Oy. What is it with the bicycles and Mayor Bloomberg?
First came the bike lanes, to gobble up the boulevards.
Now will come the bike kiosks, and 10,000 rental bikes sure to visit perpetual terror — and too-frequent mayhem — on New Yorkers of all circumstances.
Up next? The lawyers, of course.
As The Post’s Heather Haddon reported Sunday, the city is — once again, with very little public input — seeking private bidders willing to undertake a massive rent-a-bike program.
Modeled after a French (!) concept, the mayor fully intends to impose 10,000 bikes — and 600 sidewalk rental kiosks, replete with racks — on some of the most crowded concrete in America.
Riders would use their credit cards to select a bike for either 30 minutes, a daily rental or a membership option.
Never mind that the vast majority of New Yorkers have demonstrated virtually no appetite whatsoever for bicycles.
The bike lanes are all but empty. Ditto, all those bike-rack rooms the city has forced on office-building developers.
Clearly nobody fancies a bike quite like Mike — we’re surprised that the Taxi of Tomorrow doesn’t come with two wobbly wheels and a wire basket — but this latest stunt could gobble up more than just public space.
Think tax dollars — lots of them.
Sure, the winning bidder to run the program will have to put up a $3 million liability bond.
Which is chump-change in litigious New York.
In New York, governments are included in liability suits because the law says those with deep pockets pay — and whose pockets are deeper than government agencies’?
Any guesses what happens if a bike-renting tourist gets squashed by a bus?
Or a rental cyclist flattens a gaggle of pedestrians?
Is there any doubt that tort-law vultures will be flying lazy circles over every rental kiosk in the city?
Typical of Bloomberg moves, this remarkable project is going forward with scant input from the general public.
And, typically, the City Council and the borough presidents don’t seem to have much to say about any of this. (Count on them to be suitably shocked when the bikes appear, though.)
Hey, Mr. Mayor.
Show a little mercy. Please?