I am a biker and I use the Riverside Park bike path daily.

Even I think this cute little diversion was a total misappropriation of funds.

We’re laying off teachers and closing down libraries. We’re pulling cops off the beat and taking trains off the tracks.

And we spent $15.7 million so I don’t have to take a tiny detour?

Unconscionable.

Chris Raschka is clearly a man not in a hurry to get anywhere.

Consequently: Of course cabbies like it. They’d also like if you dropped dead.

A few NYC cabbies are found out to be double-charging for trips, and people go ballistic.* Don’t they know that the only people allowed to gouge the American public are bankers, government contractors and insurance providers? Meanwhile hamburgers still go for $25 in Times Square, so in reality it’s only a crime if they force locals to pay these ridiculous rates.

Consequently, imagine my surprise at just how far Bloomberg’s gotten to documenting everybody (and the NYPD have been doing so a bit more aggressively as well) when, in hailing a gypsy cab up in Washington Heights I found that, to a man, they now had little plastic cards with the NYC logo showing their licenses and a bill of rights for customers, including how very illegal it was to hail them. It didn’t stop ‘em from ferrying me around, but hey: We must keep appearances, no?

Speaking of appearances, a Mercedes ad has cropped up on the pages of Bike Snob and Streetsblog, where some guy in a Mercedes SUV enjoys a leisurely trip while losing time in a race with a frenetic bike messenger. The former scoffs at the ridiculous route the Mercedes driver took, the latter rails against how they make Manhattan bikers look like maniacs. Well, this ain’t Amsterdam, after all (though I do have special enmity against one-speeds). They both forgot the most important part of the whole exercise: Where the hell is that guy gonna park a goddamn SUV in Brooklyn Heights?

*Seriously, get over yourselves, people. An extra $4 a trip average ain’t gonna break the bank if you’re taking cabs in the first place, it’s a scam as easy to catch as watching the meter tick once, 3,000 cabbies outta an estimated 39,000 – what with the high turnover rate – is far from universal, and saying you’re “not going to tip out of spite” or how we should “revoke their green cards” is petty and racist.

The debate continues (and continues) on bike lanes and just who owns the road in NYC. Staten Island thinks itself a “car culture,” Chinatown thinks they add congestion and the commentators think bicycling is the only mode of transportation where people disobey the posted rules.

Now instead of going on yet another diatribe about the uselessness of bike lanes for anything other than symbolic gestures by the city to accommodate bicyclists (or the infinitely more satisfactory practice of removing a lane of motorized traffic) or pointing out that while bicyclists run red lights, ignore the bike lanes and zip up the wrong way on one-way streets, motorists frequently speed, shift lanes without signaling, block the box and do all sorts of oddball maneuvers in traffic and pedestrians jaywalk like cars don’t exist and if they did it’s their own damn fault for driving in the city… but that’s just the joy of it.

Everybody crunches down on everybody. The debate will never – ever – subside and nor should it. The fact that people are paying attention is good enough.

Friday I saw a taxi being pulled off the wrought iron barrier by a tow truck after having slammed into the 72nd St 1/2/3 subway station. A woman interviewed said she asked the cabbie, bleeding on the ground, if his brakes failed and when he answered in the affirmative she told the reporter for NY1 she thought he was lying. Tuesday I glided past a block’s worth of apoplectic motorists on Dean St to see a guy parked in the middle of the street, making progress impossible. When told to get the fuck outta the way, he replied that it was alternate side parking and it was a $200 fine to park in the bike lane: Apparently he didn’t worry about being assaulted and battered by the dozen furious motorists behind him. That’s the kind of city this is: Ain’t no law that’s gonna stop people from their opinions.

I’ve had an NYU student purposefully block my path at Lafayette and 8th to slow me down and while my frantic evasive maneuvers had shorn the chain clean off my bike both I and the hapless activist remained whole. I’ve had a suit attempt to elbow me on 51st and 6th when I buzzed his wife as she obliviously wandered into traffic to hail a cab. I’ve been thrown to the sidewalk on 194th and Broadway when a city bus crossed two lanes of traffic in a plunging angle to make a stop. I’ve glided through raging arguments between motorists that lasted as long as they were going the same direction. I’ve had cabbies with two lanes of space slow down to berate me for not being in the bike lane and I’ve had cabbies cut me off when swooping into the bike lane to deposit passengers. I’ve been waved through a red light by a cop at Columbus Circle and 59th while I was waiting and yelled at by a cop at 61st and Broadway for running a red light. I’ve had SUVs squeeze me so tightly I could elbow them both at the same time. I’m personally responsible for the loss of at least three Starbucks beverages and I’m not at all remorseful, for I have encountered pedestrians shocked – shocked! – that bike lanes are not an extension of the sidewalk. I’ve had a cabbie reach over a front seat passenger to wrestle an apology out of me for dinging his rear view mirror on 42nd and Park Ave South and I’ve had a cabbie offer me a hat while biking in the rain on 57th and Madison. I’ve had pedestrians not hesitate to pick me up and dust me off after faceplanting on Washington and 14th and I’ve had a woman in pantsuit deadpan “nice brakes” when I stopped at 42nd and 5th. She was so straight-faced I still don’t know if she was being sarcastic. I’ve had just as weird an experience walking: It’s the city!

I may not know everything in the world, but I know that this is most decidedly NOT a “gift to bicyclists”, and furthermore I have lost respect for the reporter of the NYTimes who did THIS cockup:

In an effort not to make snarky comments about dead assistant principals or the two journalism college… dandies – spiky platinum blonde hair with white tie against white shirt, natch – wandering my school looking for a scoop, I will vent by listing the sorts of people who irk me when I commute by bike… by category. Of course, I’m being selfish, but who cares?

Cars

• Yellow cab drivers who use the bike lane to idle and jabber
• Yellow cab drivers who, given plenty of space, slow down to your speed for the specific purpose of giving you an earful for not using the bike lane
• FUV* drivers that use one-way streets as drag strips
• Jersey drivers in FUVs that take up 100% of a lane
• …wearing horse-blinders
• …and still drift between the lines
• Jersey drivers who pay attention to the lights, not the traffic
• Jersey drivers in general
• Drivers that use the bike lane as turning lane
• Livery drivers who match your speed and ride alongside only to cut you off when turning at the intersection or changing lane
• Livery drivers who do random three point turns on major thoroughfares against the light
• Regular drivers who think they can do that as fast as the liveries
• Brooklyn drivers in cars that would pay a mechanic’s college tuition hurtling down a street to cut you off before you reach the intersection
• Brooklyn drivers in cars that would pay a mechanic’s college tuition thinking that the answer to speed bumps is better shocks
• …and higher suspension
• Drivers who yell because you didn’t run the red light, forcing them to wait for you to get up to speed
• Drivers who yell because you did run the red light, forcing them to shift trajectory

Bigger Cars

• Delivery van drivers who only know full go and full stop
• Access-a-Ride minibuses whose drivers think they’re in subcompact rally cars, begging the question as to whether their clients were handicapped before their service was requested
• Panel truckers who use the bike lane as parking
• Panel truckers who use the bike lane as loading zones
• City buses that cross three lanes in a deep scoop to hit the bus stop, forcing you onto the sidewalk
• Chinese Bus Co drivers who must’ve put nitro in the gas tank, considering how often they weave and gun it
• 18 Wheelers that back into an avenue

Pedestrians

• NYU students who jaywalk looking the wrong way
• Columbia students who see you approaching then stop directly in your path
• Suits who get out of taxis on the traffic side
• Suits who hail taxis twenty feet from the curb
• Suits who jaywalk without looking because they don’t hear a car coming
• Suits on cellphones who break into a run while crossing for no reason
• Hotel porters who leave carts in the bike lanes
• People who use bike lanes as extension of the sidewalk
• People who slowly walk four abreast on bike paths
• Dateline moms who LOUDLY EXCLAIM that they will CALL the COPS because you RAN a RED LIGHT in an empty intersection

Other Bikers

• Critical Mass
• Biking activists in general
• Guys on fixed speeds for whom braking is something scrubs do
• Take-out delivery guys who bike on the left side, meeting you head on
• Yuppies on road bikes with earphones on
• …riding on the left side, meeting you head on
• …after ducking out from behind a parked panel truck

In short, NY traffic in general.

*Fuck U Vehicle