A two-wheeled tsunami is about to hit New York — and Mayor Bloomberg couldn’t be more pleased.
A giddy Bloomberg yesterday promised that the perpetually delayed bike-share program would flood the city’s already-packed streets with more bikes than Beijing.
“It’s going to be increased by tens of thousands,” the mayor said of the future bike-share New York on his weekly WOR radio show. “Every city that’s done this, it is phenomenally popular.”
Some 5,500 bikes will be placed at 293 docking stations in Manhattan south of 59th Street and downtown Brooklyn in May.
The number will swell to 7,000 bikes by the end of the year, according to the Department of Transportation.
The total is supposed to reach 10,000 bikes at some point, with docking stations as high as 79th Street in Manhattan and over a larger stretch of Brooklyn and Long Island City.
Cautious officials — who have repeatedly delayed the program since it was announced in 2011 — have refused to give a date for the full rollout.
While Mayor Bloomberg was celebrating the two-wheeled onslaught, some New Yorkers feared a public menace with inexperienced cyclists flooding streets crowded with pedestrians and traffic.
“It’s already an all-out war between cars and bikers anyway,” said Michael Sampo, an electrician and plumber from Brooklyn.
“It’s one thing if the person can ride the damn thing, but if people are renting bikes and learning to use it on the New York City streets, that’s going to be a problem,” Sampo said.
“The idea that bike sharing is going to be wildly popular remains to be seen,” said Robert Sinclair, a spokesman for AAA.
“New York brings a different set of challenges than perhaps might be found in any other city in the country,” said Sinclair.
“For many cyclists, the rules of the road don’t apply. You see it day in and day out. If motorists engaged in a similar level of behavior, we’d have carnage on our roads,” he said.
Despite the skeptics, a confident Bloomberg predicted the program would be extremely popular when it finally was up and running.
“It is just going to be unbelievable,” said Bloomberg, who has added more than 200 miles of bike lanes to the city’s roads during his three terms in office.
“And the people who don’t like it are going to become converts, just like smoking,” he said, referring to the once-reviled ban he placed on puffing in bars and eateries in 2003.
A caller to the mayor’s radio show, named George, complained to Bloomberg that cyclists had become a “menace to pedestrians.”
Bloomberg admitted George had a point.
“You’re right there,” he said. And he admited, “We don’t enforce the automobile traffic laws or the pedestrian laws as well as we should. The police have a lot of things to do. They focus on the most serious things and when they have time do these others.”
The bike share program was supposed to launch in the summer of 2011, but had its date pushed to September, when software glitches prompted another delay.
Some New Yorkers worried that the addition of thousands of bikes would be dangerous, particularly with riders inexperienced on city roads.
“It’s already an all-out war between cars and bikers anyway,” said Michael Sampo, an electrician/plumber from Brooklyn.
“It’s one thing if the person can ride the damn thing, but if people are renting bikes and learning to use it on the New York City streets, that’s going to be a problem.”
City officials blamed the latest bike share delay on super storm Sandy, which flooded the Brooklyn warehouse where the bikes were stored.
A day pass to use the bike share program is $9.95, while a yearly membership to the program costs $95, less than the price of a MetroCards.
Each of the system’s 40-pound bikes — clunkier than average to discourage speeding and theft — features a GPS system to track it if it is stolen.
The bikes have three speeds and a little handlebar bell that tinkles.
EAST COAST: Bicycle bedlam like this in China’s capital, Beijing, could become common in NYC if Mayor Bloomberg’s prediction comes to pass. (Getty Images)
Additional reporting by Matt McNulty