A Vision Beyond Vision Zero

Last night, I decided to take a bike ride before class.

Since beginning an MA in Social Journalism at CUNY remotely this past August, I spend more time seated in front of my computer than I’d like. In the before-times, my work kept me on the move. Now, I have to make time to get my body in motion.

I make my usual preparations: bike lights charged, helmet on, reflective clothing donned. I do all the things necessary to make myself visible to drivers and pedestrians.

I saddle up, check for oncoming cars, and glide into traffic. Peddling south on 7th Ave in Brooklyn, I’m immediately confronted by an obstacle ahead of me in the bike lane: a car, reversing towards me. I ding my bell and call out, “Bike lane!” as I swerve around them. Out of the driver’s side window, a man shouts, “Aww shut up!” I peddle on, and within a block encounter a pedestrian walking directly up the bike lane. I ding my bell, but he doesn’t acknowledge me. “Bike lane!” I call out, swerving around him, thankful there aren’t too many cars on the road. “I heard you,” he calls back.

For those who don’t know, bike rides are supposed to be fun.

A gif of me cycling down the Coney Island boardwalk early in the shutdown.

There are many things to love about riding a bike: the wind on your face, the pleasure of using your legs to get somewhere, and seeing the city from a different perspective among them. For me, though, what makes biking irresistible is the freedom.

I’m not beholden to a train schedule or a subway meltdown. I can’t be trapped underground in a metal box that isn’t moving. While I’ve definitely been stuck in traffic before, I’ve not yet been stuck on my bike.

Pre-pandemic, I worked as a museum educator and teaching artist in schools all across New York City. I loved this work, but with the MTA in an ever-growing state of crisis, and as MetroCard prices steadily climbed, the commuting eventually took a psychological toll. I was stressed and anxious all the time, knowing that no matter how carefully I planned my route, there was a good chance that I would get screwed by forces totally beyond my control. The train is 20 minutes late, and when it arrives it’s too packed to board. The bus never shows. This train is going over the F line, and the F is now an A, and it’s running local until just before your stop, where it will then immediately go express. For a person who likes to be in control, every commute felt like a nightmare.

One day I was looking at a map, and it hit me: cycling is the most direct route to the majority of my destinations within the outer boroughs. Were I willing to try it, I could actually get to most places by bicycle in less time than I could by train, especially in Brooklyn. In same cases, traveling by bike could cut my travel time almost half; in others, as much as a third. As my subway frustrations increased, my fear and hesitancy decreased.

I bought a cheap used bike from a friend and rode it home.

It was as though I’d found a magic carpet. It wasn’t just a bike: it was a source of independence, exercise, freedom and joy. Using my body to get me around made me feel strong and confident. Why hadn’t I done this sooner?

Sometimes people remark, “You’re such a badass,” when I talk about riding my bike in the city. I know they mean it as a compliment, but it sort of bums me out. No one should have to be a “badass” to simply ride a bicycle. It should be, and in many places is, perfectly possible for any one of us to get on a bike and safely ride it from one location to another.

The unfortunate reality, however, is that riding a bike in the streets of New York City is not always fun because it’s often scary. It’s scary because it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous both because we have ceded an enormous amount of our public street space to private car storage, and because our leadership refuses to invest in permanent, pedestrian-centered street design that would, quite literally, save lives.

Sea of Cars: A car drives over an unprotected bike lane to navigate around a car that’s double-parked, between rows of parked cars.

Semi trucks clamor down residential streets in Brooklyn.

A semi truck squeezes between a row of parked cars and a car that’s double-parked.

Bike lanes, if they exist at all, regularly have no permanent, physical barrier keeping cars and cyclists apart.

A cyclist squeezes between traffic in an unprotected bike lane.

These cyclists are technically in the bike lane.

Fingers crossed these drivers respect cyclists! Double row of cars on the left are all parked.

Vans and delivery trucks idle or park in bike lanes, forcing cyclists to fishtail in and out of vehicular traffic in order to navigate around them.

Amazon Prime delivery van idles in a bike lane directly behind a dumpster that is permanently blocking the bike lane. The cars on the left are all parked.

All of these vehicles are parked. If you were a cyclist, how would you navigate around this truck?

Bike lanes, if they exist at all, sometimes put cyclists directly in harm’s way.

Remind me.. how do people get in and out of cars?

All things considered, the paint the city slaps on the road starts to feel like municipal trolling rather than a good-faith attempt at infrastructure.

Cool.

All of this was true before the pandemic. But then… there was a pandemic.

There was an unusual moment in New York City between mid-March and June where a combination of shuttered businesses and residents working remotely meant that there simply weren’t many cars on the road. The city became noticeably quieter. The air was measurably cleaner. For a brief moment in time, cyclists could ride directly in the city streets without fear of aggressive drivers.

Many people rediscovered the bikes that had been collecting dust in their basements. Bike shops sold out of bicycles and saw record sales. CitiBike membership increased.

However, bikes weren’t the only thing New Yorkers bought during the pandemic. Wary of public transportation and feeling trapped by a city still under lockdown, people started buying cars.

We now have a dangerous problem: at the exact moment that more, and newer, cyclists are riding bikes than ever before, there are more cars fighting for precious street space.

The city’s failure to prepare for this predictable scenario has proved deadly. If 2019 was a bloodbath, setting a record 29 cyclist deaths, 2020 is on track to hit that record, and that’s taking into account the 2.5–3 month period when the citywide shutdown meant there was effectively no vehicular traffic on the roads. According to the NYPD’s own traffic stats, car crashes involving bicycle injuries are up compared to last year, even as all other crashes involving injuries -including those involving pedestrians- are down. The maddening reality is that all of this death and injury is preventable.

When asked why there hasn’t been a greater effort in New York City to expand bike infrastructure during the pandemic as other cities have done, Mayor Bill de Blasio simply said, “New York is different.” What, specifically, is it about New York City that means we can’t have basic, life-saving infrastructure?

There are problems facing our city that don’t have easy answers. This problem is not one of them.

During my time at Newmark J School, the community I want to serve is the noncompetitive cycling community in New York City.

No cyclist or pedestrian need die by car. All of the pieces are in place: we have the blueprints, we have will of the people, we have the space (so long as we’re willing to move our parked cars off of it).

We can prioritize our public spaces for people instead of machines. We can have safe streets, cleaner air, more space, and happier lives. All we’re missing is a leader with a vision. Until we have one, it will be up to organizers, journalists, small business owners, pedestrians and cyclists, working together, to find ways to organize and communicate with one another around a shared vision for our streets.