Under the auspices of Mayor Bloomberg, Janette Sadik-Khan has been making NYC roads, some of them, safer for bicyclists and pedestrians alike. Favoring any traffic other than cars can be politically risky, as DC Mayor Adrian Fenty discovered while losing the primary. According to Colbert King at the Washington Post (hat tip Washcycle):

In questions submitted by the audience, and in barbs hurled at the mayor by lesser-known mayoral candidates, three expressions of derision directed toward Fenty were used almost interchangeably: "The Washington Post" (which endorsed him), "dog parks" and "bike lanes" (both of which he champions). These are three thinly disguised code words for white influence. They also reflect a mind-set that holds that the city's dwindling black majority is being kicked to the curb.

Of course Fenty primarily hurt himself by replacing black officials with white officials, and older black teachers with younger white teachers, but it is interesting that bike lanes are seen as infrastructure aimed at white folk because I see riders of all colors in Baltimore. But even though most cyclists also drive cars, people tend to see bicyclists as "intruders" disrupting the natural order of things, as evidenced by this flyer in California (Hat tip Cyclicious).

Part of that attitude is certainly due to cyclists' own bad behavior. Last week, I drove to work because of a job site meeting, and was driving home by way of Charles Street, which varies from two to three lanes, and has a lot of traffic lights. Here comes a biker, no helmet, between the two rows of cars. He waits for opposing traffic to pass, runs the red light, then takes over the right lane. Even though I was in the left lane, and even though I'm a cyclist, I was pissed off at him for earning negative points for the rest of us. I tend to stay to the right, and have no qualms about using the sidewalk where the car traffic is too intense. Unlike some places, Baltimoreans seem very accepting of cyclists on their sidewalks. Bikes are banned at Inner Harbor during the busy hours, but otherwise, even the bicycle cops ride on the sidewalks.

Back in NYC, however, pedestrians and cyclists hate each other with the sort of ire usually reserved for drivers and cyclists. Articles have been written about bicycle traffic, generating hundreds of comments, insults and threats, but the essence is that cars dominate the roads, and pedestrians are plentiful on the sidewalks and roads, so even careful cyclists have a hard time getting around without getting in the way of cars, or without scaring the bejesus out of pedestrians. And some cyclists are not careful at all, riding as fast as they can with little regard for people in their way, even other cyclists. Pedestrians are used to avoiding cars in the street, but bikes seem to come at them from all directions while they are busy with cell phones or lattes. A bicycle messenger machismo seems evident. I was a passenger in a BMW convertible in DC once, and a cyclist came towards the car full tilt. The driver, my boss, sat stone-faced until the cyclist banked sharply away at the last second. He told  us they did that all the time to try to scare people.

But having lived in a few cities, I have to note that some pedestrians are even a nuisance to other pedestrians (meaning me). Groups walking together, for example, will walk two-by-two on narrower sidewalks, then spread out to the full width of the wider sidewalks, making it difficult to get past. In my neighborhood, people stop and chat right where the lightpole and ATM line reduce the sidewalk to nothing. People lurch out of shop doors without looking for other foot traffic, much less bike traffic. It is hard to imagine the two groups sharing the same spaces unless the traffic is light and people are unhurried, both of which are generally the case in Charm City.

I used to be opposed to separate bike lanes because the ones I knew were bike paths with isolated stretches through fields and woods far away from streets and stores and safety. With bike lanes adjacent to well-traveled streets, I think Sadik-Khan is headed in the right direction in NYC, but I wonder if Mayor Bloomberg sees bike lanes as a companion political strategy to his stop-and-frisk cleanup of the poor for the benefit of well-to-do shoppers. And I wonder if that combination is what doomed Fenty in DC, and made bike lanes a symbol of white gentrification.