One Neighborhood’s ‘Bizarre Culture War’ Over Bike Lanes

This is Street Wars, a weekly series on the battle for space on New York’s streets and sidewalks.

At first glance, the Queens neighborhood of Bayside certainly looks like an idyllic place to ride a bike. Far from the chaotic noise of Manhattan, under a wide-open sky, small, low-slung houses sit set back from the curb on shady side streets. Neatly clipped lawns burst with blue and pink hydrangeas. One house has a homespun “Welcome” sign with a strawberry in place of the “o.”

But in front of that house, just to the left of its perfectly trimmed hedges, stands a red sign with white letters: NO BIKE LANES.

Across the street is another red sign, and then another. Up and down Oceania Street. Along 53rd Avenue. There are signs next to driveways. Next to parked cars. Across from the elementary school and the middle school. Near the church. At least two houses with statues of the Virgin Mary, arms open in a gesture of kindness and compassion, also have scolding red NO BIKE LANES signs.

There are, in fact, bike lanes in Bayside, and in the adjacent neighborhood of Fresh Meadows, where more red signs can be found. And more bike lanes are coming to Queens. The new lanes, where the signs are, were installed last fall and encourage sharing the road in an area that is mostly a public transportation desert: Bayside has a Long Island Rail Road station, but you’d have to walk an hour to get to the closest subway.

The sign campaign is proof that every block in New York is a battleground, and city officials face a multitude of challenges as they try to accommodate all the ways streets are used, from neighborhood to neighborhood. In Queens, there are cyclists who clamored for the new bike lanes as a matter of safety. And there are residents who resent the lanes because they replaced parking spaces in front of their houses.