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“Don’t be a jerk.”
City officials will be targeting that ad slogan squarely at rogue cyclists who recklessly tear across sidewalks, run over pedestrians and violate every traffic law in the book.
“We will be urging cyclists themselves to call out negative behavior” in an Internet and television campaign, Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said.
“It will feature a good cast of celebrities, including Mario Batali, but will bluntly tell cyclists to stop riding like jerks.”
The campaign came up at a City Council Transportation Committee hearing yesterday on the rapid expansion of bike lanes.
“Many cyclists disregard the laws, and some don’t even think they have to obey the laws,” said Nancy Gruskin, whose husband, Stewart, was killed by a cyclist on Park Avenue on his way to work in 2009.
“You just can’t paint a bike lane somewhere and expect everything to be fine,” she said.
The NYPD has addressed the issue in the past year, issuing 7.2 percent more summonses to cyclists so far in 2010 than in 2009, Sadik-Khan said.
That’s 29,545 violations this year compared to 27,555 last year, with the main culprits being food delivery bikers, Sadik-Khan said.
Both the public-service campaign and the NYPD crackdown come as the DOT aggressively lays down more bike lanes — both physically separated and not — than ever before, causing hostile relations between people who love to pedal and those who find them to be nuisances.
There are about 483 miles of bike lanes now, more than double the total in 2006 — and officials want that number to hit 1,800 miles by 2030. That’s an expansion of about 50 miles of bike lanes each year, stats show.
“Few issues today prompt more heated discussion,” said City Councilman James Vacca, chair of the transportation committee.
“More bike lanes can mean fewer parking spaces, or fewer travel lanes, and that means more congestion and aggravation for people who use their cars,” he said. “How do we accommodate bicycles?”
That’s because cycling is booming — DOT numbers show a 109 percent increase in everyday bike commuters on the road from 8,499 a day in 2006 to 17,451 now.
The group Transportation Alternatives said the total number of bike riders reaches 201,000 per day.
And that number is growing, which is why more bike lanes are needed.
One avid cyclist, Sharon Phillips, said the investment in bike lanes actually decreases the cost of pollution, obesity and congestion.
“It also connects neighborhoods,” said Phillips, a science professor who cycles along the West Side Highway nearly every day. “Combating obesity costs a lot more money than installing a bunch of bike lanes and encouraging cycling.”