Brooklyn, NY – DeBlasio in Interview With Hamodia Attacks The Mayor on Handling of Bike Lanes

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    Brooklyn, NY – In a wide ranging interview to be published in the upcoming Hamodia Weekly, public advocate elect – Bill de Blasio unleashed a blistering attack on Bloomberg’s handling of bike lane coverage in the City, VIN News has learned.

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    Criticism of the Mayors policy comes after the the city transportation commissioner did an about face and redirected bike traffic on a 14 block stretch in the heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn NY.

    The change has prompted an angry response from biker enthusiasts, who tried to repaint bike lane road-markings that the city removed in response to persistent opposition by local residents of the mainly Hasidic area of Williamsburg. Some bikers have threatened to continue to stage an indecent protest specifically designed to offend the highly conservative community. However those attempts have been roundly condemned by mainstream biker organizers.

    Listen below to a partial audio clip of the full interview

    In the interview Mr. de Blasio told Hamodia editors that; “The mayor and his folks come up with grandiose plans, and are not good at talking to communities about what it will actually take to achieve, what will be the impact on the day to day life on the community.”

    Referring to the bike lane dispute de Blasio continued; “The mayor is an ideologue on many levels. The mayor and his team they can be zealots; they see themselves as reformers and in some cases they have achieved very important results. But all zealous reformers tend not to listen well to other opinions, and tend to belittle the needs and the values of other folks so the bike lanes are a great example.

    “I think there is many places where the bike lanes make sense. I think there’s a great argument environmentally for more bike lanes but not everywhere. There’s some places where their presence really does hurt; a commercial strip, there’s some places where there are cultural realities that need to be taken into account and there’s nothing that says you can’t have those conversations with the community up front and decide whether it makes sense or not, and really listen to a community.

    “I went to a community board meeting one night about a year ago and heard a lot of this and what was striking to me was that the people in the room; the activists; the merchants all said: If they had come to us first we would’ve explained why this particular plan would’ve failed and that’s the problem.

    The administration rarely goes and talks to people first and as public advocate I want to make sure we do that better we should do it in the right way.” de Blasio concluded.


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    6 Comments
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    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    I hope he gets to the president Chair one day he is a real OHAV YISROAL

    focus
    focus
    14 years ago

    he’s absolutely right. the bedford avenue bike lane was put up on yom tov (i think it was simchas torah) nobody in the community was awear that it’s coming and nothing was able to be done at that time. the mayor didn’t find it important to discuss this matter with anyone so now he’s at a point where noone’s happy.