Gothams tyrannical bike kings are taking over the city

New York City is dealing with elevated crime and disorder, failing and emptying schools, taxpayer flight and a fiscally crunched City Hall.But our ruling class is targeting the “real” emergency: not enough bike lanes.Cycling activists and their friends at the Department of Transportation have stepped up their crusade against the existential threat of the four-wheeled vehicle, imposing street-redesign plans on neighborhoods, whether residents want them or not.Let’s be clear.New Yorkers like bikes.

Four wheels good, two wheels better.Bike lanes can be great assets, so long as they’re not at the expense of pedestrians or drivers.Cyclists and pedestrians travel well together in places like the Hudson River Greenway right by the faster drivers on the West Side Highway.Reducing any of the lanes of the greenway or highway would upset a careful balance.But that balance is exactly what’s missing across much of the city.DOT’s “bike kings” have turned street design into an ideological exercise, where the goal is not better mobility — but fewer cars, period.Park Avenue.Canal Street.

72nd Street.Astoria’s 31st Avenue.

One by one, major arteries as well as side streets are set to be narrowed, rerouted or stripped of lanes under the cyclist creed.The bike kings go to communities with glossy presentations stuffed with buzzwords — “traffic-calming redesign,” “rebalancing public space,” “reimagined corridors.”Translation: Your car, delivery truck or Access-A-Ride van  — no longer welcome.Too often, “reimagining” a street simply means strangling it.And if residents object? Dismiss them as backward, selfish or (worse) suburban-minded.On the Upper West Side, hundreds of residents protested a proposed bike lane on 72nd Street, citing worse congestion, lost parking, delivery chaos and reduced access for seniors and the disabled.In Astoria, firefighters pointed out that barriers and narrowed lanes could slow emergency response as firetru...