Clarence: The Purple Traffic Calming Wizard

Clarence Eckerson Jr.: [00:05] Hey folks, it’s your favourite traffic calming maniac and in honour of Halloween I have disguised myself as a wizard, and we are here in Chelsea at the site of the physically separated bike lane on 9^th Avenue, the innovative project that the New York City Department of Transportation has conjured up for us, and we’re going to talk about that and hopefully people are going to talk to us. What do you think of the new bike lane?

Speaker: [00:27] I love it.

Clarence Eckerson Jr.: [00:28] You love it?

Speaker: [00:30] I love it.

Clarence Eckerson Jr.: [00:31] Hey, this guy loves it.

Speaker: [00:33] Love the bike lane.

Speaker: [00:35] This is just separated and there’s no cars interfering. I can enjoy my bike ride better.

Clarence Eckerson Jr.: [00:39] It seems to be the first day that they have the bike lights working.

Speaker: [00:42] Wow, I didn’t even realise that. I usually ride on the east side where there’s all bets are off.

Clarence Eckerson Jr.: [00:49] So one of the great things they have here now is they have activated the bike signals. This was one of the more important concerns was how do you make the left hand turns through the separated bike lanes safe, and these traffic signals do that by giving bicyclists a dedicated signal. They will get the green only while the drivers that want to turn left must hold until they get their green arrow and then the bike signal will go red. Man do I love these bollards. These bollards have been placed here to stop the cars from turning directly into you when making that left. And they’re so… they’re so beautiful.

Speaker: [01:28] This is making New York more… first of all, coming from a third world country, it’s fantastic to see these bike lanes, and catering for the pedestrian and the cyclist, fantastic.

Speaker: [01:37] It’s going to make it look more beautiful, it’s going to encourage people to come and visit. We love it.

Clarence Eckerson Jr.: [01:42] Hey here on 9^th Avenue it ain’t all about cyclists. As you can see they’ve started to fill in some of these concrete islands, and these concrete islands are number one helping serve as a buffer for the separated bike lane. But also they’re helping pedestrians navigate 9^th Avenue a little better. It looks here sometime maybe in the spring we’re going to have some greenery planted, a tree, a shrub, I don’t know, I love greenery, I’ll take anything. One of the most important parts of this physically separated bike lane is that, of course, parking has been taken from being curb side to outside, and they’ve done that here with flexible bollards, we love the bollards of course, just because there’s a physically separated bike lane doesn’t mean that there’s no more parking. You can still park but you can’t park here.

Speaker: [02:25] Yes, very excited. It’s the future. Right where they’re turning, that’s my only issue. Yeah. I don’t know I’ll see how it works. I haven’t had any problems with it yet.

Clarence Eckerson Jr.: [02:34] Another thing we noticed is that there’s a lot of bike racks going in on 9^th Avenue, about a half dozen or more per block. It’s always good to have more bike parking. I love bike parking. What’s that? Big bikes for that lane?

Speaker: [02:45] Wow, too wide, too wide.

Clarence Eckerson Jr.: [02:53] That’s a no-no. So as you can see behind us this is one of the problems we’re going to have to face. The cyclist has to go around this… look at that. That’s because this truck came up, backed in and parked in the bike lane. And to be honest I don’t know how much more you could do to keep that truck out of there other than having a police officer here at all times. So obviously there’s some education that’s going to have to go on and some enforcer. And so there you have it, lots of new physical improvements going on here on the 9^th Avenue bike lane, the concrete islands are going in, a lot of pavement markings, the dedicated bike signals for cyclists. So this continues to be something very exciting to watch as it nears its completion and then we’ll get to see how successful it is. And what do you think about my costume today?

Speaker: [03:42] It’s slightly too tight. If you maybe one size bigger then I’ll probably say it’s perfect.

Speaker: [03:47] From a female perspective, we think it’s fantastic. The tighter the better. It shows off those pecks.

Speaker: [03:50] Purple’s your colour. Purple’s your colour.