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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Bike Lane Foes Should’ve Peddled the Case Faster

BROOKLYN, N.Y. (CN) - Senior-citizen and community groups dragged their feet too much to sue New York City for building a bike lane that lets cyclists zip safely around Prospect Park West, a state court judge ruled.

The Department of Transportation first presented a plan to build the bikeway at a community board meeting on April 16, 2009.

Construction began roughly a year later, with the path mostly completed by July 1, 2010.

In a barrage of ensuing community board meetings followed, proponents touted safety for cyclists, while challengers claimed that emboldened riders endangered pedestrians.

On March 7, 2011, Seniors for Safety, Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes and their representatives put their proverbial shoulders to the wheel, suing the New York City Department of Transportation and its bike-friendly commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

By that time, however, the statute of limitations had expired, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Bert A. Bunyan ruled on Tuesday.

The famously direct Sadik-Khan did not mince words about bike-lane critics in her applause of the decision.

"This decision results in a hands-down victory for communities across the city," the commissioner said in a statement. "The plaintiffs have been dead wrong in their unsupported claims about the bike path and DOT's practices. This project was requested by the community, they voted repeatedly to support it, and their support has registered in several opinion polls. Merely not liking a change is no basis for a frivolous lawsuit to reverse it."

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