License This, Nice Lady
COUNCILMEMBER MADELINE PROVENZANO isn't a bad Democrat. She's been a dogged and effective advocate for public spaces, after-school programs and elderly services in her northeast corner of the Bronx. By most accounts she is a trustworthy and respected leader in her community, as well as a positive role model for middle-aged Staten Island-bred Italian-American women in the time of Growing Up Gotti. If Provenzano were a fireman, she'd probably have rescued a kitten or two from the Pelham Bay Park treetops by now.
Bill 497 would require every New Yorker over the age of 16 who rides a bicycle to acquire a license ($25) from the Dept. of Transportation; those who failed to display this license could be fined up to $300, have their bicycle impounded and be subject to up to 15 days of imprisonment. No word yet from Provenzano on whether the licenses would come in the form of a six-spoked yellow wheel.
Naturally, the folks at Transportation Alternatives and other bike-advocacy groups are livid. They've been spinning in their banana seats since they got wind of the bill last week and have flooded Provenzano's office with emails and faxes demanding that she withdraw the bill. (Form letters can be found at transalt.org.)
The text of 497 does not hint at why the bike licenses have become necessary, and Provenzano's office did not return calls requesting an interview. Which leaves us free to marvel at the unspoken wisdom guiding the bill's introduction. Just what in the public good is served by mandating the registration of bicycles? Is the $25 license fee meant to dissuade straphangers from abandoning the MTA after the next fare hike? Has a statistical overlap between bicycling and environmental activism been detected by Operation Atlas software at the Dept. of Homeland Security, triggering the need for a Huffy watch-list?
Or is the bill just another inexplicable step in the trend, ominously apparent since the RNC, in which the city feels free to stop cyclists, assault them and steal their bikes like some buck-toothed bully with plumber's crack?
There is no safety argument to be made in favor of the bill. Bikes don't kill people; cars kill people. As Transportation Alternatives was quick to point out, bill 497 is in itself a safety hazard insofar as it would reverse the trend of the last 10 years toward larger clusters of bicyclists traveling together, which research has shown to cut bike deaths by as much as half. If the bill has the insidious goal of reducing the number of bikes on city streets, then any councilmember who votes for it will have blood on their hands when bike fatalities (currently continuing a steep downward trend) inevitably begin to climb in the wake of the bill's passage.
The only somewhat reasonable explanation we can come up with is that 497 is just a well-meaning but ill-thought out attempt to control the bike-theft epidemic (around 70,000 annually). Perhaps Provenzano imagines a soft-focus, tree-lined, bicycle-packed city of the future in which stolen bikes are quickly tracked down via a computerized database of registration numbers, then returned to their grateful, weeping owners.
If this is the true intent of the bill, we'd like to apologize to Provenzano and suggest a better way to go about reducing New York City's industrial level of bike theft. The bill goes by the number 155 and would require that all buildings be bicycle accessible and equipped with some sort of bicycle storage facility. The bill is cosponsored by 14 council members (to 497's two) and would be a constructive way for the city to recognize-and welcome-the growing population of New Yorkers who choose to go about their business aboveground without polluting the air or threatening the lives of all those kids Madeline Provenzano otherwise takes such good care of up in the Bronx.