Stories You Should Read this Weekend
Great pieces from Escape Collective, Cycling Weekly, and Streetsblog, plus the first-ever, highly coveted Leg Day mayoral endorsement.
Leg Day is a newsletter about the pursuit of joy as a city cyclist.
As I’ve become the kind of person who willingly bikes through the rain four days in a row, I’ve learned a lot about how bikes and cyclists exist in our collective imagination. Even though the number of people that ride a bike in New York City rises every year, the activity is still seen as a niche. Cyclists usually get a kind of patronizing credit for the fact that our hobby is also a workout, but then get blamed for making streets feel chaotic and dangerous.
The latest chapter in the Bedford Avenue bike lane saga is evidence of this. The lane—which was only moved from the middle of the street to the left side, protected by parking and pedestrian islands, last September—is under threat. Earlier this month, our current mayor announced his DOT would be unprotecting the lane along the three-block stretch between Willoughby Ave1 and Flushing Ave. He seems to be doing it thanks to pressure from the area’s Hasidic community leaders, who have long opposed the lane2, as he gears up to kick his re-election campaign into overdrive. Earlier this year, a child was injured by someone riding an e-bike. The New York Post used the occasion to interview a rabbi and a business owner in the area who said that the bike lane has made them feel unsafe for their children.
This characterization is not backed up by the data. In the first five months of 2024, there were 88 reported crashes on the stretch of Bedford between the Grant statue and Flushing Avenue, injuring 51 people, including six cyclists and 10 pedestrians. One pedestrian died. This year, with the protected lane in place, crashes dropped by 18 percent (72 total) and total injuries dropped 25 percent (38). The biggest beneficiary has actually been motorists, but there was also one fewer injury to pedestrians this year. Most importantly: No one has died since the protected lane was finished being installed last November. The last time a pedestrian died along Bedford was on October 10, while the DOT was finally doing the work to make the infrastructure changes it promised would come before. the end of 2023.
Last week, I participated in a rally hosted by Transportation Alternatives in support of keeping the protected lane in place. We had just learned a judge had halted the plan to change the roadway, forcing the DOT to come back to court in August to argue that moving the bike lane back into the main road way in this section would improve safety. I honestly don’t know how they’ll do that, but I would urge any New York City cyclist reading this to take extreme care when you bike up Bedford for the next few months. You don’t want to be the lycra clad cyclist Eric Adams using to score a political point.
QUICK INTERRUPTION … I just made some new stickers for all paid Leg Day subscribers. The goal was to make something that promoted biking and cities, without being too mean to drivers. (Just a little mean.) I decided to do a flip of the “Thank You for Not Smoking” signs with a car instead of a cig. There’s definitely an argument to be made that the former is more dangerous than the latter!
I’ll be reaching out to paid Leg Day subscribers in the next few days to hand-deliver or mail them one of these. If you want one, consider upgrading your subscription! It’d help me a lot!
Speaking of Eric Adams, have you voted in the New York City Democratic primary yet? I voted last Saturday, on the first day of early voting. My mayoral ballot was Mamdani, Lander, Myrie, Blake, Adams, in that order. We can squabble over the ordering if you like—I was planning to rank Adrienne Adams higher, but was disappointed by some of her answers in the mayoral debate and her unwillingness to cross-endorse, even after Mamdani asked his supporters to donate to her campaign last month—but whatever you do, Do Not Rank Andrew Cuomo.
If you care about New York’s transit system, know that while Cuomo was governor he worked with suburban Republicans to take hundreds of millions of dollars away from the MTA to lower tolls on bridges and bail-out upstate ski resorts. If you care about housing, know that while Cuomo was governor, the average price to buy a home in NYC grew by 77 percent and the cost to rent grew by 52 percent. (He also used ChatGPT to create his housing plan.) If you care about New York City being an enclave against Donald Trump’s increasingly authoritarian encroachments, know that Cuomo’s campaign is being bankrolled by billionaires like Bill Ackman who love Trump.
I shouldn’t even have to say any of this. Cuomo resigned in disgrace from his position as governor just over four years ago, after a report he commission concluded that he had sexually harassed nearly a dozen women and retaliated against at least one who made her complaints published. It is shameful how many institutional Democratic politicians who called for his resignation as governor have rallied behind his mayoral campaign.
Please, vote to make it clear their decision was the thoughtless, short-sighted, hypocritical choice it was. Do not vote for Andrew Cuomo.
Four other stories you should read
The Mural That Said ‘All Bike(r)s Welcome’—and the Culture War that Followed
Cycling Weekly
Rosael Torres-Davis
Bentonville has become a well-known destination for mountain bikers, mostly thanks to investments from the Walton Foundation. Here’s a story about how a cute pro-biking mural in the city was almost painted over because some right wingers thought it had coded pro-trans rights messaging.
‘Chocolate helped me win’ – Emma Pooley on cycling’s dangerous obsession with weight
Escape Collective
Emma Pooley
Former pro racer and GCN presenter Emma Pooley has just released a cookbook of delicious things to eat while riding. In this story, she reflects on the unhealthy eating habits she was encouraged to adopt by some coaches and trainers as she moved up the ranks of professional cycling.
For formerly incarcerated New Yorkers, Citi Bike’s growth is a job opportunity
Gothamist
Arun Venugopal
Did you know that a lot of Citi bike mechanics are formerly incarcerated folks? I didn’t! This bit from the story almost made me cry.
Stacey Manning, 44, recently marked his first anniversary of working as a bike mechanic at Motivate. It’s the first job he has had, after spending 25 years in prison for murder.
Manning thinks of this job in spiritual terms. After all, he reasoned, these bikes get people around, and it’s partly up to him to keep them safe and alive.
“We're serving a divine purpose and a divine assignment,” he said. “For society.”
In These Capitals, Electric Bike-Share Will Take on Cargo
Government Technology
Skip Descant
Actually nice news: The bikeshare fleets in Columbus, Ohio and Washington, D.C. are apparently going to be getting electric cargo bikes in the next few weeks. This rules! If this was in New York, I’d be using them to do more of my shopping at the H-Mart in Sunnyside.
Funnily enough, as Streetsblog pointed out, Adams referred to it as Willoughby Street in his tweet about the bike lane change. This man was literally the president of our borough! How can you be so careless!
Their views are not necessarily representative of that of the broader population. Whenever I ride through this stretch of Williamsburg, I always see kids using the lane with scooters or little bikes. And you only need to spend 10 mins in Prospect Park on a weekday afternoon to learn that plenty of Orthodox Jews are roadies. I’ve seen enough talit fringe coming out from underneath Rapha kit to be disavowed of the common misconception that Hasidic folk only drive.