To the Editor:

Kirsten Gillibrand is a political hack and opportunist if ever there was one. (“Why Kirsten Gillibrand Could Have It All,” July 26). She shamelessly scouts for headlines to jump on and take what her handlers advise are “populist” positions. An example is Gillibrand jumping on the “Miracle in the Hudson” incident to call for an all-out war on Canada geese that resulted in the roundup and destruction of 751 geese just a couple of weeks ago from the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge—a refuge-turned-slaughterhouse, thanks to the political ambitions of Gillibrand. She should be road out of town on her broomstick come November.

—Patty Adjamine

Double Standard 

To the Editor:

Reading “Brewer Intros New Bike Legislation” (July 26), I would like to commend Council Member Gale Brewer and Queens Councilman James Vacca for new legislation, but was disappointed that they can only see one side of this problem of lawbreaking bikers. Why only concentrate on commercial bikers? Whatever laws they break are also broken by other bikers who do the exact same things—going through red lights, against traffic and on the sidewalk, shaking up pedestrians, especially the elderly. Why are these other offenders exempt from punishment? Why the double standard?

—Bunny Abraham

Paul Panus with his recovered bike at Chelsea Piers. Photo by Jonathan Springer.

With bicycle thefts now common in NYC, one man set up a sting operation to recover his stolen bike

by Sean Creamer

Paul Panus’ story is one that begins like many bicycle thefts, with a nice bike and a cheap lock. After his bike was stolen, Panus, a 33-year-old IT project manager and skateboarding and cycling enthusiast, seemed destined to become just another statistic in the ever-growing rash of bicycle thefts currently plaguing New York City.

Through a combination of tenacity and cunning, however, Panus found his wheels and brought the thief to justice.
The bike is a Jamis Coda, a sleek, flat-handlebarred “road racing [bike] without the racing emphasis,” according to the manufacturer, that Panus purchased in late March of this year for around $600. Only three days after Panus bought his new set of wheels from Chelsea Bicycles, it was stolen from outside the skateboard park at Pier 62 in Chelsea.

“I got to Chelsea at about 11 o’clock in the morning,” said Panus as he sat on his recovered bike at the scene of the crime one recent afternoon. “I happened to peek my head over the fence at about two o’clock, because it was a brand-new bike, and I noticed that it wasn’t there. The bike wasn’t there and the lock wasn’t there.”

Panus questioned his fellow skaters to see if anyone had spotted the bike-napper. Unfortunately, no one had seen the thief, but he received a tip that would prove pivotal.

“Some people told me to report it to the [Hudson River Park Trust] lost and found. I never did, but then someone suggested I check Craigslist, and that is what I did for the next three days, looking for a Jamis Coda bike,” Panus said, as he drew a heavy- duty lock from his bag and snapped his bike frame to a signpost.

Panus began his search on a Saturday and scoured the Internet for three days until he found what he believed to be his ride.

“It was a generic description of the bike, with a picture from the actual website, so it wasn’t a photo of the bike,” he recalled. ”But that is what made it seem fishy to me, because if you’re selling the bike, why don’t you take an actual picture of it?”

While the NYPD didn’t provide data on the number of bike thefts that occur in the city each year, the bike community in New York City has noted a rise in such crimes and many say it is now a common occurrence. Will Huff, who has worked as a bike messenger for 10 years and is currently a salesman at Spokesman Cycles, has had three bikes stolen over the last few years.

Huff said the rising popularity of road and high-end fixed-gear bicycles has skyrocketed demand for stolen parts. “We can sell a bike one week and have it get ripped off two days later,” said Huff as he restocked a line of premium steel bike locks.

Huff was surprised to hear that Panus had gotten most of his bike back; usually when a bike is stolen it will be stripped of its components, with each one sold individually to bike messengers and aficionados who search for specific parts. While the buyers of the stolen parts may be cycling enthusiasts, Huff said he thinks the thieves themselves steal for a very different reason.

“Most of them are junkies,” alleged Huff. “Once you know how to do something, that is how you make your money. There is basically a steady flow of professionals going around stealing wheels, brakes and whatever they can get their hands on.”

Huff then brandished a heavy-duty bike lock called “The New York Fahgettaboudit Mini,” which weighs 7 pounds. Hefting the lock up and down to display its size, Huff noted, “They can all be sawed through. The only way you can protect your bike is to lock it in a place that is well-lit and well-traveled. People are generally lazy and will lock their bike up in front of their house, which is where most thefts will happen.”

On the day of the theft, Panus locked up his bike at Chelsea Pier 62 at 23rd Street, a renovated pier that is home to a skate park with a bike rack near the entrance. It is heavily traveled by tourists, skateboarders and cyclists and is located right next to a leisure cruise line.

Despite all of this, Panus’ bike was stolen in the middle of the day, almost right under his nose.

“Bike thieves will watch an area and take notes on which bikes are locked up and how often the owner comes back to the bike,” said Huff.

The ad that Panus believed to be selling his bike was a generic one. The bike was being sold out of Jersey City at an asking price of $350, and the post contained a picture of the bike from Jamis’ website.

“It was the only ad I saw that was the same model as my bike,” said Panus. “The bike is not that common.”
Panus decided to email the thief directly, posing as a potential buyer. Acting on impulse, he sent that first message without any idea of what his next move would be.

“It seemed kind of fishy to me,” Panus said of his conversations with the thief. “He did not post a photo of the bike itself and would not give out his number.”

In his email communication with the thief, the seller touted that the bike was more or less brand new and that Panus could have it, provided he met the seller in Jersey City or Hoboken.

Before another potential buyer could swoop in, Panus acted fast and consulted a pal who is an NYPD officer. The friend advised Panus to talk to the officers at the 10th Precinct, the jurisdiction in which the bike was stolen, before meeting up with the thief.

“I went in and I gave them the ad from Craigslist and told them the situation,” he remembered. “They said, ‘Are you sure this is your bike? Do you have anything to identify it with?’”

He told the officers that he could tell if the bike was his by checking its serial number, which Chelsea Bikes provided him. Similar to a vehicle’s VIN, bicycles have serial numbers the manufacturer uses to catalog each one produced. The only remaining hurdle for Panus was that his bike was being sold out of New Jersey, outside of the area covered by the NYPD.
“They told me that if I could convince the guy to come into the city, to bring the bike into the city, that they would be happy to set up a small sting operation,” said Panus.

They told Panus that if he could get the thief to come to Chelsea with the bike, the police would set up undercover officers who would make the arrest, once Panus had identified the bike as his own.

Armed with renewed vigor and a plan to take down the crook, Panus contacted the suspected bike-napper and told him that he wanted to buy the bike, but only if the seller would travel to New York City. Panus greased the seller’s palms and promised more money if the man made the trip out to Manhattan.

“I told the guy, ‘Listen, I work and live in the city; it is going to be hard for me to get over to Jersey.’” he said. “‘If I give you $50 more, will you bring it to the city?’”

The man quickly agreed to the new terms. Panus called the cops to tell them he was meeting the seller in front of the Starbucks at 23rd Street and 8th Avenue. Bear in mind that Panus found the bike on Craigslist, contacted the crook, brought in the police and baited the target to come into the city all in the same day—only three days after his bicycle was first stolen. All that was left to be done was wait for the man to show up.

“The NYPD brought in three officers. One sat in the Starbucks while I waited out front for the man and two sat in an undercover car designed to look like a taxi,” Panus said.

While they were waiting, Panus got a call from the crook, saying that he had just gotten off the PATH train and would be there soon. A Hispanic man in his mid-thirties, “a normal guy who did not look like a thug,” Panus recalled, rode up on the bike, and Panus initially thought he might have the wrong guy.

“Immediately, I noticed that the seat was different, the handle grips were different and the pedals were different,” Panus said. “But I looked the bike over, pretending that I really wanted to buy it, and I flipped the bike over and began turning the crank to make sure he didn’t think something was up as I double-checked the serial number, which I had memorized.”

“Sure enough, the serial number matched,” Panus said, smiling. “And then I threw my hand in the air.”

The undercovers sprang from their concealed locations and immediately cuffed the crook. Panus said the man was utterly shocked when the three officers converged upon him. His only response was a confused “What?”

Panus returned to the station with the undercover cops and the crook to finish up some paperwork. He watched as the man was booked on charges of possession of stolen property, since there was no way to prove that the man who was trying to sell the bike was the one who had stolen it.

“Basically, that was it. I filled out some paperwork and they let me ride away with my bike right then and there,” Panus said. “I didn’t want anyone to get away with this. I’m glad I was able to get my bike back and catch the guy.”

For those hoping their bicycle doesn’t succumb to the same fate, Huff has one simple piece of advice: “The only real way to keep your bike safe is to take it inside your home. It does not matter what kind of lock you use.”

Huff himself is the victim of multiple bike thefts. Some were stolen and never seen again, but there were several instances where he had to play dirty to get his gear back.

“Once I had a bike stolen and I found it chained somewhere a few weeks later. I went up to it, put my own lock on it and waited for the guy to come back,” Huff said. “Sometimes you have to get rough to get your stuff back.”

Photos & Text by Veronica Hoglund

As the weather continues to get warmer, there is no question that most of us will be spending our free time outdoors soon. With that in mind, now might be the perfect time to invest in the bicycle you know you’ve been wanting. I decided to check out the wares at Recycle-A-Bike (75 Ave. C, betw. 5th & 6th Sts.), located in the East Village. The cycle technicians at the shop take old, worn bicycles and give them a facelift, providing you with a beautiful, fully functional refurbished bike while creating no new waste in the process—a process that takes only four hours to complete.

The bike first comes to the shop as a donation, usually bikes that have been sitting in basements or have been left behind by former building tenants. “The bikes just need a little love,” manager Patrick Tomeny told me. Recycle-A-Bike has been providing a vast variety of New Yorkers with recycled bicycles since 1994, in addition to facilitating youth programs in and around New York City.

From the moment you walk into the shop, it is clear how meticulous the process of refurbishing a bicycle can be. The tiny shop is packed with tools, parts and various pieces of equipment. As the Recycle-A-Bicycle team prepares to tackle their latest project, a vintage Schwinn World Tourist, they begin by taking apart the bicycle and wiping down the various parts. As staff member Brendon Brogan explains, the team does an “overhaul” of the bike, completely disassembling it to “guarantee the quality of the bike.” Bear in mind though, about 85 percent of the refurbishing process is simply cleaning, which mainly consists of wiping it down with a concentrate of water and Simple Green.

Though much more complicated than the guys make it appear, the bike is pulled apart piece by piece, screw by screw. In what seems like an instant, all that is remaining is the bicycle frame.

Once everything has been disassembled, it’s time to rebuild the bike. First, each part is given all the way from the bicycle chain to the handlebars—is given a good clean. When able, parts used are taken from the original bicycle and are replaced only when necessary. Then, the many parts are reassembled, using fresh grease to get the bicycle moving the way it should.

After a long four hours, a once-exhausted bike has been transformed into one ready for the streets. A set of refurbished Recycle-A-Bike wheels will set you back $250-$350 dollars, but considering the care and love put into these pieces, it is well worth the price.

Construction of protected bike lanes is scheduled to start April 2, and Upper East Side and Harlem small business owners are pretty worried about the negative impact they will have on their bottom line. Our West Side neighbors said, “Goodbye, Columbus Avenue” to their mom-and-pop stores and hello to the chain drugstores and banks, thanks to the bike lanes.
Since the Great Recession, two to eight stores have closed on the blocks along First and Second avenues from 57th to 96th Street and with overtime charges for limited delivery accessibility and reduced parking spots, there’s little hope for new businesses to open and pay high rents.

In addition to damage to businesses, getting picked up or dropped off will be particularly difficult for our residents, especially the elderly and handicapped, with protected bike lanes on one side and Select Bus lanes on the other. Far more people need to take taxis or be transported by car and buses than need bike lanes—for no more than 22,000 cycling commuters, according to the DOT.

Despite complaints to City Councilwoman Jessica Lappin’s office about lawless cyclists and lack of enforcement from 72 percent of her constituents, Transportation Commissioner Jannette Sadik-Khan is adding 10,000 uninsured rental bikes and installing 40-foot-wide bike stations in our neighborhood in July. If you can’t run, be sure to look in every direction when walking on our sidewalks and before crossing our streets.

Susan P. Forman
East 63rd Street

Letters have been edited for clarity, style and brevity.

Bikers ride through Central Park.

A new shift is about to once again change the battling dynamic between vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians traveling through Central Park. In the coming weeks, the Central Park Conservancy and the Department of Transportation will be jointly presenting a plan to community boards 7 (Upper West Side) and 8 (Upper East Side) outlining their plans to permanently change the 72nd Street transverse, also known at Terrace Drive. The plan will reduce the number of cars on the road while allowing for an increased number of bicycles.

While the idea of more bikes on the park’s roadways might raise the ire of some local residents, the plan was actually conceived as a way to encourage cyclists off the pedestrian and shared paths and back onto the road.

“The purpose of this plan—developed in conjunction with DOT and Parks Department—is to encourage bicyclists to use the drives instead of interior pedestrian paths,” said Dena Libner, spokesperson for the Central Park Conservancy. “More bike access on the drives, we believe, should help in accomplishing this.”

Currently, the drive accommodates two lanes of vehicle traffic and one bike lane, with a fence between the bike lane and the pedestrian path on the south side. Each vehicle lane is 11 feet wide, with a three-foot buffer between the cars and the eight-foot-wide bike path.

The new plan will create wider buffer zones, with the intent to allow more bicycles and keep pedestrians safer, and allow bikers to travel both east and west on 72nd Street. Two lanes of traffic will become one single 11-foot-wide lane, with a four-foot shoulder on the north side and a four-foot buffer on the other, separating the cars from the double bike lanes. Each bike lane, divided by a dotted line, will be slightly narrower than the previous one, at seven feet wide each.

The DOT has already conducted a traffic study to determine the Loss of Service (LOS) rate that will result in narrowing the road for drivers.

Right now, an average of about 500 cars travel on Terrace Drive during the morning peak hours of 8–9:30 a.m., with an average delay of 9.8 seconds. Using this as a benchmark, the DOT estimates that the LOS level will be a “B” on an A-F scale, with A being the current condition and F being the worst possible, meaning the changes will produce “reasonably unimpeded traffic with average travel speeds about 20 percent less” than current, with an average delay of 13 seconds for the same number of cars.

In other words, if the projections hold, cross-park car trips may only be held up by an additional 3.2 seconds, on average, as a result of this change.

The Parks Department and the Conservancy have implemented several changes recently to address the increasing numbers of cyclists crossing the park on a daily basis as well as the safety concerns of pedestrians who don’t want to share paths with bicycles zooming past. Earlier this year, the park debuted a newly shared path for bicyclists and pedestrians to cross the park at 96th Street, in answer to bicyclists demanding safer cross-park routes. It faced some severe opposition from both East and West Side community board members, but so far has not caused major controversy in action.

While the CPC will be presenting the plan to the community boards and listening to feedback, the new configuration is already slated to switch over in the coming months and is designed to stay.

“This change will be permanent,” Libner confirmed. “We expect more cyclists to use the drive for cross-park commutes and travel, and pedestrians to be able to navigate interior paths with greater ease.”

The Central Park Conservancy, the Department of Transportation and the Parks Department have been working jointly on an initiative to open several east-west pedestrian paths to cyclists, similar to the changes made recently that allow cyclists to bike at walking speeds on nearby Riverside Park paths.

The initial routes likely to be converted to shared paths, possibly by this spring or summer, are the paths on either side of the 96th Street Transverse, which run near the North Meadow Recreation Center, and the path at 102nd Street. Later, the Conservancy will work with DOT to consider adding shared routes along the 72nd Street Transverse.

Currently, to cross from the West Side to the East Side, cyclists can either use the 96th Street transverse—a notoriously risky route—or take the bottom part of the loop, which is a long detour for those who want to get to the northern areas of the Upper East Side. Cyclists are not allowed on pedestrian paths.

Peter Frishauf is on the Recreation Committee for the Central Park Conservancy, and he’s been involved in this effort since January 2010, when the question of how cyclists can safely and easily get across the park arose from a meeting with Upper West Side Streets Renaissance.

“For all practical purposes right now, there is no safe and sanctioned way to get across the park at all,” Frishauf says. “The only legal way is a treacherously dangerous way where cyclists have been killed,” referring to a woman on a bike who was struck by a vehicle on the 66th Street Transverse in 2006 and later died from her injuries.

Frishauf and several others met with the Conservancy president, Doug Blonsky, who is also the Central Park Administrator, and they decided to figure out ways to create shared paths for pedestrians and cyclists.

“There’s a lot of people that commute to work by bike, and they go through the park,” Blonsky says.

Steve Vaccaro works with Transportation Alternatives and bikes with his son to school every morning across the park, from their Upper East Side home to his son’s school on the Upper West Side. When his son was younger, he biked on pathways, but was often chastised by pedestrians telling him to dismount. Children up to 12 years old are allowed to bike on New York City sidewalks, which are the jurisdiction of the DOT, but the rules are fuzzier in Central Park, where the Conservancy governs the pathways.

Recently, Vaccaro and his son started using the Transverse to get from east to west, but that’s not without its problems.

“As the cars and the bikes are headed into the tunnels, suddenly the road gets a lot narrower,” Vaccaro says. “It also gets really dark. It’s sort of a confluence of bad conditions.”

“This would be an enormous safety improvement as well as improve the quality of life for thousands of people,” Frishauf says. “No one should be forced into a dangerous situation just trying to get to work or use the park.”

Government evidently needs to learn that moving traffic violations are life and death matters. And bicycling violations are not mere quality of life offenses, especially when they are everywhere—even on low-traffic East End Avenue. Walking just one block home from the East 79th Street Neighborhood Association meeting, Ruth S. was almost struck by a delivery food bike speeding along the sidewalk. I yelled, “Off the walk!” The problem is, nobody else ever does, even though lawless biking is often deplored at civic meetings.

Nor is it talked about much elsewhere. Thankfully, neighbor Claire R. does. She said that after being narrowly missed by a bike careening around the corner into the crosswalk at East 80th Street, she recently learned to cross at East 81st Street, “where cars and bikes rarely turn into you, and you can see them coming!” I’ve preached this “don’t cross where they can turn into you” basic gospel for decades. Be very, very visible too. To stress the latter, I brought my new battery-lit cane to the association meeting to wave around as I urged the attending police and legislative aides to “at least enforce the bike light law to give us a fighting chance. And let’s light ourselves up—be visible.” I am very saddened by the middle-aged man who was fatally injured by a car as he crossed East 79th mid-block last week. While a risky thing to do, crossing with your light at the corner is not safe enough.

Again, make yourself very visible, swing your arms or a newspaper, wear something light colored, and holler at those wheelers who come too close. Don’t be silent.

I’m also grateful for our building staff member, Michael Kearney, who warned passersby about melting ice slabs falling from upper windows of our and other apartment buildings. And the Daily News thankfully reported about young men who got their kicks tossing ice off a building, with one piece striking a pedestrian.

Related was Claire R.’s report about another youthful reckless endangerment, which lamentably did not make the news. Leaving Hunter College about 4 p.m. March 10, she was aghast to see about 10 or so high school students race into moving traffic.

“It’s a miracle no one was hurt as brakes screeched and horns blared and the kids broke up laughing when they reached the other side,” she said.

Would that photos were taken, 911 called and nearby schools alerted. I did report it to the 19th Precinct. Our doorman, Martin Griffin, reports seeing a similar reprehensible scene on East 86th Street.

But back to two-wheeled anarchy and motor vehicles’ deadly failure to yield. I’ll protest both at Transportation Alternatives’ public meeting March 16, and hope you will, too, at the March 23 meeting from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the fifth floor conference room of the Vanderbilt YMCA, 224 E. 47th St. The group needs to hear about bike violations—big time. More complex is Council Member Jessica Lappin and AARP’s “Take Back Our Streets—Making New York Walkable for All New Yorkers,” scheduled for April 19 through 23, “to survey and evaluate your neighborhood intersections for walker safety.” Call Jane Swanson at 212-980-1808 for more information.

But that evaluation business has been done and redone when the foremost needs are for all-out enforcement on the law to yield to pedestrians on turns, and an all-out crackdown on bike violations. That would do more to make it a safe and low-stress traveling city for me than anything else. Then we can push for a lower speed limit! It can be done if enough of us try.

dewingbetter@aol.com

Proponents say that protected lanes offer bicyclists a safe route, while pedestrians will see less bike-riding on the sidewalk. The extra lane would also break the street into shorter segments, making it easier to traverse for senior citizens and those who have trouble walking.

At Board 7’s Oct. 6 meeting, throngs of bicycling advocates young and old came out to support the new bike lanes.

“There was a groundswell of support for this issue not only from cyclists, but from seniors, children and pedestrians,” said Lisa Sladkus, an organizer for Upper West Side Streets Renaissance Campaign. “It gives cyclists a very safe place to be and little incentive to be on the sidewalk.”

The board, by a vote of 28-7 in favor of the project, called for the department to create a plan for a “class 1” lane, which is separated from traffic by a barrier, possibly parked cars.

But neighborhood business interests are skeptical about the new lanes. Shop owners have complained that bike lanes, especially ones that are protected, block off truck loading and unloading zones and restrict parking for customers.

Peter Arndtsen, head of the Columbus-Amsterdam Business Improvement District, supports the bike lanes, but urged city officials to heed business concerns when designing the new space.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for both the Department of Transportation and Community Board 7 to really rise to the occasion and meet with local businesses to come up with something that works for everybody,” Arndtsen said.

Bunny Abraham
Central Park West

Letters have been edited for clarity, style and brevity.