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COURIER L 6 IFE, SEPT. 27-OCT. 3, 2019
Driving change
Motorists organize to undermine bike lanes
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
You’ve heard of the so-called “War on
Cars” — now meet the resistance!
Car-owning Brooklyn residents are
gathering in churches throughout the
borough to plot the destruction of bike
and bus lanes in their communities,
which one former pol blamed for the
downfall of the middle class!
“If you’re trying to get rid of my car,
it’s almost like you’re trying to take
away the middle class family, because
biking is not for everybody,” Renee Collymore,
a former Fort Greene district
leader.
One recent gathering at Fort Greene’s
Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church
on Sept. 17, dubbed a “Townhall on the
NYC War on Cars,” invited motorists
to discuss policies that redistribute the
city’s transit wealth away from drivers
— axing parking spaces in favor of bike
lanes and eliminating driving lanes to
make way for dedicated bus lanes — as
car owners seek to retake the roads, according
to one Clinton Hill resident.
“We want to be on the game board,
we want to be noisy enough that we’ll
get their attention,” said Shellie Hagan,
who organized the meeting along with
Fort Greene resident Lucy Koteen and
Community Board 2 member Ernest
Augustus.
The bike lane rebels aren’t shy about
drawing some heavy comparisons, and
fl iers advertising the Fort Greene town
hall emulated German Pastor Martin
Niemöller’s famed 1946-poem “First
they came,” which condemned complacent
dissenters amid the rise of National
Socialism.
“First they took away traffi c lanes.
Then gas stations. Now they’re coming
for the parking,” the fl yers read.
The advertising campaign was not
too effective — only about a half dozen
car lovers showed up for the meeting —
but the Fort Greene town hall follows
a gathering in Park Slope earlier this
year, where locals packed Seventh Avenue’s
All Saints Episcopal Church to
condemn a bike lane on Ninth Street.
Both meetings eschewed the offi -
cial pipeline for extending gripes to
city government — community boards
— as motorists embrace a growing resentment
of the boards’ volunteer civic
gurus, whom Hagan called out of touch
and ineffective.
“The community boards don’t really
represent the neighborhoods, it’s just a
giant bureaucracy and even when you
do get something through the board,
they’re just advisory and politicians
will ignore them when it’s convenient
for them,” Hagan said.
Instead, the drivers are organizing
their own gatherings and inviting local
politicians to hear from them directly.
Council Majority Leader Laurie
Cumbo spent about 40 minutes at the
Fort Greene meeting and a representative
for Borough President Eric Adams
was present at the Park Slope meeting.
Adams was not swayed by the drivers’
outrage, according to a spokesman,
who said the Borough President remains
committed to enhancing traffi c
safety and building bike lanes
“The borough president has been
an active supporter of the Ninth Street
bike lane, he was there at its ribbon cutting,
and he conducted a bike ride down
Ninth Street to highlight safe streets
needs,” said Stefan Ringel in January.
But if the drivers are organizing
meetings in an effort to be heard, they’re
creating opportunities for the opposition
to express themselves as well, and
insurgent bike and safe-street advocates
invaded both gatherings, with cyclists
outnumbering drivers at the Fort
Greene town hall four to one!
“The people who are going through
the trouble of organizing these forums
are a pretty small minority that is
averse to change,” said Eric McClure,
who co-chairs Community Board 6’s
Transportation Committee. “For advocates,
the reason they show up is that if
electeds are there, they see that the car
owners view is not monolithic.”
Now Park Slope drivers are inviting
Councilman Brad Lander (D-Park
Slope) to meet at Eighth Avenue’s
Church of Gethsemane on Wednesday,
Sept. 25, but they’re going to really have
to pack the pews if they want to outnumber
the cyclists, according Hagan,
who suspects the bikers will show up in
force.
“If you’ve got a cause you better show
up for it — the bikers, they do that,” she
said.
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boroughs. For more
info, email
CareNYC@scsny.org
or call 877-577-9337. CARE NYC is supported in part by a grant from the
New York State Department of Health
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www.silvagniandcomolaw.com
Bedford-Stuyvesant safe streets advocate Joe Paski (left) butted heads with former district
leader Renee Collymore (right) at the “War on Cars” town hall in Fort Greene on Sept. 17.
Photo by Kevin Duggan
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