It’s dangerous out there for bikes

Mayor de Blasio is sending mixed signals to bicyclists in New York City. New bike lanes encourage cycling while arbitrary enforcement of outdated traffic laws penalizes biking and makes it less safe.

I recently went back to work three months after having my first baby. Each day, I commute to work three miles across Harlem. This trip takes 45 minutes each way on transit — more with delays. Walking to work takes an hour. By bike, my commute takes 15 minutes.

My 15-minute bike commute means I can feed my daughter 30 minutes later each morning and 30 minutes earlier each evening, cutting down on the time she has to go without nursing — and giving me a precious extra hour with her each day.

Biking is by far the best way for me to commute, but it’s still a harrowing ride. My commute is entirely on city streets — not through a park or on a separate bicycle path — and I navigate through 42 intersections in each direction.

In addition to the danger posed by car and truck drivers, police officers stake out the bike lane in unmarked cars — not to ticket doubleparked vehicles and ensure bicyclist safety, but to take advantage of the predictable flow of bike traffic through quiet intersections as a stream of easy tickets.

One morning earlier this month, I was issued two summonses by a police officer for rolling slowly through a couple of red lights at “T” intersections, instantly making my affordable commute more expensive than a monthly MetroCard.These were locations without the possibility of intersecting car traffic, and where it was plain to see that no pedestrians were around.

The officer stated that he saw me carefully looking out for pedestrians, and agreed that what I did was safe. It was only technically illegal, he said. But “accidents are up,” he told me, and he was following orders to “crack down” on biking. Crack down on biking? If Mayor de Blasio is truly concerned about safety, he must refocus the NYPD’s enforcement strategy. In the last year according to city data, zero pedestrians were killed in crashes with cyclists. Car and truck drivers killed 105 pedestrians and 24 people on bikes. The risk is real, and it has nothing to do with me rolling cautiously through an intersection on my bicycle.

Each day on my short ride to work, I encounter many aggressive drivers and 40 to 50 vehicles obliviously double-parked in the bike lane. Every time I have to leave the bike lane and merge with faster traffic to go around these parked vehicles, I face greater risk.

That risk became reality Tuesday morning, when a livery cab pulled into the bike lane in front of me. I swerved to avoid hitting the back of the car as the cab’s passenger swung the car door into my path.

The door knocked me down, warping my handlebar and smashing my hand. The police officer across the street looked the other way.

De Blasio sees himself as a progressive mayor, but a policy of cracking down on people riding bikes while ignoring too much dangerous driving — including blocking the bike lane — is not progressive. New York may not be Amsterdam, but biking is fast becoming the best way for able-bodied people to get around, particularly as streets are too clogged for buses to move and subways have grown so miserably unreliable that parents can’t count on getting to work and back home to their children on time.

Growing bike ridership is a good thing for this city: for health, for air quality, for relieving overcrowded trains, and for most efficient use of the public streets. It should be understood and supported by our law enforcement.

But instead of supporting and protecting people on bikes and cracking down on unsafe driving, police are empowered to penalize even very cautious biking based on technicalities.

As long as the mayor’s NYPD targets cyclists who are trying to survive their every commute — and ignores drivers who put people in danger — New York can’t be “the fairest big city in America,” nor the most sustainable. It’s time for de Blasio to unambiguously show his support for biking as a way for New Yorkers to get around. He must shift enforcement priorities without delay.

Meanwhile I hope he hops on a bike the next time he heads to the gym or a meeting. He will soon understand what is at stake.