Bike-o!

In which we respond to Stu Bykofsky, and issue a challenge.

by Brian Howard

In last week’s City Paper, I wrote a piece critical of Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky’s sustained attacks on the two bike lanes that have been painted onto Pine and Spruce streets. My editor’s letter last week was called “Lane Rage: Stu Bykofsky’s attacks on city bike lanes are flawed,” and in it I accused Stu of cherry-picking stats and an incomplete analysis in slamming the Streets Department report on the bike lanes’ effect on traffic.

Stu, good man that he is, responded, and that response is printed in this week’s paper. While he makes some salient points — particularly that all columnists cherry-pick stats (a claim I think is, sadly, generally true) and that I did, as well (which I’m not so willing to concede) — some don't ring true. To those, I promised a response.

Quoth Stu: “While he attacks me for saying it, Brian doesn’t deny the city’s bike report was incomplete. He reports Streets didn’t count two major intersections because it was raining. Is that a good excuse? The counts were done on a single day. Is that solid research?”

To say that I attacked Stu for saying the report was incomplete is just not true. I called the Streets Department to find out why it was incomplete and discovered that some counts weren’t performed due to rain. I attacked Stu for failing to report evidence from the very same report (AM rush hour intersection counts) that he could have used to make the point he seems determined to make, that the bike lanes in question are indeed holding up traffic. Was the report “solid research”? No, it certainly would not pass muster in a scientific setting. But the idea proffered in his piece (“the deck was stacked and the cards were marked”), that certain data was not included as a smoke screen, is at least made flimsy by the presence of the AM rush hour data. Did the lanes slow traffic on a residential street? Indeed. But is that a bad thing?

Sayeth Stu: “Brian’s reporting shows 1.9 percent of streets dedicated to the 1.2 percent who commute by bike, so how are [bicyclists] being shorted?”

There was no claim in my piece that anyone was being shorted. My claim is that the large concessions to a “noisy minority” Stu alludes to are a mirage.

Quoth Stu: “Biking will never be a realistic choice for the vast majority of commuters who come from more than four miles out.”

And where exactly does this statistically ambiguous data come from? How do you define “realistic”? Why four miles? And who ever said anything about a vast majority? What if it were a realistic choice for a vast minority of 5, 10 or 15 percent — certainly a not-outlandish goal? What if it were a realistic choice for 50 percent of those commuting from two miles out? Further, even traveling at a conservative eight miles per hour on a safe, dedicated bike lane, a four-mile commute would take just 30 minutes. Sounds like a fairly realistic alternative to driving, or public transit, to me.

Says Stu: “We ought to focus on building a safe, clean, comfortable and low-cost mass transit system. Maybe Brian and I can agree on that.”

As long as I can bring my bike on it — anytime I want.

And finally, says Stu: “Then there’s the dog-eared charge that I oppose unclogging the streets and cleaning the air through using bikes. You get those benefits without bike-only lanes, which is what I oppose, not bikes.”

To which I can only say: Reasoned like a man who’s apparently never put feet to pedals and ass to saddle in this city. Without bike lanes, the only cyclists you’ll get are the self-selecting bunch brave, brazen and/or crazy enough to risk being run off the road, carelessly doored, hit, assaulted and have bottles and cans chucked at their heads. So I’ll conclude with a challenge — a bike ride from the Schuylkill to Second on Chestnut (on it's laughable "bikes and buses lane"), and from Second back to the Schuylkill on Spruce (on the shiny new bikes-only lane). Isaiah Thompson and I will hook you up with a comfy bike and lead the way. After that, you can tell us if you think bike lanes are worth taking another look at.

(bhoward@citypaper.net)