NYPD Busting Cyclists Exiting The Williamsburg Bridge
Image: Behind The Hype
If you’re a cyclist who happens to pedal across the Williamsburg Bridge to Manhattan, you’ll want to proceed with caution. The NYPD has started ticketing cyclists once they arrive in the city for a minor—and common—infraction. Bill Bratton’s New York, right?
According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, tickets are being handed out to cyclists who “continue westward along Delancey Street” when they’re only allowed to go north or south. The action goes against traffic patterns without actually going against traffic. As a spokesperson from biking advocacy group, Time’s Up, points out, “These bicyclists didn’t go through a light, didn’t go against traffic, didn’t do anything illegal—they just proceeded in a direction that the city’s new design doesn’t ‘allow’ for” and that at its heart the Manhattan-side of the bridge has “a design flaw with the entrance/exit to the street.” The group has submitted proposals for addressing that flaw, but their calls have gone unheard, so cyclists continue to face fines.
While we don’t know exactly how much the offenders must pay in ticket fines, a 2013 Daily News story estimates that bicycling fines can range anywhere in price from $25 to $190 depending on the seriousness of the charge.
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