[secondary photo is from December. License plate is of the trailer; the cab had NJ plates.]

Well, I passed by again, took pictures, and the rent-a-cop was there again. Our hearts weren't really in it this time around; he diligently called me a re-tard and said the truck would be there every Friday evening no matter what I did, that I could put all the pictures on MySpace I wanted and it wouldn't make a difference, because nobody gave a f*ck. I dutifully took my shots and and notes and got in out of the cold.

It's just exasperating that a business can hire a cop in order to _avoid_ complying with the law. It's also frustrating that, by design, the run from 23rd 9th to the Bowery is now the fastes 2.5 miles in downtown Manhattan by any transportation means, and things like this just spoil it.

Black cables draped over a blacktop road at night; as a supporter of organized labor I will have to keep this in mind the next time I hear about unions = safety. I just saw this with a couple of feet to spare; if there had been traffic to my right I would have been a grease spot on Hudson Street. I knocked on the cab of the truck and said, you know, you're going to kill someone. But whatever it was, it was someone else's job. BTW isn't it the law that a truck has to carry cones, reflectors, and flares? Anyway, I peeled the "glove system" off of my frozen fingers to get the shots and call 311. Then I circled back around a few blocks, and by the time I came back (3 minutes) a cop was there and someone was tucking in the cables properly. Or more or less properly, or more less than more, but at least it wasn't going to act as a garrot.

After I took this shot of his side doors open into the bike lane, he said he was sorry and would take care of it right away, which he did. What a dick.

I might be off by one avenue block on this one.

After I finished taking pictures and took off, this beemerette pulled up next to me and said "obviously you don't have children that need to be dropped off at school." I gave her the standard spiel but what I should have said was hey, I went to school by bike.

It took me a week to recover enough from this gross violation to post it. Somehow the driver "didn't know" he couldn't park in the middle of an intersection between the pier access road and the Greenway, straddling multiple sets of glatt kosher lane markers. For safety, here and 23rd st the Greenway makes an S-curve across the intersecting automobile road with stop signs only for the cars. In other words, everyone there that night (and a mob gathered) risked rounding a bend and ploughing smack into the side of this truck.

So, are the cops allowed to use the bike lane for parking their own cars?

This is now the 3rd bike lane closure on the new 21st st bike lane. The other two at least have big orange signs saying "lane closed" and stuff like that. Aren't they supposed to have a permit displayed to close a lane? A flag man? Cones and stuff?

The orange spray-paint is for HOLES in the ground that wait to get filled in and paved over. What does it take to schlepp this thing away? It's been there forever, and HUNDREDS of cops pass by it every day -- it's the entrance to Rodman's Neck firing range.

Here is a design flaw in the Hutchinson River (not actually a river) Greenway; more dangerous than any car parked in a bike lane and more useful as a political photo-op than as transportation. There are four heavy-duty cross-overs along this 2-mile mini-greenway. This one and its twin, the cross-over from the other side of the road back to this one, desperately need more car traffic control. Usually the way things work in NYC is that someone gets killed before proper signage or a traffic light gets put up. (My greenway entrance, Avenue C and the FDR, now has four stop signs and two flashing red lights, up from one stop sign when it opened.) Bikes have to go up a steep incline and make a 90 degree turn, shedding all of their momentum. Cars just whiz by with little advance visibility of crossing bikes. This is dangerous and inefficient; it's no wonder I've never actually seen anyone else actually riding a bike on it.

Sadly, there are now tens of thousands of people recently arrived in sub-Bruckner Bronx, in new town house condos, vastly underserved by public transportation, tied to cars, and stuck in exploding sub-prime mortgages, mostly working in Manhattan. A real bike transportation plan connecting the Hutch, the BRP, and the Bruckner to the Triboro Bridge could solve an awful lot of problems for an awful lot of people.

Ah, getting ready to go back to Florida. Perhaps he'll block the bike lane in Boca Raton. How do you folks in the East 70s tolerate this? The entire lane up to 97th street had at least one car parked per block.

Note the SUV thinking about turning left while the cyclist behind the Lincoln was forced to make a life or death choice.

BTW i was almost able to post this from my actual PDA-phone, but it choked on the ADD button. That would be convenient to post real time.

I realize that PDAs don't take good night pictures, but trust me, four of those trucks could have stopped at the curb just ahead of this guy. Cars, bikes, and pedestrians have a hard enough time merging from Stuvesant Street onto 10th without having to worry about someone bottlenecking the street.

I usually don't worry too much about working vehicles in bike lanes on single lane streets except in cases of serious danger. This was serious danger, and he was just sitting there. And he's not that bright, either: he could see me snapping away without a flash and into his headlights, but he was covering his face like he was on a perp walk.

He's managed to be in a bike lane and at a fire hydrant at the same time; he obviously can't drive, and he's spent 60K for what is now essentially a 94 Ford Contour.

Something's wrong here. Coming off the Hudson River Greenway at the north end, on to Riverside Drive, the greenway direction is to turn left on to Staff Street. You can see the bike lane paint and the greenway sign, but also a sign for angle parking with cars parked across the lane! The lane looks like someone tried to grind off the paint. Who's liable if I follow the sign and plow into one of these?

It's impossible to get something like this unless you ride with a camera cocked and ready; even with a helmetcam it's never pointing the right way. Transalt is right; without signage the whole bikelane idea is worthless. There is a stop line before the intersection with the greenway and a double yellow line on the greenway, which according to my drivers' test means "main road." Yet here is this guy sitting in the middle (tried to pull out when he saw me taking a picture, but of course put the West Street car traffic in danger. We really need more signs like "stop HERE" and "leave intersection clear" and "don't turn across parallel road with approaching traffic."

I am truly embarrassed at having a tourist industry in New York. Traditionally, we have visitors and the visitors go places and do things. We never had "tourists" until after 9/11. Never had steel drums or splash monster buses. Taking up any road footprint at all for these buses is a sin. They never go faster than 15 MPH, let them buy electric buses or something; same for the street blimps. Photo 2 is the bus pulling up to within inches of my bike, trying to get me to move, which I eventually did. Photo 3 is today on 8th & 23rd; Traffic Officer Linton refused to issue a summons; no reason given.

Why pay rent when you can run your business in this handy bicycle lane courtesy of the city?

Honestly though, I've never seen a cyclist using the eastern half of the Bergen Street lane. Allen Street in Manhattan, though, is another story.

Connecticut car & driver, with mistress in back seat, and a limo behind him, both waiting for the same SUV to pull out so they can park. A likely story. Are they planning to fight for the spot? Shades of Seinfeld? I haven't biked here in a while, but I remember there were always limos here; I ticket blitzed it once and it stopped for a while.

There must have been a sweep or something... The entire length of the 21st st lane to 8th avenue and then up to Columbus Circle, this was the only bad parking violation I saw. Of course,, there was still plenty of hooking, which is harder to catch on film.

Limos and valet parking are constantly taking up the entire bike lane on Broadway between 37th and 36th. And they threaten violence if you insist they get out of the lane. Seriously, this is very dangerous, Broadway is narrow and crowded at this point. I wish I knew about this site BEFORE i took the picture -- really it was just a prop to get the driver's attention, but another guy clued me in/