EASY, RIDER! A cyclist in the East Village yesterday gets the high sign from a city worker reassigned to restore order to lawless bike lanes. (Steve Hirsch)
Taxpayers are forking over cash so a small army of city DOT employees can baby-sit rogue cyclists, reminding them of the basic rules of the road so they don’t pedal into pedestrians.
Nearly a dozen Department of Transportation workers — some who usually maintain traffic signs — were deployed to sparsely occupied bike lanes on First and Second avenues in the East Village yesterday to hold up red stop signs to control speeding cyclists.
The other side of the signs display the warning “wrong way.”
The sign holders said they loved their new, easy gig.
“This is great! Usually, I’m changing signs,” said DOT worker Danny Gonzalez, 40, of Bayside, Queens, a traffic-device maintainer who earns more than $50,000 a year. “This is so much less stress on my body. I don’t have to lug around a ladder to do this!”
The DOT calls the workers “street safety managers.”
They were specially trained by contractor Sam Schwartz Engineering.
The team will rotate to different bike-lane areas each day, and they’ll be out until October.
They’ll also hit the bridges and ask cyclists and pedestrians to not veer into each other’s lanes, the DOT said in a statement yesterday.
“It’s a waste of money, and it’s a waste of peoples’ rights. People know safety better than the government,” said Eric Alberti, 39, an East Village resident.
The DOT explained the workers are needed in advance of next month’s rollout of the city bike-sharing program, which is under fire from residents who say the racks block precious sidewalk and parking space.
The DOT won’t say how much all the new sign holders cost, but officials insisted that using city workers saves “costs associated with contracting out similar services from a private vendor.”
Residents argue the program isn’t necessary at all.
“That’s a lot of money in terms of labor cost to get [cyclists] to stop,” said Stephen Juneau, 24, a student from the East Village.
“It is a lot of money to be spending, [and] I don’t know if it will be helpful in the long run.”
But pedestrians who are terrified of speeding cyclists said the monitors may finally bring the problem under control.
“I’m not afraid of cars. I’m afraid of the bikes. Especially when they swoosh by me from out of nowhere, it scares me. It is very frightening,” said Christine Fiedler, 70, a retired nurse.
And cyclist Ryan Shanley, 30, from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, admitted, “A lot of riders blow through lights and are completely disrespectful of pedestrians.” Additional reporting by Elizabeth Ferguson