I wrote this a year ago, and forgot to post it after my rage subsided. I recently biked on the east side quote Greenway unquote again. Turns out nothing’s changed–which makes me mad all over again. File under “Mranh”, with all the other fodder for cranky letters I need to send.

On Sunday, I cursed the alleged Greenway effort a little bit, when Peter and I biked to Kew Gardens and attempted to ride through a big park–on an alleged bike path–but never saw any suitable signs to get us on the path. As a result, we biked for several miles, in traffic, lost, in our respective pissy snits, and also failed to make it to the movie on time. Adequate signage would’ve been the easy path to marital bliss–as it was, the best we could muster was, “Hey, thanks, Robert Moses, for actually putting an underpass under one of your motherf–king expressways…and then dumping us god knows where.”

Monday morning, I cursed the alleged Greenway in much more colorful language.

It was a beautiful, crisp fall day. The kind of day that makes me really want to ride my bike–as opposed to all the other mornings, when I lie in bed and try to think of the smallest excuse so as to just sit my lazy ass on the train and read a book instead.

I’m working at the building by the World Trade Center site (which deserves its own post–but short version is: staring down at the massive construction site is like watching animals at the zoo! The baby bulldozers are so cuuuute!), which is a long-ass ride from Astoria. I figured it was the perfect opportunity to actually use the east side Greenway.

My ass.

I’m still so pissed I can barely articulate. _Six_ years ago, people, was the last time I biked that path all the way down there. Guess what? All the things that were shitty then are still shitty now! That skinny spot where only one person can get by, and you’d pitch over into the highway if it weren’t for the chain-link. Those giant puddles south of Houston Street–except now, there’s a wonky orange traffic cone in one of them, to warn you that it might be even deeper. And about six giant construction trucks, trundling along, blocking the entire path, kicking up dust.

And I’m not even including the part about how I couldn’t even get _on_ the damn path. How I nearly got dumped on the highway–whatever that east side highway is called–in an attempt to cross over to the path. It was either the highway or Bellevue. I had to bike back up the ramp, against traffic, and into a construction site.

And then, to add insult to injury, I had to bike past the closed Fulton Street Fish Market. Sad. I headed west from there and encountered nothing but more construction–I followed a savvy-looking woman for a bit, who zigged and zagged around barriers, but then she led us directly into one massive construction zone, with workers shouting, “Sheesh, lady! No!” I had to get off my bike and walk for a block.

And then I rolled up to 7 World Trade Center, renowned for its LEED certification and all that green jazz, and do I see a single bike rack? Of course not. After I locked up to a traffic sign, I asked the security guard, and he said there was a rack down the block, in the back. Of course, because bikes would make the front of the building look bad. No indoor bike parking, either.

Why am I so peeved? I deal with this every day–this just happened to be a longer ride than usual.

It’s because a couple of weeks ago, I went to a heartwarming, almost church-y get-together of bike-happy people, directed by bike geek David Byrne, and I heard a charming man from Copenhagen tell me how great and bike-friendly a city could be–if only people cared. Like, you time all the lights to bike speed–not car speed–so bikers get to cruise through straight green lights all the way to work. You separate cars from bikes just by switching the parking lane and the bike lane. You raise up the bike lanes so that cars have to slow down before they drive across them. Not coincidentally, the more bikes you have on the road, the fewer accidents there are.

We snickered that night about one NYC bike casualty–someone who got killed on that east-side highway, where of course bikes aren’t even supposed to be, so what did the guy expect? But now I see how they could get there _very easily_.

Shudder.

And NYC is so far behind Copenhagen, it’s ridiculous. _Nine_ blocks of Copenhagen-style bike path on Ninth Avenue? I’m supposed to be placated? Bloomberg has been talking about extending the Greenway all the way around Manhattan since he got elected. He’s been talking about it for so many years that I thought surely, by now, something would’ve been done.

So too late: screw the damn Greenway–I want to be able to ride in the street, and not get honked at constantly. I want to be able to ride my bike to my destination–not sidelined along the farthest edges of the island–and then lock it up somewhere normal and trustworthy. I just want to get to work in the morning and not be filled with bile and bitterness.

Transportation Alternatives: stop being such freakin’ sissies! Bloomberg: get the goddamn lead out!

Meanwhile, it’s raining today. No biking for me. Just stewing and fuming.