E-scooters are nice, but what I need is more secure bicycle parking

The time is now for New York’s leaders to keep their promise on secure bike parking

New York’s leaders are laying the foundation for a spiffy dockless e-scooter pilot, but what my community needs is a safe place to park our bikes.

I’ve lived in New York City since I was three. My family and I bounced around many neighborhoods in Queens — Corona, Glendale, and most recently St. Albans, near Jamaica, while going to school in Jackson Heights and Ozone Park. Despite what you may read in the New York Post and the Daily News, bicycles aren’t just for the affluent “tech” bros. Here, I and many others that look like me rely on bikes — today — as an irreplaceable means of affordable transportation to school, work, and many other places. For many of my neighbors, bikes are their job; they’re delivery workers, couriers, and messengers.

No, bicycles aren’t just for rich white neighborhoods; Black & Brown communities like mine need them too. With the pandemic still raging across the city and transit shuttered overnight, working class communities like St. Albans and Jamaica have come to depend on their bicycles more than ever.

But we’ve been forgotten.

Each year, as many as 75,000 bicycles are stolen across the five boroughs, and countless more are vandalized or damaged by harsh weather. One doesn’t need to be a detective to find the common thread amongst these problems; the lack of secure bike parking.

Affordable secure bike parking is innately non-existent in New York. There’s nothing. The best New York has is a handful of parking garages providing some spaces, but at $60 a month for one bike parking space, these are priced for only the very wealthiest. I just don’t have that kind of money! I find them sketchy too; as unsafe as I feel just walking through, I don’t feel confident leaving my bike there.

I received my bike as a birthday present more than ten years ago and it’s been there for me ever since. I most often use it for shopping to reach shops that are 30 minutes away on foot but easily 10 minutes by bike. Sometimes, a particular supermarket does not have the item I want, so my bike puts others within easy reach. My bike also brings me closer to my friends, activist meetings, and places I like to go to for leisure such as the Queens Library’s Central branch.

The bicycle makes long distances easier and faster than walking but it’s also free transportation. Every $5.50 I save is valuable. Any investment I have to make on maintaining my bike is a one-time payment that lasts a very long time for many trips.

I live with the thought of having my bike or its parts stolen each day I ride. Even though I have two thick, heavy chains, I fear that nothing will stop a thief from trying and I may come back to a bike without a saddle, lights, baskets, or wheels. The longer I leave it outside, even locked, the more likely I feel it’ll end up a statistic. This is why before the pandemic I have never biked to the subway, even though it would cut at least 20 minutes off my trips across the boroughs.

As I ride, I cannot escape the eerie remains of bicycles that have been stripped apart by thieves and vandals. For every rusted hulk, there is a fellow rider that has likely given up.

These are sights that should never be seen in any community

The prospect of losing my bike to a thief is definitely one of the most anxiety-inducing facets of my daily riding experience, right up there with being hit by a driver. Some of my friends are so affected by this cruel reality that they actually purchase a second “beater bike” that can be easily written off.

Any spares or replacements for my stolen bike are out of my financial reach. Thus, my relationship with cycling in the city is one of continual apprehension; I know that each day on my bike could be my last, if not because of a crash, then because it is taken from me.

If this happens, I don’t know what I’m going to do.. I don’t know how I’ll make it to work, or to the grocery store. I don’t know how I’ll be able to see my friends or make it to Transportation Alternatives activist meetings. I don’t know because my own bike is the cheapest way to get around the city, I really can’t always afford $2.75 for a Metrocard, Fair Fares is getting cut, and I definitely can’t afford the $7.75 for the LIRR or $15 for an Uber. And I most likely won’t be able to afford the $4 that the scooter companies will charge per ride in the city’s planned pilot.

I’d be lost without my bike.

In 2016, I thought hope had finally come when the DOT announced that it would start piloting bike parking hubs throughout the city. But nothing happened.

There was hope again, this time a bit more tangible, when I learned about the city’s first secure bike parking pilot in Downtown Manhattan. This time, the pilot wasn’t from the city, but from a private company named Oonee. I visited the station and it was great; it was everything that I’d need to keep my bike safe back in Queens.

I appreciated the green roofs and side benches, but most importantly, it was free to use!

Oonee’s first installation in Downtown Manhattan was a success — but the city forced it to close

I spoke to advocates and I heard nothing but great feedback. The community loved it, the cyclists loved it, the businesses loved it, even elected officials normally against plazas and bike and bus lanes loved it. It seemed like New York had finally struck gold.

But then nothing happened. There was no hint of an expansion, not even an announcement.

I tweeted at the company, in frustration. Why weren’t things moving faster? What was taking so long? Why couldn’t they set up stations in Queens?

I received a surprising response from the CEO: red tape had brought expansion to a halt. Though the program was completely free to both the government and New Yorkers, the city wouldn’t allow the company to advertise on the side of its stations. Without any draw of revenue, not only was the existing installation in jeopardy, but so were future ones I had hoped to see and use.

I tried to help; I wrote letters, I testified at hearings and I spoke to fellow advocates. Instead of good news and progress, New York’s first secure bike parking hub was eventually dismantled. I was crushed; if this couldn’t work, nothing would.

I can’t help but feel ambivalent about the city’s planned scooter pilot. I suppose it’s good that there will be another, albeit expensive, transportation option for Queens, but it’s one that I won’t find useful when I have to carry stuff, which I do very often. It appears that our leaders have completely forgotten about their promises to create a bike parking system for New York — one that could be far more useful to my community, where bicycles are already being used.

I cycled around the city and saw multiple places that would be ideal for Oonee style secure bike parking

These locations were everywhere — and I had hoped the city would move forward with aggressive expansion

Black & Brown neighborhoods like mine, would especially benefit

I testified at hearings to support Oonee expansion but nothing has happened — city agencies haven’t kept their promises to build out this infrastructure.

Oonee is still here. I’ve watched as they rebounded from their first pilot at Water-Whitehall with two other stations that are on non-city owned property. I know it’s not easy; without city support, the company must spend many months of planning on each individual new station. They’ve got to work with landlords, engineers and investors on separate terms for each individual project. All of the planets must align. Sometimes, planned locations completely stall out due to, like the one by the Queens Place that mall I was counting on. Even more, Oonee isn’t the product of a corporate parent like Google; it’s a tiny startup composed mainly of Black & Brown transportation advocates and designers.

Working with the city directly on a large-scale rollout would make this process much easier, in almost every conceivable way.

I sometimes wonder if a big corporation, with lots of cash for lobbyists and a government relations staff, would have been enough for the city to begin to move forward with new locations. I find it ironic that during the height of a national conversation about the underrepresentation of black & brown communities in the halls of power, a small minority led startup would be shut out of the process of answering the city’s own call for cycle parking facilities, and being impressively adept in doing so.

I hope our leaders fix this soon. The City Council can work with the Department of Transportation to create a citywide bike parking opportunity that companies like Oonee can compete for. At minimum, the Department of Transportation should be encouraged to create an expanded pilot.

Now is a perfect time to do this. The bike boom is real in this era of COVID-19; there are more people on bikes than ever, and they need safe, reliable places to park.

We can’t miss this opportunity.