Wheely mad: TransAlt rages at attorney
BY LINCOLN ANDERSON
Call it busway rage.
Transportation Alternatives,
the pro-cycling and mass-transit
advocacy group, is seething that Village
and Chelsea residents have dared to
throw a monkey wrench into the city’s
“experimental” pilot plan for a 14th St.
busway.
And they are especially furious at
one man, a Villager whose name is
synonymous for them with a gunkedup
bike derailleur, if not a busted front
fork: Arthur Schwartz.
And they’re not just stewing about it:
They planned to protest at the activist
attorney’s W. 12th St. townhouse on the
evening of Wed., Aug. 14, and demand
that he withdraw his lawsuit, which is
currently derailing the busway.
Perhaps instead of pitchforks and
torches, they’ll be angrily brandishing
quick-release wheels, bicycle pumps
and MetroCards.
A press release for TransAlt’s protest
urges: “Protest Rich Residents From
Stopping 14th St. Busway.”
Meanwhile, Schwartz is fi ring back
that TransAlt are a bunch of fascistic
bullies for trying to intimidate him —
likening them to no less than Donald
Trump and the Ku Klux Klan. Going
on the offensive, on Tuesday morning,
he preemptively protested TransAlt’s
protesting him at the group’s 111 John
St. offi ces. He fumed that the group
crossed a line by blasting out his home
address.
Last Friday, Schwartz succeeded in
getting a last-minute court-ordered
stay from an Appellate Division court
to postpone the no-cars busway plan,
which was set to kick off this Mon.,
Aug. 12.
The stay was issued because Schwartz
on Friday fi led an appeal of the ruling
that had been issued just days earlier
on their anti-busway lawsuit by a State
Supreme Court justice, who cleared the
traffi c plan to start on Monday.
Schwartz has also been contesting
the new crosstown bike lanes on 12th
and 13th Sts.
In a press release Monday afternoon,
Thomas DeVito, TransAlt’s senior director
of advocacy, railed against the
community litigation as a “frivolous
lawsuit.”
“The West Villagers who fi led the suit
have used every dirty trick in the book
to delay needed improvements along
New York’s slowest bus line,” DeVito
fumed in the e-mail blast. “For them, it
doesn’t matter how slow and unreliable
our buses are for working New Yorkers,
or how straightforward and obvious
the fi xes are. Their only concern is
preserving parking for themselves and
keeping anyone else off their street.”
DeVito apparently was quoting from
The Villager’s report on the stay being
Village District Leader Arthur Schwartz, right, was joined by Michael
Schweinsburg, of 504 Democrats and Disabled in Action, at Wednesday’s
rally about Schwartz’s lawsuit to restore M14 bus stops.
granted last Friday, when he wrote,
“Their lead lawyer, Arthur Schwartz,
has asked publicly ‘who uses the bus?’
and he has fl ippantly acknowledged that
his clients gladly chipped in ‘a thousand
dollars here, a thousand dollars there’
to perpetuate his capricious lawsuits.”
The Villager article read: “The attorney
said that, after Tuesday’s defl ating
State Supreme Court ruling, he had
asked members of block associations
fi ghting the city’s plan if they supported
appealing the decision, and the answer
was overwhelming.
“ ‘I said it might cost $5,000 to
$10,000 to print the record,’ he said,
referring to the paperwork — in multiple
copies — required to fi le the appeal.
‘I got a great reaction… Everyone was
pledging $1,000 here, $1,000 there.’ ”
DeVito’s e-mail continued, “What’s
happening today on 14th St. is a
hyper-empowered minority using their
wealth to deny better bus service for
27,000 working commuters.”
The transit advocate noted the protesters
planned “to congregate in front
of Arthur Schwartz’s $10 million
brownstone to demand he drop the
lawsuit.”
In a statement to this paper early
Monday evening, Schwartz unloaded
on TransAlt, calling them nothing less
than un-American Trumpian fascistic
bullies.
“TransAlt, in deciding to picket the
house of a lawyer, who represents clients,
to demand that ‘I drop’ their case,
is engaging in a form of bullying which
is in the tradition of Donald Trump, and
has nothing to do with how we function
in a non-fascistic Democratic society,”
he declared. “I do not drop that word
lightly, and I am asking lawyers from
around the city, and my elected representatives,
to join me on my stoop.
“I might also add that for an organization
whose top offi cials make
$200,000 per year running a nonprofi
PHOTO BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELL-DOMENECH
t, their complaint that Village and
Chelsea residents active in block associations
are ‘rich,’ is demagoguery similar
to that we see emanating from the
White House.”
About six hours later, Schwartz sent
out an e-mail announcing he intended
to hold a press conference Tuesday
morning outside the Lower Manhattan
offi ce of TransAlt, which the attorney
described as “the $4.5-million-per-year
cyclist lobbying group.”
“This kind of undemocratic bullying,
reminiscent of how white-hooded zealots
would threaten white lawyers who
represented black people in the South,
or dictators who threaten lawyers who
represent unpopular fi gures, needs to
be called out,” Schwartz proclaimed.
“I represent everyday residents of
Chelsea and Greenwich Village,” he
said, “people who speak for Greenwich
Village, and Transportation Alternatives
is taking the fi ght to my home,
where I live with my wife and teenage
children, for one purpose only — to intimidate
me.”
Schwartz, who is the Village’s male
Democratic district leader, called on
other elected leaders, including Mayor
Bill de Blasio, Comptroller Scott Stringer,
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams
and Council Speaker Corey Johnson,
“to stand with him” on Wednesday
night when the enraged TransAlt protesters
were to descend on his home.
It didn’t sound like he had any takers,
though.
Meanwhile, Schwartz also called a
press conference for Wednesday morning,
at 11 a.m., on the south side of 14th
St., just east of Fifth Ave. — where a
bus stop was recently removed as part
of the newly implemented Select Bus
Service on the M14 route.
At the press conference, Schwartz
announced his second lawsuit related
to the 14th St. traffi c changes — to demand
that the city restore the removed
bus stops. His plaintiff in that case will
be Disabled in Action, a group representing
disabled New Yorkers.
In a quote announcing the event,
Schwartz said, “We need to talk about
how the city, in its quest for bus
speed, has abandoned folks in wheelchairs
and walkers, has not addressed
the real concerns of the affected communities,
how we are not a ‘wealthy minority
group of landowners,’ but representatives
of thousands of people who
live in the Village, Chelsea and Flatiron
and have for decades.”
The Steering Committee of the 14th
St. Coalition urged its members, “Bring
handmade signs with messages like:
‘COMMUTERS ARE NOT MORE
IMPORTANT THAN COMMUNITIES’;
‘STREETS ARE FOR EVERYONE’;
‘THE BUSWAY PROMOTES
ABLEISM’; ‘WE ARE NOT AN EXPERIMENT’;
‘NOT EVERYONE
CAN RIDE A BIKE’; and ‘SAFETY
BEFORE LOBBYISTS.’”
Members of the Coalition, which
includes Village and Chelsea block associations
and large residential condo
buildings, fear if the busway happens,
neighboring side streets would be fl ooded
with cars diverted from 14th St., and
that the fi rst-of-its-kind scheme in New
York would wreak havoc on 14th St.,
as well. They were disappointed by two
tweets Comptroller Stringer made last
week about the issue.
“Today should have been a triumphant
day for bus riders in Manhattan,”
Stringer tweeted last Friday, after the
stay blocking the busway was issued.
“Instead we are stuck with the failed
status quo. I stand with those fi ghting
for a world-class bus system in New
York. We need projects like the 14th
St. busway.”
In an earlier tweet, last Tuesday,
Stringer praised the fi rst ruling, which
would have allowed the project to go
forward:
“This is terrifi c news,” he trumpeted.
“Thanks to all the advocates who
fought tirelessly to make this day a reality.
Now — let’s get our buses moving!”
The 14th St. Coalition members took
Stringer’s tweets personally, saying it
was “calling us the failed status quo.”
The Coalition, which was the lead
plaintiff in Schwartz’s previous two
lawsuits on the 14th St. plan, actually
is not part of this latest suit, though a
number of its block association members
are.
Stringer is a candidate for mayor, as
is Speaker Johnson, who has vowed to
“break car culture” in New York City.
6 August 15, 2019 TVG Schneps Media