I wold like to see DOT pay close attention to the swarms of pedestrians who flood into the bike lane on 6th Ave in midtown at evening rush. (I don't pass through there during the morning rush as there are better southbound routes, so I can't speak to that.) It is as if seven or twelve sports arenas have all let out at once, and the masses bulge over the sidewalk into the unprotected lane quite easily. While some will openly walk for half a mile in the bike lane, others use it as a kind of shoulder and will suddenly pop out into it. I can illustrate how dangerous this becomes for cyclists with a story. I was once nearly hit by a black car because I had to swerve to miss a pedestrian who kept darting unexpectedly deeper into the bike lane without bothering to look for oncoming bike traffic. After pasing him once, I stopped ata a light, but he jaywalked, and got ahead of me again, and the next time he darted out proved damaging to both my body and my livelihood. Since the road was wet, opting neither to hit the pedetrian nor to be hit by the black car meant that I went down, sliding a good ten yards up a busy boulevard, scraping up my whole right side--it was summer so it was bare skin--and wrecking my laptop. This further reduced my ability to work and I could by no means afford to buy another one. The driver of the black car I was avoiding stopped, and a handful of very kind pedestrians stopped, but the one pedestrian I had twice had to avoid hitting just stepped over me into the street and went on his merry way, no doubt shaving two minutes off his walk to Grand Central and thus winning the macho commutathon for the day. I was largely unharmed--though bleeding in four places and covered in grit--but it could have been far worse had the black car driver not also taken care. That bike lane becomes all but unusable during the evening rush.
I wold like to see DOT pay close attention to the swarms of pedestrians who flood into the bike lane on 6th Ave in midtown at evening rush. (I don't pass through there during the morning rush as there are better southbound routes, so I can't speak to that.) It is as if seven or twelve sports arenas have all let out at once, and the masses bulge over the sidewalk into the unprotected lane quite easily. While some will openly walk for half a mile in the bike lane, others use it as a kind of shoulder and will suddenly pop out into it. I can illustrate how dangerous this becomes for cyclists with a story. I was once nearly hit by a black car because I had to swerve to miss a pedestrian who kept darting unexpectedly deeper into the bike lane without bothering to look for oncoming bike traffic. After pasing him once, I stopped ata a light, but he jaywalked, and got ahead of me again, and the next time he darted out proved damaging to both my body and my livelihood. Since the road was wet, opting neither to hit the pedetrian nor to be hit by the black car meant that I went down, sliding a good ten yards up a busy boulevard, scraping up my whole right side--it was summer so it was bare skin--and wrecking my laptop. This further reduced my ability to work and I could by no means afford to buy another one. The driver of the black car I was avoiding stopped, and a handful of very kind pedestrians stopped, but the one pedestrian I had twice had to avoid hitting just stepped over me into the street and went on his merry way, no doubt shaving two minutes off his walk to Grand Central and thus winning the macho commutathon for the day. I was largely unharmed--though bleeding in four places and covered in grit--but it could have been far worse had the black car driver not also taken care. That bike lane becomes all but unusable during the evening rush.
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