Cries of “Who’s chairing this meeting?” received the most applause at Community Board 7 Monday night as opponents of the new Columbus Avenue bike lane drowned out board members for over two-and-a-half hours.
The bike lane has been paved through Columbus Avenue from 77th to 96th streets—narrowing the current traffic lanes to three working lanes, one “floating” parking lane, and the bike lane.
Many residents are riled up about the new lane, which started construction in August. The new lanes were intended to reduce congestion, encourage bicycling, and improve pedestrian safety.
Tila Duhaime, a community organizer for the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance, described the project as “not just a bike lane, but an entire street redesign that includes the protected bike lane, dedicated loading facilities for commercial establishments where there weren’t any before, dedicated left-turn lanes that help improve sightlines for turning vehicles, and somewhere around 28 new pedestrian refuge islands, which are really good for pedestrian safety.”
Some supporters showed up to the meeting to challenge the project’s vocal opponents.
“I think it’s wonderful,” resident Jillian Lazaridis said. “In fact, it’s too little too late. Columbus Avenue is like a highway—Amsterdam’s even worse—and if anything can be done to slow down the traffic, I am all for it.”
Linda Alexander, a vice-chair of CB7, praised the concept of the five-lane street, saying she’s seen it executed well in other areas of the city, like in Chelsea or on Broadway in the West 50s. But, she said, “They’ve screwed up egregiously on Columbus Avenue. Between 81st and 83rd Streets, they’ve knocked out 17 parking spaces. They’ve made it impossible for those merchants to get deliveries or make deliveries. They can’t do business. That’s simply bad planning.”
At the meetings of the Community Board, Alexander said she hopes that “we’ll get some parking spaces back. First and foremost they have to return the merchant parking, maybe give them some kind of signage for merchants only. However they do it, people have to do business. And the backups are insane. The timing of the left-turn lights is off, so sometimes traffic is down to one lane, with delays from the light and double-parked cars.”
Still, opponents ultimately outnumbered supporters and shouted down board members.
Resident Joseph Schiff pointed out that trucks, which already frequently double-parked on the street to unload, are now sometimes forced to triple-park.
“Why? Because they can’t park in the floating lane, but they have to deliver something on the east side of the street,” Schiff said. “Today, there was an emergency and the fire truck couldn’t get through. You’re dealing with human beings, and human beings don’t always follow rules.”
Richie Zingone, owner of the grocery store Zingone Brothers between 82nd and 83rd streets, spearheaded the petition against the bike lanes.
A sign in his store window expresses opponents’ biggest concern: that the lanes are inappropriate “on a commercial avenue” and “better suited on Central Park West, … Riverside Drive, or West End Avenue,” which are all noncommercial. A signature book inside the store collected over 200 signatures against the bike lane in just a week.
At the meeting on Monday, Zingone grew increasingly angry as he ticked off his problems with the lane, emphasizing that people getting out of cars are forced to open their doors to automobile traffic on one side and cyclist traffic on the other.
“I walked to almost every business last night, and I talked to a manager or an owner and I asked them how they felt about the bike lane,” Zingone said. “When they were asked, they said no [to the lane]. So how are they coming up with so many yes votes? I want the DOT [New York City Department of Transportation] to interview every business, and I guarantee it would be over 90 percent against.”
At the meeting, Zingone had to be restrained, and calmed down when he slammed down his papers, walked over to a representative from the DOT, and yelled, “How many people are you going to fire? I have to fire someone this week because you put this lane in.”
Residents became extremely agitated when DOT representatives attempted to explain why the plan originally presented to the board ended up looking so different from original proposals.
“We were told the bike lane was going to be on the other side and parking was not going to be affected at all,” said Andrew Fisher, owner of Royal Opticians on 81st Street. “Were there no plans given to the board showing exactly what would be done before it was done? Now we’ve found that because we have no parking, disabled people, nobody can park. My business has really been rocked by this.”
The few “mixing” left-hand turning lanes the DOT plans to install, for example, would knock out seven parking spaces each.
“You can’t just unilaterally come along and implement something,” Fisher said. “Nobody told us anything. If you had, it would have been voted down, and you wouldn’t be here right now.”
A smattering of applause prevented any counter-arguments.
The board members, who were almost unable to get a word in edgewise throughout the two-and-a-half-hour meeting, could only ask that residents speak “one at a time, please.” But in a city where space is scarce, one at a time was hardly enough.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Linda Alexander’s title. She is a vice-chair of CB7. Spectator regrets the error.
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