BY KEVIN DUGGAN AND JOE HITI
Their motto is courtesy, professionalism,
respect — except
when it comes to bike lanes!
Police offi cers and city bureaucrats
are illegally parking
their cars in a Downtown
Brooklyn bike lane at all hours
of the day, leaving one out-oftowner
to question why have a
bike lane in the fi rst place.
“You can tell bike lanes are
not really respected,” said Canadian
Dan Pavlich.
The Schermerhorn Street
bike lane between Nevins and
Smith streets is fl anked by numerous
municipal buildings,
where the offi ces of the Police
Department’s District 30 Transit
Bureau, the Human Resources
Administration, and
the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority can be found.
And while workers there enjoy
their own designated parking
spots, unmarked vehicles
featuring police placards and
other law-enforcement paraphernalia
COURIER L 16 IFE, OCT. 4-10, 2019
on the dashboard
routinely park in the bike lanes
and sometimes in the middle of
the road, ensnaring traffi c and
creating a hazard for cyclists
and pedestrians, according to
one frustrated cyclist
“It’s chaos and gridlock and
impossible to bike through
safely,” said Blythe Austin, who
volunteers with the safe streets
advocacy groups Transportation
Alternatives and Families
for Safe Streets. “It’s also very
dangerous to cross as a pedestrian
there.”
Two inspections by Brooklyn
Paper’s Bike Lane Action
News Bureau on Sept. 25 and
Sept. 30 discovered two dozen
vehicles blocking the bike lane,
along with a handful of doubleparked
cars on the street.
About a third of those had
police placards in their windshields,
while others made do
with Police Department-issued
vests, jackets, and one camoufl
age-patterned notebook with
Downtown cyclist and safe streets advocate Blythe Austin said the bike lane on Schermerhorn Street — including
a Citi Bike dock — is routinely blocked by illegally-parked cars. Photo by Kevin Duggan
an American fl ag and an NYPD
shoulder patch on top of it.
One passing cyclist said “It’s
terrible,” while another said the
painted lanes have essentially
lost their intended function.
“It’s not a bike lane, it’s a
parking lane,” said the rider,
who declined to give his name.
And it’s not just drivers
blocking the bike lane. A construction
site had setup Porta
Potties on and placed traffi c
barriers around the bike lane,
despite Council enacting a law
last June allowing the Department
of Transportation to revoke
a builder’s permit to use
part of the street for construction
if they don’t provide an adequate
detour for cyclists.
Austin noted that she saw
a traffi c agent ticketing cars
over the weekend, but said she’s
skeptical any of summonses
were issued to police or bureaucrats.
“City offi cials do not want to
police each other,” she said.
A transit cop leaving the
Schermerhorn Street station
in plain clothes blamed deliveries
to nearby supermarkets and
other government agencies for
the parking problems.
“A lot of space is used up by
food deliveries at the supermarket
and people dropping off at
the HRA offi ce,” said the cop,
who didn’t provide his name.
One offi cer blamed the mess
on the construction, while another
Boy in Blue simply refused
to comment.
“I can’t comment on that,”
he said.
Requests for comment to
the Department of Transportation’s
and the Police Department’s
press offi ces went unanswered.
‘It’s a mess’
Cops using Downtown
bike lane as parking lot
They count on you,
So count on us to
keep you going.
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