This is Street Wars, a weekly series on the battle for space on New York’s streets and sidewalks.
At first glance, the Queens neighborhood of Bayside certainly looks like an idyllic place to ride a bike. Far from the chaotic noise of Manhattan, under a wide-open sky, small, low-slung houses sit set back from the curb on shady side streets. Neatly clipped lawns burst with blue and pink hydrangeas. One house has a homespun “Welcome” sign with a strawberry in place of the “o.”
But in front of that house, just to the left of its perfectly trimmed hedges, stands a red sign with white letters: NO BIKE LANES.
Across the street is another red sign, and then another. Up and down Oceania Street. Along 53rd Avenue. There are signs next to driveways. Next to parked cars. Across from the elementary school and the middle school. Near the church. At least two houses with statues of the Virgin Mary, arms open in a gesture of kindness and compassion, also have scolding red NO BIKE LANES signs.
There are, in fact, bike lanes in Bayside, and in the adjacent neighborhood of Fresh Meadows, where more red signs can be found. And more bike lanes are coming to Queens. The new lanes, where the signs are, were installed last fall and encourage sharing the road in an area that is mostly a public transportation desert: Bayside has a Long Island Rail Road station, but you’d have to walk an hour to get to the closest subway.
The sign campaign is proof that every block in New York is a battleground, and city officials face a multitude of challenges as they try to accommodate all the ways streets are used, from neighborhood to neighborhood. In Queens, there are cyclists who clamored for the new bike lanes as a matter of safety. And there are residents who resent the lanes because they replaced parking spaces in front of their houses.
The local community board has been pushing for bike lanes for years. Proponents have argued that they are especially important as connectors between local parks.
The city Department of Transportation has worked to design and build new bike lanes in Northeast Queens in close coordination with residents, said Vincent Barone, a spokesman for the agency. “Their designs have proven to significantly improve safety for everyone on the road — whether you’re walking, biking or in a car,” he said.
Since the coronavirus pandemic, Kenneth Cheng and his wife have been putting their two children, ages 4 and 6, on the back of their bikes to ride down Oceania Street.
Cheng was excited to see the lanes installed, especially those with a physical barrier between the cars and the cyclists. “We feel safe riding it,” he said. “I actually love it.”
His family uses the bike lanes to get to local parks and the greenway — a 40-mile, continuous pedestrian and cycle path that connects various green spaces. Plus, his kids can use their kick scooters on them, which means, he said, “I could get some exercise instead of driving my kids to school.”
John Kelly, a street safety advocate and former community board member, grew up just north of Kissena Park, and still lives and bikes in Queens. He pushed for connectivity between the various parks in the eastern part of the borough.
“These bicycle lanes? They’re not built for me,” Kelly said. “These bike lanes are built for kids to go to school and built for kids to go to the park.”
But some residents clearly aren’t happy about it.
Rashan Fray, a Fresh Meadows resident and special education teacher, started a Change.org petition to stop the bike lanes. More than 800 people have signed it.
“The vast majority of the people in the community did not want these bike lanes and do not want the bike lanes,” he said. “They were just put up there against our will.”
Fray said that his neighborhood lost at least 60 percent of its parking spaces to bike lanes. “Everyone here drives,” he said.
Because of the bike lanes — and the “no stopping” signs that accompany them — residents, many of them older, have to park farther away from their homes. “Someone coming in with grocery bags or something like that, who’s in their late 70s, is trying to lug these things because of these bike lanes,” Fray said.
Though the lanes have already been installed, he said, “the signs are still up everywhere in solidarity against this thing that has been forced on us.
“The people are letting it be known that they do not consent to this intrusion into their lives and neighborhood.”
Kelly, who owns a car like most of his neighbors, doesn’t think much of the parking argument.
“We’re not really taking away anything from anybody,” he said. “It’s more of like, an affront to their right of having a free parking spot in front of their house.”
Laura Shepard, the Queens organizer for Transportation Alternatives — a nonprofit organization working to decrease automobile use — called the red signs and petition against the bike lanes “really misguided.”
“It’s a very bizarre culture war,” she said. Like Kelly, she’s been part of the push for street safety in Queens and said that the new lanes are already making a difference.
“It’s a total game changer to be able to bike safely,” she said. Without dedicated bike lanes, she said, many people are deterred from cycling. “When you have wide streets with no bike infrastructure, drivers go pretty fast, and it’s very intimidating.”
Shepard grew up near Bayside and still lives in Queens. She noted that there are a lot of single-car households in the area, meaning that other members of the household need alternate ways to get around. Interest in micromobility — bikes, scooters and e-bikes — has grown, she said.
“Most people, even if they’re not cyclists, they know somebody who is,” Shepard said. “And most people don’t explicitly wish ill on other people, or for them to be unsafe.” But the red signs, she said, send a message “that these homeowners feel that their convenience or their parking spots are more important.”
Every Sunday at 9 a.m., weather depending, about 30 people meet at the Unisphere sculpture in Flushing Meadows Corona Park for the Queens Social Ride, a bike journey through the borough.
Eric Harold started the event when Covid hit. “I saw a lot of my friends were suffering through loneliness,” he said. “There were also a lot of people buying bicycles who didn’t know where to go. And, you know, I know Queens like the back of my hand. I grew up here.”
He leads the ride at a leisurely pace; it’s not a race. And his route varies, deliberately. “If you ride with us every week, eventually you will see every section of Queens,” Harold said.
By day, he’s an aircraft mechanic, and he owns a car. When he works a day shift, he finds it faster and easier to bike to work, especially with the new technology of electric bikes. “We have to accept that the modes of transportation future generations are going to be using are going to be changing,” he added.
Harold has seen the NO BIKE LANES signs in Bayside. “Once someone told me about the signs, and the next week, we did a ride through there,” he said.
He stopped the ride, briefly, in front of one of the signs, and everyone posed, with their bikes, for a group photo.
Cycling cycles back, again and again
Biking in New York City ebbs and flows in (ahem) cycles but has been popular for over a century.
In 1925, a New York Times article declared: “A New Generation Discovers the Bike.” Apparently the youth were no longer interested in automobiles and roller skates and “had to turn back to the thrills of a bygone generation,” riding a bicycle.
Fast forward to 1941: New Yorkers went “awheeling” through Central Park, and bicycle sales had “reached an all-time high” of 1,300,000.
“War Increases Bicycle’s Popularity Among Women,” read a headline in 1942. The Times reported that Eleanor Roosevelt had recently acquired a bicycle, but added “she has not yet learned to ride.” However, the article noted, “the return of the bicycle as a means of recreation has not yet given rise to a definite trend in women’s sports wear.”
In 1960, the trials for the U.S. Olympic cycling team took place in Central Park, and in 1967, New York’s City Council passed a bill to require bike paths in parks.
In 1970, cycling was called “the individualist’s mode of transport” and the Times included a photo of Bobby Short, the famous singer and pianist, riding down an avenue in Manhattan. Also pictured? Stewart Mott, the philanthropist, cycling in a tuxedo.
By 1980, the city was “working on a plan” to register bikes “amid a mounting toll of accidents,” and in 1987, commuting by bike was on the rise — but cyclists had complaints.
“I am tired of feeling like a criminal,” said Mylene Anderson, a Transit Authority employee, and a bike commuter for more than a decade. Before embarking on a ride across the Brooklyn Bridge, she said, “I get flak from pedestrians, cars, the Mayor, the police — people don’t realize this is such a plus for the city.”
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