A Bike Lane Network: The Community Wants It. Can The City Get It Right?

Sometimes, when I don't have all day, or even morning or afternoon, to ride, I'll take a spin out to the eastern Queens, the New York City borough where I live (in its western end).  The routes between my Astoria apartment and Fort Totten or Alley Pond include some charming residential streets, cute shops and some lovely parks.  

But as the urban-but-not-claustrophobic character of my neighborhood also gives way to more spacious yards, the neighborhoods also become more suburban--and auto-centric.  While some residents of those areas ride for fitness or simply fun, they ride to and in parks and cycling isn't seen as a means of transportation.  Also, the city's mass transit lines don't reach into those neighborhoods.  So, for most people, going to work, school or shop means driving or being driven.

That is why on at least some of the area's streets, cycling can be just as hazardous as it is in more densely-populated neighborhoods.  Too often, drivers simply aren't accustomed to seeing cyclists on the streets.  Or, they have been inculcated with the notion that the drivers rule and cyclists, pedestrians and everyone else are supposed to get out of their way. Thus, so-called "shared" roadways--which consist of nothing more than lines and bike symbols painted on pavement--do nothing to promote safety.

Also, eastern Queens is laced and ringed with major highways.  The off-ramps from those by-ways merge into the neighborhood's main streets like Northern Boulevard.  One problem with the bike lane on the Boulevard is the difficulty in crossing one of those exit ramps, where there is no traffic light or even a "stop," "slow" or "yield" sign.

The problems I mentioned were cited by members of Community Board 11 when they sent back a proposal the City's Department of Transportation presented to them.  The proposal called for a series of bike lanes in a five square-mile area.  While the Board is in favor of establishing a network of lanes, the DoT's initial proposal called for fewer miles of them, none of which would have been protected.  Worst of all, at least in my view, this "network" would have the same problem I've encountered in too many bike lane "networks":  It's not a network.  Lanes weren't connected to each other; they are the "bike lanes to nowhere" I've complained about in other posts.  One board member pointed out that the lack of connection between segments actually puts cyclists in more danger than simply riding on the road.

As I often ride out that way, I am interested to see what the DoT does in response.  I am just happy that in an auto-centric area, community board members see the value in having a network of protected bike lanes. I hope the DoT gets it right. 

The Gates To The Seasons

Today I took out Tosca for the first time since the week before Christmas.  In fact, this is the first time any of my Mercians have been out since then.


At Alley Pond Park, we got an interesting welcome:

The "gate" is in Alley Pond Park, near the Queens-Nassau line.  I hadn't been there in a long time.   In fact, the last time I was there, I was on a mountain bike.  So were the three guys who were riding with me.


We didn't need--or, in my case, want--an open gate or door. We used to feel more drawn to entrances like this one:

We were young.  They were guys; I was living as one--and trying desperately to show that I was one of them.  We wouldn't talk about the signs of spring we saw or felt; the seasons didn't really matter.  Nor did the quality of the light.  Actually, I cared about that and other things I didn't talk about then.  

At the end of the day, there was the day's ride and the bike.  Some things don't change.  In fact, even though I'm not and probably will never be in the kind of shape I was in back then, some things are better.  That includes the ride and the bike.

Each of them has brought me to the gates of a new season.

Trails And A Track, Then and Now

For the last couple of days, I think I've had some version of a summer cold.  I have felt congested and tired, and a bit weak.  So I didn't cycle today.  However, yesterday I rode to a couple of places I hadn't been to in a while.  Neither is very far from me, but I just haven't had occasion to go to them.

One was a place where I used to ride off-road with a few guys I used to know.  It's at the far end of Queens, near Nassau County.  I rode on the dirt paths in the woods of Alley Pond Park, which even in the most suburban part of New York City, seems bucolic.  I didn't try any of the jumps we used to do:  I haven't done them in a long time and, frankly, a lot of what I did in that park--and off-road generally--I did to show off.  Yesterday, even though I felt myself riding slowly, a man about my age who was riding one of those bikes that you'd think was a bargain if you found it for about ten dollars in the Salvation Army store looked at me and yelled, "Whoa, lady, slow down!"

Hmm....Maybe I am a fast woman after all.

I had gone to the park after the real purpose of my ride, which involved meeting with the chair of the English Department at a community college not far from the park.    I actually had met her once, years ago, in the only other time I had ever been on that campus.  I don't know whether she remembered me:  Back then, I was still one of those guys riding on the trails in Alley Pond Park, among other places.  I didn't mention that to her.


I started to think that it might be good to work there, and with her.  It'd be a fairly lengthy commute, but if I were to pedal it regularly, I'd really get into good shape. Even in the unlikely event that she remembers that brief, long-ago meeting with me (which wasn't bad), I'm not sure it would matter.  I don't think anyone else in that college knows who I am.  That, as you might have guessed, is one of the reasons why I thought I might like to work there. 


Save for Sheldon, who now works at Bicycle Habitat, I have not seen any of those guys with whom I used to ride the trails since we rode those trails.  They are like some other people from my past:  I would be curious to see them again, to see what they look like and what they're doing now.  I'm not so sure, though, that they'd want to be friends with me, or that I would with them.  They weren't bad guys, but our whole relationship was that of guys doing those rides together.  They may not be the same sorts of guys I knew then and, well, I'm not a guy.  And they may not be riding anymore, or they may be riding differently. 


And, in the course of my ride, I stopped somewhere else where I used to ride with some other people I haven't seen in years:  the Kissena Velodrome.  Yesterday, only one cyclist, a young and shy Latino, was pedalling on the banked oval.  

Ironically, Robert Moses built the Velodrome.   He was not known as a friend of cycling, or of anyone who isn't behind the wheel rather than astride two, or on his or her own feet.  (His motto could have been auto uber alles.) Two of his best-known projects, the Verrazano Narrows and Whitestone Bridges, don't have paths for pedestrians or cyclists.  And the Major Deegan Expressway, which he also built, has made it all but impossible to pedal across the Bronx from the George Washington Bridge, not to mention that it destroyed a few neighborhoods and was instrumental in the decline of the Bronx.


I used to ride on the 'Drome, as we called it, on a Bianchi track bike.  I'm talking about the real thing, not the prototypical hipster fixie you see everywhere.  The one I rode was an older Italian-made Bianchi, with a lugged frame made from Columbus SL steel tubing.  How real a track bike was it?  The geometry was right, the dropouts were those nice thick rear-facing horizontal ends you see on track bikes and--yes, here's the clincher--neither the front fork nor the rear stay bridge were drilled for brakes.  I could have drilled that front fork for a brake, but in those days, that seemed sacrilegious.  Besides, I didn't ride it on the streets:  If I wasn't on the Velodrome, I rode it on an enclosed loop that was closed to traffic, such as the ones in Central and Prospect Parks.  

Women's National Championship at Kissena, 1964

I thought, for a moment, about riding a lap or two.  Would that have made me the first woman to ride it in a dress?  The idea was tempting, especially since the track was in much better condition than it was back in the day.  Back then, one of us joked that we were going to design the first dual-suspension track bike specifically to deal with the Kissena surface, which at times resembled the Ho Chi Minh trail after a monsoon.


One of these days, I'll go there with Tosca.  Its geometry is not quite as aggressive, I think, as that of my old Bianchi, and it does have some amenities to make it more rideable on the road.  But it's actually a better-quality bike and, being a Mercian, has a bit more character.  I've been told that these days, I do, too.