As expected, rather than celebrating a dramatic decrease in accidents, injuries and speeding on one of Brooklyn’s beautifulest stretches of street, bike-hating borough president Marty Markowitz greeted the results of a recent Department of Transportation study that found the new Prospect Park West bike lane had reaped huge benefits for local cyclists, pedestrians and motorists with skepticism and accusations of numbers-skewing.
On Sunday Markowitz told the Park Slope Patch: “Until there is an independent assessment of these changes, these biased DOT studies will continue to ‘prove’ what they want us to believe.” Weird way to respond to good news.
Markowitz, one of the PPW bike lane’s many opponents, tells the Patch in an email: “The DOT has to justify the Prospect Park West bike lane, so I question the validity of any data coming from the very agency that installed the lane.” He goes on: “As I have said all along, we need an outside study—not one conducted by the DOT but perhaps by the NYPD”—whose information on cyclists and bicycle infrastructure is mad partial—”to get an impartial analysis of the Prospect Park West reconfiguration.”
Markowitz concluded by accusing the DoT of skewing its numbers by getting bike activists to ride the PPW lane on days when the survey was being conducted. The Patch article, by Kristen V. Brown, concludes thusly:
If the DOT does eventually decide to remove the lane, rather than make the pilot project permanent, the agency said its removal would cost three times as much as its installation.
Higher costs, higher numbers of accidents, injuries and speeding motorists: sounds like Markowitz’s ideal solution. (Photo)