza.
I took the accompanying photo in Prospect Park, which is where you would
expect to see such scenes. But what struck me, visiting the neighborhood for
the first time in a quarter century, was the greater accommodation for
bicyclists outside the park, with lanes on adjacent Prospect Park West and
Eastern Parkway—and how many people were using them.
Much of this has to do with the city’s initiative in
recent years in making room for new lanes:
350 miles of them in the five boroughs since 2007, according to the
Department of Transportation. But, among the small but growing force of bicycle
commuters, Brooklynites take pride of place. Michelle Higgins’ article in The New York Times a week ago on this phenomenon quoted a 2008-2012 survey
indicating that half of the New Yorkers who say they bike to work come from
Brooklyn.
Biking is not a panacea for traffic and pollution
ills, but as a regular daily bus commuter into the Lincoln Tunnel, I can attest
to the havoc that one car can cause. The 27,000 New Yorkers who say they bike
to work, then, can make a material difference in the quality of life for the
entire tristate area.
All of this planning for bicycle routes must
inevitably sound to some conservatives like their worst nightmare of
centralized government control. But conservatives might be surprised to know
that one of their own called for an even more drastic program of this kind.
All of this is a more literally down-to-earth
version of a proposal floated by the late conservative icon William F. Buckley
Jr. in his quixotic 1965 campaign for mayor of New York. Buckley had no problem
calling for sharp curbs on welfare and busing to achieve racial integration,
but when it came to finding a solution to traffic, he was willing to call for
something that even the conventional liberal in the race, John V. Lindsay,
wouldn’t touch: a Manhattan “Bikeway”
that would “run 20 feet above ground, on both sides of the street,” with ramps
and parking areas.
Buckley may have wanted to capture some of the verve
of European cities such as Paris and Berlin with the idea, but he’d hit upon
something that, nearly a half century later, only has even more advantages.
Building “Bikeway”—even something along the lines of the High Line, as advocated by Eric Grannis in a New York Daily News op-ed piece—would not
only make bicyclists healthier and boost employment, but, by lifting the lane above
ground, would do much to lessen the safety issues arising from bicycles now
with insufficient room to navigate city streets.
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