Bike Lane Backlash Leaves Glass Shards Strewn On Village Path

LOWER MANHATTAN, NY — Vandals have spray painted cycle paths and left others strewn with a broken glass in an apparent backlash on new routes cutting across Manhattan, city officials said.

Department of Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg and NYPD Chief of Transportation Thomas Chan denounced recent vandalism of the 12th and 13th street bike lanes — which span the East and West Village neighborhoods — in a joint statement released this month.

Slogans such as "bring back our parking" have been found painted across the green paths, fake parking signs have been placed in them and broken glass has been scattered in the protected lanes, according to bike lane users who post their findings on social media.

"We are very disturbed about the reports from the Village, where new protected bicycle lanes were recently defaced and rendered dangerous by broken glass. As our agencies did with a similar action recently in Sunnyside, Queens, we are working closely with our colleagues at the DSNY to quickly clean the lanes," the DOT and NYPD joint statement reads.

The city agencies made it clear that the NYPD will be investigating the acts of vandalism as a crime and will hold the vandals accountable.

Read the full statement below:

The 12th and 13th street bike lanes were implemented as part of a larger mitigation plan for the planned 15-month shutdown of the L train to repair the dilapidated Canarsie tunnel. A busway on 14th Street was also planned to keep private vehicles off the busy stretch and aid L train commuters facing service suspensions.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently announced that the L train shutdown may not be needed and proposed an alternate plan that will reduce late night and weekend service on the line.

The new method, developed by a team of experts from Cornell University and Columbia University, has never been used in the United States before. It has been used in Europe, Cuomo said, but never in a tunnel reconstruction.

Cuomo's announcement may have emboldened opponents of 12th and 13th street bike lanes and the 14th street busway, but advocate groups such as Transportation Alternatives have stated the mitigation plans should be enforced regardless. The group created a petition calling on city and state officials to implement the plans because they will "provide faster, safer and more efficient modes of transportation for New Yorkers to travel crosstown and alleviate congestion in our streets."

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