Ninth Ave. bike lane means headaches for business owners

By Kathryn Lurie

Trying to put two daughters through college is a difficult task. It becomes even harder when your business decreases by 40 percent over the course of a few weeks.

Such is M. Singh Gill’s dilemma, he says, thanks to the installation of the new bike lane on Ninth Avenue between 16th and 23rd Streets in Chelsea. His establishment, Dil-e Punjab, is located on that strip of Ninth near 20th Street. Gill relies heavily on a customer base of cab drivers and black-car drivers, whom he provides with a place to use the bathroom, wash up and eat a hot meal. With the new lack of parking thanks to the bike lane, the drivers are finding other places for refreshment.

At the Community Board 4 meeting held at the Hudson Guild last Wednesday, Gill, another neighborhood merchant and a concerned neighborhood resident both voiced their opposition to the way the bike-lane project has been implemented thus far.

“I’m not against the bike lane,” Gill said. He simply wishes that the city had discussed the project with Ninth Avenue merchants before its installation. Had there been such a discussion, it would have been the appropriate venue in which to bring up his parking concerns.
“In New York City, we don’t have shopping malls with a lot of parking,” Gill said. “Small-business owners depend on street parking.”

The Department of Transportation reported a net loss of 29 spaces over the length of the bike lane, according to Jay Marcus, co-chair of the transportation committee for Community Board 4.

On Gill’s block in particular, the parking spots have been reduced from eight to two, said Henry Stozek, owner of design shop Nest Interiors at 172A Ninth Ave., who also spoke at the meeting. “And people don’t even know to park there,” he said, calling the project “a disaster.”

“The people who designed and implemented it—the city—nobody ever came to dialogue with the merchants, the retailers, the people who are here,” he said. “They should have discussed it to get ideas to maybe try to rework it.”

One of the biggest problems that has developed, according to Stozek, is lack of implementation of traffic laws as they apply to the bike lane. For example, he often spots trucks and cars parked or driving in the lane.

“Nobody’s following it,” he said. “Even though it says ‘Don’t stand, No parking, No idling,’ people still park; people still double-park.... We live in a congested city; people are going to do it.”

He described a scene he witnessed recently where a cyclist became aggressive when he came upon a truck parked in the bike lane to unload a delivery for Rite-Aid. The cyclist, who Stozek said was a “local neighborhood person,” told the driver that he wasn’t supposed to be there, and they proceeded to argue.

Sreetsblog.org, a blog that covers what’s happening on New York City streets, also reported Tuesday that truck drivers have been parking in the bike lane.

Problems like this are likely attributable to the newness of the project, said Marcus. He said that the Department of Transportation came to the board just last month to present their plans for the new bike lane.

“Installation began a week later,” said Marcus. DOT hadn’t sought advice from the board or the community about the specificities of the plan, he added. Consequently, some issues with the lane were not addressed prior to the installation.

“We were concerned that [the DOT] hadn’t consulted us on the design and implementation [of the project],” said Marcus, who has also received complaints about insufficient signage in and around the lane.

Other problems Stozek cited include the Muni Meter becoming more expensive, and the noise level in the neighborhood increasing.

“They got rid of a whole entire lane,” said Stozek. “You have trucks making deliveries.... The fire trucks can’t even get through.”

“When they laid out Europe in certain areas, they factored in bike paths,” he said. “It was part of the planning. This is a retro-fit that’s just gone completely wrong. I’m a biker myself. I love biking, but this is wrong.”

Though the community board did express concern bout DOT coming to them very late in the game, Marcus said that the board is “very supportive of bicycle lanes generally.”

“There are exciting aspects to this bike lane in particular,” Marcus added, including an extended buffer zone and raised areas for pedestrians in crosswalks.

Marcus said that the board will take a look at the project over the next couple of months to determine how many of the problems are start-up issues, and what can be done to improve on it. He said that the board expects that dialogue with the DOT will be ongoing, and that residents should anticipate another public hearing to address issues regarding the initial installation.