One of the “special” cities in the previous post was New York City, the Big Apple, Metropolis, Fun City U.S.A. A lot has been reported lately about bike policies and a backlash to these policies in the city. But this one takes the cake.
Recently, reported the New York Times, city cops ticked 10 bicyclists for what appeared to be exceeding the speed limit in Central Park, a posted 15 MPH. They used speed guns all day long in an effort to slow down the cyclists.
Then that night the police individually visited the homes of the cyclists to apologize and tell them the tickets had been voided.
Yikes.
Turns out that even though there were signs in the park with the limit, along with other park regulations, there was no speed limit law the city could or should enforce within the park. Indeed city officials acknowledged that 15 MPH was “a snail’s pace” for a bike! The result was the Police Department took the almost entirely unprecedented step of apologizing IN PERSON for a misapplication of the law.
Looks like the city needs to get its act together. Indeed, as the report in the previous listing showed, the city is still a pretty scary place to ride a bike, where even its vaunted network of bike lanes are constantly violated by both parked and moving vehicles.
