At Bloomberg's shark tank unveiling, he talks about the fear of bicycles
Bloomberg at the New York Aquarium. Dana Rubinstein
4:22 pm Aug. 16, 20121
At an event unveiling the design for a brand new, $130-million shark exhibit at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island, Mayor Michael Bloomberg answered some questions about bike share, bikes, and people's fear of them.
"I have a friend who was hit by a bicycle in Central Park just last week, got a concussion, and it really is disturbing when it happens," said the mayor. "That's the bad news. The good news is it really happens very seldom."
The Daily News has been on a tear recently, sending reporters armed with speed guns into Central Park to record speeding cyclists, and today, on its front page, featuring the story of a blind man who was hit by a cyclist and suffered a fractured pelvis, among other injuries.
Asked about the issue today, the mayor, whose transportation commissioner has vastly expanded the city's cycling infrastructure and is generally quite popular with cycling enthusiasts, cautioned against overreaction.
"Keep in mind, the number of people hit by bicycles is really, very, very small, particularly if you look at the number of pedestrians that are hit by automobiles or trip and fall," he said.
"What we've got to do is understand that if we want to have more bicycle lanes and more bicycles, bicyclists are going to have to, like everybody else, act responsibly," he continued, adding, "and if you did a front page article on everybody that was hit by an automobile, you'd never have another front page."
Speaking of bicycles, a reporter asked about the city's bike share program, Citi Bike, which was supposed to launch by the end of July, but hasn't. Other cities launching similar programs with the same operator, Alta Bicycle Share, have also been experiencing delays.
Both Alta and the administration have been oddly tight-lipped about the reason why, with the mayor simply referring, repeatedly, to "software" problems.
Today was no different.
"We're getting very close," he said. "Look, everybody wants to say there's a secret agenda here. The software doesn't work. And putting it out when the software doesn't work, it wouldn't work. Period. And so we're trying to find out when we can put a date that we're sure or reasonably sure that it will work. And we're trying."
Here are some renderings of that aforementioned shark exhibit, which will feature 40 individual sharks and replace the existing exhibit, pictured below.
From the outside:
From the inside:
As it is now:
Hey, headline writer (probably not the author herself): Your windshield perspective is showing. When the Mayor emphasizes how rarely bike-on-pedestrian collisions happen, and when he goes on to say "if you did a front page article on everybody that was hit by an automobile, you'd never have another front page," shouldn't the headline be about the hazards of cars (far worse in both frequency and severity), not the "fear of bicycles"? One expects bike-bashing bias from the Post (or, sadly, the Daily News in recent days), not from an otherwise intelligent publication. Whatever anyone may think about Mayor Bloomberg's positions in other areas, his comments here are in accordance with the facts -- both the measured fatality/injury stats and the reality experienced by every pedestrian and every cyclist.
Never forget that automobiles are a destructive and wasteful technology that has proven impossible to integrate peacefully into urban life. If you're a New Yorker, you're a pedestrian, and if you're a pedestrian, King Car is your enemy, even if you've knuckled under to its unearned domination of street space and accepted the damage it does as "normal." Compared with the planet-frying, bone-breaking, blood-shedding, graveyard-filling, air-befouling, landscape-uglifying, Saudi-enriching (and thus terrorist-supporting) effects of cars, the occasional damage wrought by a rash or inept cyclist is negligible. The Mayor wouldn't say it that bluntly, but he appears to recognize it. The editors of responsible magazines and newspapers should do the same.