One valid criticism of bike lanes, and bicycle infrastructure generally, is that they’re constructed mainly in gentrified or gentrifying neighborhoods. Whenever someone suggests that the lanes, bike parking facilities and bike share programs into neighborhoods populated by people who are darker or poorer than those in Williamsburg or Chelsea, the excuse for not “sharing the wealth ,” if you will, is that “people don’t ride bikes” in areas like Jamaica, Queens.
That is a point Samuel Santella makes on Streetsblog. He lives in Saint Albans, a southern Queens community that is a “transportation desert:” it is not served by the New York City subway system and only a couple of bus lines traverse it. So, its residents—nearly 90 percent of whom are Black—either drive or, like Santella, ride their bicycles, whether to their destinations or to the subway in nearby Jamaica.
Sound on for commentary pls 🙏 pic.twitter.com/HHzMHZhQSI
— Samuel Santaella 🚎🤝🚲 (@TransitNinja205) November 11, 2021
Many New York City neighborhoods like Jamaica have a “downtown” that is a commercial district and transportation hub. Santella, as he recounts in his piece, rides to Jamaica to take the subway to Brooklyn. He shows how it’s difficult to cycle safely on any of the thoroughfares that lead to the train stations. Hillside and Jamaica Avenues are essentially “stroads,” while Archer Avenue has a bus lane that are, technically, illegal for cycling. And all of those streets are chaotic messes of delivery vehicles and “dollar vans” that ferry people from neighborhoods like his to the subway and Long Island Rail Road (yes, it’s spelled as two words) stations.
I know what he’s talking about: I sometimes ride those streets. As a matter of fact, I cycled them almost daily for seven years, when I worked at York College, in the middle of Jamaica. I experienced some of the pandemonium he describes, which is undoubtedly worse than it was when I was making the commute in pre-pandemic, pre-Uber days when SUVs, while growing in popularity, didn’t dominate the roads as they do now.
