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Did NYC’s Transit Dept Strike a Backroom Deal with Satmars?

Bike lane disappears in Brooklyn after months of Hasidic complaints

by
Ari M. Brostoff
December 04, 2009

This week, New York City’s Department of Transportation abruptly removed a 14-block stretch of bike lane that ran along Brooklyn’s Bedford Ave., a major thoroughfare that at this particular stretch goes through an ultra-Orthodox enclave. The lane had been hotly contested between the well-organized cyclist community and the Williamsburg neighborhood’s Satmar Hasidim, who complained about having to see immodestly dressed bikers ride by. The DOT’s decision, which came with minimal explanation, has sparked rumors on the street and in the blogosphere that city government officials struck a backroom deal with Satmar leaders. Thing is, the rumors may have some truth to them.

“During his re-election campaign, Mayor Bloomberg struck a deal on several issues of special significance to Hasidic leaders,” the urban planning site Streetsblog said. “Whether the Bedford Avenue bike lane was part of the bargain, we can’t say.” Commenters on that blog and others are convinced that it indeed was the quid to some quo. Occasionally, the discussion has verged on what we hope was joke-anti-Semitism, as when someone wrote on Gothamist, “It appears some people are being Jewed here.”

As we noted back in June, the New York Times reported that Leib Glanz, a notoriously shady Satmar leader, had scored meetings with New York’s deputy mayor about bike lanes. Additionally, Bloomberg campaigned hard in the Satmar community this year. “The bike lane is used very, very often, it’s a very important artery,” Baruch Herzfeld, a quirky Modern Orthodox hipster who acts as unofficial liaison between Williamsburg Satmars and bikers, told Tablet Magazine. “The fact that this bike lane was taken away smells fishy.” The DOT declined to discuss these allegations, offering only a brief statement: the lane, it said, was removed as part of “ongoing bike network adjustments.”

Previously: Hasids on Bikes

Ari M. Brostoff is Culture Editor at Jewish Currents.