Tickets For Bike Lane Blocking Drop As Cyclist Deaths Spike: Data

NEW YORK — So much for "Safe Passage." NYPD cops have slapped fewer drivers with tickets for blocking bike lanes despite touting a crackdown, police statistics show.

Officers had issued 35,089 summonses to vehicles parked in bike lanes this year as of July 7 — a 14 percent drop from the 40,802 tickets written in the same period in 2018, according to data the NYPD provided to Patch.

Ticketing for bike-lane blocking has lagged even with NYPD cops targeting traffic violations following the deaths of 15 cyclists so far this year, up from 10 fatalities in all of 2018.

The pace of bike lane enforcement seems to have picked up since the July 1 start of the so-called Citywide Bicycle Safe Passage Initiative. Cops wrote 5,673 summonses for blocking the lanes during the operation's first two weeks, a 96 percent increase from the same time frame last year, according to the NYPD.

But cyclists say the overall drop shows the NYPD has failed to use tickets to deter drivers from obstructing bike lanes, a practice that endangers bikers by forcing them to veer into traffic.

"If you don’t hit people’s pocket books, behavior doesn’t change," said Cresta Kruger, an East Village mom who rides her bike every day. "So people don’t blow stop lights as much because you get a ticket. But if you’re not getting a ticket and you’re blocking a bike lane, then it seems like it’s OK."

The NYPD and Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to target drivers who block bike lanes, run red lights, speed and commit other traffic infractions when they announced the Safe Passage plan earlier this month.

The crackdown enlisting traffic enforcement agents and traffic safety cops in all 77 police precincts was initially supposed to last just three weeks. But de Blasio recently said it would continue as an "open-ended" operation.

"I've instructed them (the NYPD) now to throw everything they got at clearing the bike lanes too," de Blasio said in a July 12 interview on WNYC. "... The way you teach drivers the new reality is a lot of education, a lot changing the physical environment, but ultimately people have to know there are consequences and see that there's real consistent enforcement."

But to cyclists, the ticket figures show the NYPD's attempts to keep bike lanes clear do not match the scale of the problem.

Kruger said she "very rarely" takes a crosstown ride without encountering a car in a bike lane. Yet the number of summonses for the offense account for a tiny fraction of the millions of parking tickets issued to city drivers in a given year.

"The numbers are so low with regard to the abundance of bike lane violations one observes on a daily basis," Choresh Wald, another East Village cyclists and parent, told Patch in an email.

The city's bike-lane enforcement regime pales in comparison to the multiagency effort that gets drivers to move thousands of cars for street sweeping and trash collection every day, said Jon Orcutt, a spokesperson for the cycling nonprofit Bike New York.

The Transportation Department posts parking regulations so the Sanitation Department can clean the roads, and the NYPD enforces the rules "like clockwork," according to Orcutt. More than 1.8 million parking tickets were issued for breaking street-cleaning regulations last fiscal year, according to city data.

"Why can’t we achieve an operation and a governmental consensus around blocking bike lanes that’s analogous to that? And the answer is nobody’s working on it," Orcutt said.

It's tough to pin down a single factor responsible for this year's huge spike in cyclists deaths, Orcutt said. But Kruger sees a correlation between that morbid trend and the city's limited bike lane enforcement.

"Every time I have to veer out of a bike lane with a child on my bike, it’s dangerous," she said.

The NYPD noted that it developed the Safe Passage Initiative in response to the spike in cyclist deaths. In addition to ticketing drivers more, cops will educate cyclists instead of giving them summonses in the wake of a fatal crash, the Police Department said.

"The NYPD continues to promote the safety of drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists through raising awareness of rules and regulations, sharing safety tips, as well as enforcement initiatives," the NYPD said in an email. "The NYPD remains a proud partner of the Vision Zero mission."