Halsey - Brooklyn

Before this paper I have never been noticed how bad my neighbor is in term of bicycle safety and infrastructure. I am currently living in Halsey - Brooklyn where I live since January this year. I am not a “bicycle person”, especially in big cities like New York and Sao Paulo where I lived. I can tell you that I am more a “public transportation person” in this case and totally against cars. I confess I have a bike but in San Francisco where I am not afraid of taking rides due to a good bicycle planning they provide as well as the respect of cars have in terms of bicyclists in that city. What I can say is, San Francisco has a huge bike community. But today I decided to walk around Halsey to check how people ride their bikes in this area where many young people live.

MY ROUT

BROOKLYN BIKE LANES MAP

Well, I can tell that Halsey is a nice and quiet area. Here you can find people from different nations especially from Latin America and West Europe. Besides that, buildings here are predominantly residential with 3 to 5 floors apartment or single housings and some local commercial facilities. We provide basically a good public transportation by MTA bus services and the “L and M” subway lines. However, my neighbor also contains a good amount of cars due to the high number of children in this community. Furthermore, Halsey also provides public parks and schools, but almost none when we talk about of infrastructure for bicycles. I have seen many people taking their bikes on the subway. What I have never realized was why. The reason is simply because there are almost “zero” bicycle lanes in this area that could link to other areas. Besides that, many children are riding bikes on the sidewalks or even worse on the streets without any security such as helmets or other protections.

BIKES ON SUBWAY

                 

KIDS RIDING ON SIDEWALKS

Bike shares are not even close to get here as you can see in the map bellow. But still, many people who work in Williamsburg area or even Manhattan take their bikes to the subways to ride their bikes where is possible to.

 BIKE SHARE MAP

In an area predominantly residential, vehicles traffic volumes are generally low.  But we cannot forget we are in New York and besides the fact I am in a quiet neighbor, the traffic and the speed are considerable higher rather than normally should be. Streets here are generally short but sidewalks are quite wide if you compare to people’s density in this area. These cause a many conflicts between cars, bikes and pedestrians. I personally don’t believe my neighbor needs to change for huge plans in pro of bikes but small changes can be benefic to the whole transportation categories including bikes.

CARS DON’T RESPECT THE BIKE LANES                                                                                            

DOUBLE PARKING

A bicyclist has told me that cars often double-park on streets around here, which is true, I have seen this a lot in here. This double-parking force bicycles riders swerve around cars exposing even more biker to dangerous situations. Cars also invade few bicycle lanes we here provide without any concern or warning, making bicycles riding in Halsey even riskier. Many bikers also ride in wrong direction due to the narrow bike lanes or where they don’t exist. I think the whole problem could be avoided with small changes such as sign directing cyclists to safer alternative routes and sidewalk sharing bike in between. This little changes can transform a community and boost people to adopt bicycles as one of the mainly transport ways if it shows efficiency and security.

HALSEY STREET                                                                                                                               

WHAT COULD BE

 SECTION OF WHAT COULD BE