It’s one of the ostensible reasons for opposition to bike lanes: Drivers complain the green strips take away “their” spaces and traffic lanes.
Turns out, people with cars and trucks aren’t the only ones who can’t find places to leave them when they’re not driving.
In spite of the warning, e-bikes have filled one of the two rows of bike racks by the Staten Island Ferry terminal. Critics of dockless bike share systems have at least one piece of evidence here.
But it also raises a valid question: Is it better to leave e-bikes and scooters in a rack where they don’t belong than in the middle of a sidewalk or other public passageway? At least those racked e-bikes aren’t making life for people with mobility issues more difficult. Still, if I had to park my bike and there were no free spaces in that rack, it might be more than an inconvenience—say, if I had somewhere to be.
I will, however, put things in perspective. Here is the biggest “parking” problem at the terminal—and throughout the city:
Some would say, “They should go to the shelters.” I have known a few people who’ve spent time in them. While a few say the shelters offer services and “you can get your life back together” in them, even they admit the shelters often turn people away because they’re overcrowded or simply can’t handle the problems some homeless people face. The overcrowding, along with some residents’ mental health issues and sheer despair and desperation, leads to theft, fights and worse. So it’s almost understandable, at least to me, that some people would “park” an elbow’s width away from the cyclists like me—and thousands of tourists—who stream by every day.
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