“It’s Like a Mad Max Movie” — Hell’s Kitchen Hustles to Get Bikes Off the Sidewalks

If you’ve walked down 9th Avenue’s new pedestrian “super sidewalk”, you may have been joined by some unwelcome companions — bicycles, e-bikes and motorized scooters, often traveling in the opposite direction to the traffic.

According to DOT data, at least 30 percent of adult New Yorkers ride a bike — and the combination of a pandemic-fueled rise in delivery orders, as well as recreational and commuter bike usage has led to a larger-than-ever influx of cyclists, some of whom disregard traffic rules altogether. As dozens of W42ST readers shared their close-call horror stories, community members are looking for actionable ways to keep sidewalks safe.  

Preventing rogue riders was the hot topic of the Manhattan Community Board 4 (MCB4)’s recent Transportation Planning Committee meeting, where board members, locals from the grassroots initiative Bikes Off Sidewalks, Los Deliveristas Unidos and representatives from the Midtown Community Court met to discuss Hell’s Kitchen’s fast-growing problem. 

“Our goal is to increase pedestrian safety by reaching out with a multifaceted approach to getting bike riders, delivery riders, e-bike riders, and anyone who’s riding bikes to follow the appropriate city ordinances,” said Richard Marans of the W47/W48th Street Block Association and Bikes Off Sidewalks. “Our approach is somewhat different from just saying, ‘Well, let’s get the police involved.’” He added that they hoped to engage community members in increasing awareness and education around cycling rules and regulations. 

Locals like David Achelis of the West 50s Neighborhood Association added that in addition to community engagement, the city must step in to invest additional funding towards rider enforcement. “The city has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on infrastructure for bikes and the bike situation, but they’ve spent not one penny on education and enforcement,” said Achelis.  “Enforcement’s another problem entirely — but education is something that we as a community group can do almost immediately, and the city can start doing almost immediately.” 

“I think the secret sauce for controlling illegal cycling is enforcement,” said Sally Greenspan, President of the Council of Chelsea Block Associations and fellow member of Bikes Off Sidewalks. “Imagine if cars were just driving any speed they wanted to, going in any direction they wanted to. There’s enforcement for that. We need enforcement for bicycles too — they’re killing us, they’re maiming us and they’re scaring us. Without enforcement, we are spinning our wheels,” she added. “We can only accomplish so much with advertising and signs and flyers. It’s up to our elected officials and law enforcement agencies to think outside the box and figure it out. Police in uniform on street corners will not be effective, because cyclists will simply avoid visible police officers. I have been told by both the 10th and 13th precincts that enforcement with undercover agents is not doable because there are no undercover officers. It’s time to create a special task force or figure something else out. Remember the civilian volunteer group, Guardian Angels? Please take a look at their work as a model New York City might adapt for bicycle law enforcement — or figure something else out.” 

But for some locals who had already confronted wayward riders, enforcement through civilian groups posed more of a risk than a reward. “I was punched by a bike rider who was going the wrong way up 9th Avenue on the corner of 47th Street in one of the ‘lanes’  — he was running a light,” a reader who wished to remain anonymous told W42ST. “My husband was struck by a fast paced motorized scooter that was going the wrong way on 48th Street and not following the law.  He ended up in the ER with a broken hand and a cast for the last five weeks. People are scared to cross the street — it feels like the Hunger Games.  The city opened up all of this opportunity for cyclists, forgetting that we are a city of people who love to walk.  I think that bikes should stay to the far West and East in designated areas and out of the midtown streets.   And there is no consequence for people who ignore the rules of the road — it is getting really, really bad out there.” 

Executive Director of the Midtown Community Court Danielle Mindess highlighted the potential for a program that would require riders served with a summons to participate in a cyclist accountability training. “It’s something that we’re happy to explore and to see if it could be a thing that would make sense in this context,” said Mindess. “Of course, for somebody to be directed to a mandated program like ours, they would have to get a summons and be required to show up at court, so it would require significant partnership to make something like that happen. I don’t want to suggest we can do that in a vacuum or turn that around tomorrow, but it is certainly something that we could explore.” 

In addition to discussions around enforcement, meeting participants floated the hope of future legislation that would require better driver accountability, including for commercial drivers delivering food from UberEats and GrubHub. Streetsblog revealed that zip code 10019 ranks as the second-highest delivery zone in the city, and although enforcement has waned over the pandemic, commercial cyclists are still required by New York law to wear helmets, vests identifying their business and to obey all traffic laws. As a way of further regulating this fast-growing industry, members at the meeting proposed advocating for legislation including licensing and registration for any vehicle capable of exceeding 20 mph, delivery driver apps that employ traffic-safe routes for cyclists, adjusting delivery radiuses from apps like GrubHub and UberEats to create shorter routes for drivers, and perhaps most significantly — improved rights and compensation for delivery drivers to disincentivize multitudes of high-speed trips. 

“Our elected officials need to leverage their power to force the delivery apps to take more responsibility for their workers, and ensure they are consistently made aware of all rules of the road. This should go hand in hand with wage increases for our essential delivery workers,” Bikes Off Sidewalks and HK49-54 Street Block Alliance Co-chair Catie Savage, who attended last week’s meeting, told W42ST. “ In addition, restaurants must limit their delivery radius to something that only serves their immediate surrounding neighborhoods. No one in our community should be able to order food from a restaurant on the Lower East Side. Delivery workers are not the only people riding and DOT must mount a massive education campaign to ensure ALL riders are well aware of the rules and all pedestrian-only areas are marked as such.” 

“Our issues and our concerns are very aligned,” said Ligia Guallpa, Executive Director of Los Deliveristas Unidos. “There’s safety issues, there are accidents, there is a lack of infrastructure, there is a lack of education. We are focusing on building the street delivery hubs with the  intention of bringing not only charging stations, but also to build education. Unfortunately, a lot of the app companies don’t provide the resources…most of the apps don’t train workers how to do this work, nor how to ride in the city safely.”

She revealed that the organization hoped to partner with community boards and organizations like Bikes Off Sidewalks to find a solution. “The second issue is the reason delivery drivers are speeding so fast and sometimes in a rush is because they don’t have a minimum wage,” added Guallpa. “The more deliveries they do, the more tips they have. We are right now fighting for the City of New York to pass a minimum pay —  because we strongly believe that a driver should be paid every minute he’s on the road making a delivery. Then, there wouldn’t be a pressure for the worker to rush, because his time is being paid. Our priority is to make sure that we pass this minimum pay, not just because we want workers to get paid, but because we strongly believe it will address the speed issue.” 

Others believe the first steps toward safer sidewalks are to make adjustments to Midtown’s super sidewalks, which have quickly been taken over by cyclists, motorized scooters and delivery trucks. “They are anything but super,” wrote reader Gregg. “I understand that they are an incremental step and a less expensive option than physically widening sidewalks. But the way they have been implemented is poor and frankly dangerous. They are open pathways with no signage and no barriers to vehicles which could mow down pedestrians. I almost never walk in them because they don’t feel safe and they are overrun with bikes and scooters. It’s bad enough for residents who can be taught what these areas are designed for, but tourists or people from other areas often have no idea that these are even supposed to be used by pedestrians. There is nothing intuitive about walking in these dangerous spaces.”

“Finally, one obvious sign that the city doesn’t care about these areas: on 8th Avenue between 43 and 44 there is a sidewalk extension which has never been painted, resulting in a phantom bike lane for one block, which is confusing for everyone,” he added. “Bottom line, sometimes spending too little on something is worse than doing nothing at all. If the city couldn’t afford to create these areas with actual signage and protective bollards, then they should have reduced the size and only moved forward on the areas we could afford.” 

Some locals say speed bumps and painted icons could be an effective first step toward traffic rule enforcement. “I think if they paint icons on the pavement in the lane (walking person symbol, or no bikes symbol), similar to how they paint a biker repeatedly in the bike lanes, it might help…” wrote 9th Avenue’s Kashkaval Garden owner Corey Samuels, co-signed by reader Eric Ogden. “Why aren’t their icons of pedestrians simply painted onto the ground? This seems like an easy fix and clarification.”

Christine Berthet, MCB4 Transportation Co-Chair and founder of pedestrian safety organization CHEKPEDS, recently visited the super sidewalk with Council Member Erik Bottcher to walk city agencies through the need for additional protections. Bottcher wrote after the walk-through: “At our on-site interagency meeting about cars/bikes using the 9th Ave expanded pedestrian space in Hell’s Kitchen, we request that the agencies 1) move the vehicle signage from the inner sidewalk to outside the pedestrian zone to help reinforce that these are sidewalk extensions 2) put ‘pedestrian’ decals on the sidewalk extensions 3) put up additional signage 4) install flexible bollards 5) step up enforcement for help ensure this area is used by pedestrians only.”

The MCB4 Transportation Committee plans to collect community suggestions ahead of the next June committee meeting, with the potential to present them at the full board meeting in July. But while citywide infrastructure and legislation changes could take time, Hell’s Kitchen residents are hoping for a speedy solution. “I’ve been hit by Citi Bikes as well as motorized bikes,” said resident Stanley on last week’s meeting. “Riding out there right now is a little bit like a Mad Max movie.”