CityBike Black Hole in Black Hat Williamsburg
The city has carved out a big hole in its controversial bike-sharing program, ensuring that a bike-hating section of Hasidic Williamsburg doesn’t have to participate.
CitiBike launches Monday with dozens of rental kiosks dotting the landscape throughout the gentrified sections of Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights and Clinton Hill — but nary a single location in the part of South Williamsburg dominated by Hasidic Jews, who have opposed at every turn the Bloomberg Administration’s efforts to increase cycling.
“They put the racks where they are going to be used,” said Community Board 1 member Simon Weiser, who hashed out kiosk locations with the Department of Transportation. “Look at the Hasidic community. No one rides a bike here.”
It’s not just low ridership that created the so-called “black hat black hole” in the bike share plan, but outright hostility to cyclists.
Hasidic community spokesman Isaac Abraham warned of “civil disobedience” if the kiosks are ever placed too close to where the Satmar Hasidim live.
“We will put baby carriages there,” Abraham said. “We will make a baby carriage lane.”
Satmars shopping recently on Lee Ave. chided CitiBike racks as threat.
“The bike racks are dangerous for pedestrians and children,” said Yoeli Klein, owner of ice cream shop Chocolate Wise.
“I’m against the bike racks,” added Avner Fried. “The installation of bike racks is crazy to me.”
Ultra religious Jews have battled bikes for years.
Williamsburg’s Satmars demanded in 2008 that officials nix the Hasidic Quarter portion of the Bedford Ave. cycling lane, complaining that scantily dressed women were pedaling past their kids.
A similar argument was made a decade ealier after the city proposed a bike lane in Borough Park.
A Department of Transportation spokesman said the Hasidic community’s antipathy towards cycling did not influence the CitiBike locations.
“The (chosen) locations were the product of an extensive public outreach process,” said Seth Solomonow, but added the locations “reflect the input of neighborhoods in the service area.”
As a result, there are bike share points in the “hipster” section of the neighborhood to the north, plus dozens of share kiosks to the south and west. But the closest the kiosks come to the Hasidic Quarter of Williamsburg is the periphery at best: one is on Kent Ave. near S. 11th St. and the other on Flushing Ave. near Wallabout St.
And Phase II of the program also avoids Hasidic Williamsburg, even as it adds dozens of share points around the community.
Jewish cycling advocate Baruch Herzfeld, who led the charge to keep the Bedford Ave. bike lane, said keeping CitiBikes out of kosher Williamsburg was a way to keep the peace.
“The neighborhood would have been in all sorts of drama,” Herzfeld said. “It is a way to avoid conflict.”
tznius
Tznius. This is very important, in the summer especially many bikers dress as if they’re on the beach.
It seems their community cares about tznius more than others (no names).
For example , we had non-tznius ads on the train station outside 770 for months. this would not happen in the Willi.
They fight together
Wish we would fight for our rights here in CH
'Bike Hating Section of Hasidic..'?
From the rabble rousing sound of this article, the only one with the real hatred is the writer.
Chaya
To poster number 2
Fight for our rights? What rights? You dont own Crown heights, and neither do the Jews in Williamsburg own Williamsburg. All they are doing is adding to the huge Chillul Hashem that they make everyday by fighting society. There is absolutely nothing wrong with people riding bikes! They should start focusing on more important things, such as the “rabbis” molesting their innocent children!
Milhouse
Chilul Hashem?! Standing up for Jewish values, in the face of the outside society’s objections, is by you a chilul haShem?! On the contrary , it’s the very definition of kiddush haShem!
um no
So we get our way whenever we want, then we want to know why ppl hate us, because everything must suit US!
Tipshim
to 4 & 5:
your philosophy seems to be: be lazy and find an excuse
no wonder the kids here look the way they do.
Milhouse
The whole world was created for us, so that we can do Hashem’s will. When we’re pursuing our own desires we should make nice, but when we’re pursuing Hashem’s desires we have every right to assert ourselves, since the truth is that He made the world for no other purpose. After all, are we not working towards a world where “every knee will bend to You, and every height will prostrate itself before You”?
Pointless
Does this stop people from riding in the neighborhood? No.
So case close.
um no#2
“The whole world was created for us” is not what law abiding citizens in the melting pot of nyc want or need to hear!
You want to be treated special and make demands?
That’s how trouble starts, when normal hard working people have to see this garbage. If it offends you DON”T LOOK, or MOVE AWAY. No one is forcing anyone to live here…
Milhouse
Whether they want to hear it or not, it’s true, isn’t it? The world is here to help us do mitzvos, and WE are in the world to make it a cleaner and holier place. So what is your problem? Or do you deny the Torah?
Um no
Yeah, we just have to get people to buy that? No?
I wonder if Hashem thinks the human race still hasn’t learn their lesson.