The L Train Shutdown May Spawn a New Generation of Bike People

This post-Sandy transit crisis offered a preview of what North Brooklyn and lower Manhattan might look like during the L train shutdown, in 2019. After the storm, the L train was at least partly shut down for almost two weeks—this reporter, who was living in the area at the time, vividly remembers the long lines for shuttle buses, and even longer walks to nearby subway lines, which were flooded with people. (Of course, Sandy’s impact is still being felt: the Canarsie Tunnel is closing specifically due to the storm’s damage, six years after the fact.)

So bikes figure to be a crucial transit alternative during the city’s impending crisis. Still, the spike in their use after Sandy was measured over the course of a few days—the L shutdown will last at least 15 months. Can bikes really serve as a viable option for that long? And how many New Yorkers, realistically, will ditch traditional commutes for wheels?

That’s the big question, according to Jon Orcutt, director of communications and advocacy at the Transit Center, an NYC-based group dedicated to improving urban mobility. Orcutt has spent a large chunk of his 30-year career thinking about bikes, including bike shares, and safety. (He was previously executive director of both Transportation Alternatives and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, two major advocacy groups for carless alternatives.)

“Bikes obviously need to be a part of the solutions,” he told VICE. “They’re one of the fastest-growing means of traveling the city right now, so it’s not unfeasible to get more people on bikes. We know how to do that. The good news is that the city is already—and committed to—doing more for bikes in the L train corridor.”

Once the L shuts down between Brooklyn and Manhattan, Orcutt predicted, the city can expect at least a 30 percent increase in bike traffic on the bridge. “It’s going to be fractional to a quarter of a million people a day, but if you look at the Williamsburg Bridge volumes alone, you’re talking about tens of thousands of people,” he told me. “That could take a real edge off the crowding in other places.”

Bikes don’t have to be an end unto themselves, of course. They can also carry commuters to other subway lines nearby—a key peg of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) shutdown plan. Way-finding efforts along those routes could be improved, Orcutt noted, especially further south. “How do you get from the Metropolitan-Lorimer area [in Williamsburg], or the areas east of there, down to the A train stations in Bed-Stuy?” he asked. “There are some bike lane connections, but just sort of reminding people, through more signage or bike parking at those stations,” would help, he argued.

This was also before Citi Bike became what it is now: a massively popular bike-share program that’s on pace for 17 million rides in 2017 (it had ten million two years ago), and recently set a record for 70,000 rides in a single day. Citi Bike has mulled plans to expand to all five boroughs, including along the L train line. “Thousands of new bikes from Williamsburg to Canarsie in Brooklyn could play a crucial role in helping to alleviate the pain of the upcoming L train shutdown,” Jay Walder, the CitiBike president and former MTA chairman, wrote in a recent op-ed.

Exciting as more bikes might be for the city’s enthusiasts, transit experts see them as just one part of a larger menu of solutions to the shutdown problem—and not without potential pitfalls.

“If cycling really does pick up, we’ll need additional protective bike lanes on and near the 14th Street corridor,” she continued. “We already know through research at the NYU Rudin Center that women in particular avoid cycling in areas perceived as unsafe—lots of traffic, or lacking separate bike lanes, for example. We must be careful to ensure equal access to all transportation options by providing safe alternatives to the subway.”

At the end of July, the Times reported that New York now hosts 450,000 daily bike rides. Bikes have always been a fixture of city life, but their use is now accelerating far faster than both population and employment, according to the paper. By the time the Canarsie Tunnel goes offline in 2019, it can be assumed the number of bike rides will be drastically higher than it was in 2013, when Hurricane Sandy battered New York’s shoreline.

“When transit is disrupted, thousands of New Yorkers take to bikes for the first time,” said Thomas DeVito, the director of organizing at Transportation Alternatives. “We’ve seen it during past transit strikes, and we can expect it to happen again.”

“The silver lining is that unlike in past emergencies,” he added, “the city has time to plan for the L-Train crisis.”