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That might be a good idea, though like some of the more commingled bike lanes in NYC plazas (e.g., early efforts in Times Square), it's nearly impossible to keep them clear of pedestrians.

That might be OK, though. We don't really want to take space away from pedestrians, we want to give it to them!

As perhaps you are implying, a bike lane might at least make it clear to all that bikes will be passing through. It could include a big "SLOW -- 5 MPH" right on the pavement.

I personally just ride a meandering path, going wherever the pedestrians aren't. I do wonder whether a straight bike lane would inhibit that.

This is a fun and different thing to do in JC. It has kind of a backyard-party feel.

Sorry that a person on a bike acted rudely and dangerously toward you. Your issue should be with that person, just as it would be if a "car enthusiast" endangered you (as I'm sure MANY have).

You are incorrect: biking through the plaza is explicitly permitted under the plaza's governing regulations. The speed limit is 5 mph, and cyclists are further instructed to ride in a manner respecting pedestrian safety.

Having said that, though, we probably should have signs at either end of the plaza stating those regulations, and by all means police should enforce them.

Note that the residents of his street quickly built and installed pop-up traffic-calming devices, including:

--a board running across the street, basically a speed bump
--cones and barricades across both edges of the street, basically a "road diet" that narrows the car lane
--signs in big, blood-red capital letters reading "SLOW DOWN."

It's all homemade, but professionally made versions of this stuff is actually used on residential side streets around the world to calm traffic and reduce deaths and injuries.

Apparently the people on Bostwick feel that radically resigning our streets to stop more kids from getting killed is more important than somebody saving 30 seconds driving or parking somewhere. Sounds reasonable to me. Let's get started.

FYI, the regs authorized by the ordinance say that bicycles WILL be allowed to ride through the plaza -- slowly and carefully.

"Allowances for restricted use of bicycles and other non-motorized vehicles (skateboards, scooters, etc.) at 5 m.p.h. or less in a manner safe for pedestrians and others on the mall."

It could use some work on appearance, shade, seating.

But keep in mind that it's new and (as noted below) not even under its ordinance yet. They've been doing things like grinding off the double-yellow line, painting parts green, installing bike rack corrals.

And no doubt they will continue tweaking it over the summer. The NYC ped plazas evolved over a few years.

Part of that evolution tends to come from businesses, as they bring out more sidewalk seating and decorate it, open up their fronts, etc.

People, don't be silly. We all know traffic congestion is caused by bike lanes.

FYI, the mayor just tweeted this like an hour ago:

"It's happening - I believe next week or following"

The $15 annual parking fee is insane and must change. It incentivizes private car ownership and driving, which is directly at cross purposes with a slew of worthy city, state, and federal initiatives to promote safer and greener transportation options.

The point about hardship to low-income families is fair; it can be addressed with reduced rates for those residents.

It also wouldn't be reasonable to suddenly jack up the rates to hundreds of dollars a year. That's all the more reason the city needs to start raising the rate very gradually, and indicate its intention to keep doing so over the years. Raising the rate to $30 next year, $50 a few years later, isn't going to send middle-class people to the poorhouse or make parking some kind of rich man's playground. It's the cost of one freaking tire.

Take every penny raised and put it toward bike and pedestrian access and safety. Toward mass transit options that help low-income residents (the new bus shelters are a nice recent example). Heck, put some toward filling potholes, which affect both cars and some alternative transportation.

Meanwhile, while not suddenly hammering current resident car owners with fees, you will begin persuading and signalling more and more incoming residents to arrive without cars, or at least to go light on them (one car for a household that might have bought two). Which is ultimately the best way to maintain some access to street parking for those most in need of it.

While we did put out a lot of traffic warnings online, and ask people to share them around, I agree that we should ask for more official outreach about traffic.

I'd love to see the city acquire and deploy some more of those big electronic signs, like the one they had at Exchange Place. For big NYC events, they put those out several days in advance on the biggest affected roads. Best way to reach drivers is through their windshields!

JC has more and bigger (very awesome) outdoor events going on in public spaces lately, so those signs would be a good investment for that alone, but of course they're also very useful for warnings about construction, dangerous weather, etc.

BRIEF MESSAGE TO WARD TOUR RIDERS:

Online registration for Sunday's #JCWardTour2015 is now closed (tentative final total: 2,067 riders registered!).

We will send out a detailed email to all registered riders shortly; please watch out for it (and check your spam folder if you don't get one by tomorrow morning).

But since many of you know the drill already, here are a just few important points of emphasis:

--We're expecting a HUGE crowd on Sunday, maybe 50 percent bigger than last year, so PLEASE arrive as early as possible after 9 a.m. at Exchange Place to check in and pick up your rider bib, then move away from the check-in area and let others get in. There are lots of very pleasant nooks along the waterfront and piers where you can hang out after check-in and wait for the 11 a.m. start. There will also be more breakfast vendors there in the morning than in previous years if you get hungry.

--We will be offering day-of on-site registration for those who didn't do it online, but if you're doing that you should get there REALLY early, 9:30 at the latest, to avoid the possibility that you'll get shut out.

--Check out your bike now and make sure it's basically in good shape, tires pumped, seat height adjusted comfortably, nothing broken or loose. We will have bike mechanics near the start line Sunday to help with minor problems and last-minute adjustments.

--On Sunday, please remember to bring and wear your helmet, and bring money if you want to enjoy the many great food and drink vendors at our Finish Line Festival after the ride.

See you Sunday!!

LAST CHANCE! ONLINE REGISTRATION CLOSES TODAY AT 4 PM!

Online registration for the tour will end at 4:00 p.m. TODAY, Friday, June 5.

If you want to ride and have not yet registered, please do so online ASAP! We plan to offer on-site registration on Sunday morning, but frankly it's a hassle, both for you and our already hardworking volunteers. Plus if the lines get crazy, its possible you could get shut out of the tour.

It's much easier for all if you register online; then on Sunday we just check off your name and hand you your numbered bib.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER NOW

1,628 riders registered! Holy bikeys!!

We still need more volunteers to help make this the best Ward Tour & Festival ever! We'll have jobs for volunteers from 8 a.m. till 5:30 p.m. on Sunday. If you want to help us show everyone a good time and show the world this city is ready for better biking, please sign up to volunteer here:

VOLUNTEER SIGNUP

Seriously, though, I personally would support ticketing of cyclists who barrel down sidewalks in congested areas like Newark Ave. biz district. (Yes, I know it's illegal everywhere, but we're talking about enforcement focus.)

I'd also support ticketing cyclists who fail to yield to pedestrians. Both of these violations actually endanger innocent people.

I would of course support such ticketing in conjuction with ticketing of drivers for various particularly dangerous violations, such as failure to yield--which are exponentially more dangerous to innocent people than almost anything done on a bike that doesn't involve a medieval lance or a machine gun.

And yes, we need enforcement against parking and standing in bike lanes; this violation currently persuades some cyclists to just give up and take the sidewalk.

You know who didn't like cyclists riding on the sidewalk while simulating things? HITLER.

There, fixed it for ya. OK, back to work, everybody.

We'll probably have to keep it at age 10.

Otherwise we get lots of very young kids falling behind and the police can't re-open the roads behind us and it's a big mess (one of the biggest problems we've had on the tour in early years).

Most ever! Now 1,451 riders signed up for Sunday's Ward Tour, a new record! Wooooo!

Did you register yet? Clicking "going" on the Facebook page doesn't count; go here to sign up: WARD TOUR REGISTRATION

Still need to register? It's easy! Click here to register.

It's free, though we have a $5 suggested donation to Bike JC. But $0 is totally fine too. Also a $500 donation would be fine.

We know it was somewhere north of 1,100 who actually rode last year.

We registered about 1,430 riders last year in advance, and ended up giving out over 1,100 bibs in the morning, both records.

Pretty sure that first record will get broken soon, and if the weather is decent probably the actual ridership will be bigger too.

1,224 riders registered. You comin'?

Just passed 1,000 riders registered!

If this keeps up it'll be quite a thing.

Want to help put on one of Jersey City's greatest annual events, the Jersey City Ward Tour and Festival?

Come down to Zeppelin Hall at 7 p.m. Thurs. 5/14; we'll be figuring out volunteer assignments for Bike JC's big June 7 bike tour.

Please first sign up here on our ONLINE VOLUNTEER SIGNUP FORM

Volunteer needs:

Before Tour Day:

---Leading up to the event our greatest need is for a few folks to help out with fundraising and organizing food and entertainment. Day-of roles that we need to fill are for morning setup, rider registration, ride marshals, festival setup, festival staff, and cleanup.

On Tour Day:

--Morning setup starts at 8 a.m. and involves some heavy lifting and the ability to work fast.

---Morning pre-ride registration involves sitting at a table the day of the event and collecting completed registration forms and distributing numbered ride bibs.

---Marshals ride in strategic places within the tour, helping to direct other riders and keep them safe, help them with minor mechanical and other issues, communicate with police

---Festival setup workers will work at Exchange Place from about 11:20 to12:45, while the riders are out on the tour. You will be converting the plaza into the festival grounds. You will need to work quickly, follow a map/site plan for the festival, possibly do some lifting, and take initiative. NOTE: THESE VOLUNTEERS CANNOT RIDE IN THE TOUR, BUT WE WILL NEED A LOT OF PEOPLE TO DO THIS, because we are expanding the attractions at the festival this year. If you are a friend of biking, but you can't or don't want to ride in the tour, please consider volunteering for this duty.

---Festival staff work begins later in the day and involves manning the t-shirt sales tables, helpers for the art, music, and children's areas, etc. Marshals need to be able to ride 15+ miles comfortably and assertively handle on-course duties such as traffic calming and dealing with participants who run astray or don't follow the rules.

--Cleanup starts in late afternoon and is usually done by 5:30 or so.

Join us Thursday to plan this great event! Zeppelin Hall is at 88 Liberty View Drive off Grand Street, near the Grand Street light rail station. Casual German food and a wide variety of beers are available for purchase. We're usually in the northeast corner of the indoor seating area, though if the weather is nice we may be outside in the garden. (We'll post our exact location right here when we settle in.)

If you'd like to volunteer to help run the Ward Tour, please sign up here:

Volunteer signup link

(A link listed below/earlier may be dead, so please use this one.)

Also: Please volunteer if you can! We think this could be the biggest Ward Tour ever!

We?re looking for volunteers to help out with spreading the word about the Ward Tour beforehand, by putting up posters and staffing our outreach table at other festivals.

We?ll also need LOTS of volunteers throughout the day of the tour, for early-morning setup, rider registration, marshals on the ride, festival events, and afternoon/evening teardown/cleanup.

LOTS more detail about the Ward Tour below, from our Facebook event page, which is here: Ward Tour Facebook event page

Please share any and all ways you can!

Register here: Rider registration link

Come ride all over this town with us! Bike JC?s 6th Annual Jersey City Ward Tour will roll out of Exchange Place at 11 a.m. Sunday, June 7, taking you and well over a thousand of our closest friends on a 15-mile tour of our great city (and passing through all of its political wards).

When the tour ends back at Exchange Place around 1 p.m., you can enjoy our equally great Finish-Line Festival there all afternoon, featuring live music, food and drinks, and local vendors and community groups, all on our scenic waterfront.

Registration is free, with a suggested donation of $5 to aid our year-round efforts to improve, promote, and teach safe and fun cycling in Jersey City. Note: We are now an IRS-recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Donations are tax-deductible. Also, if you want to give more than $5, we're totally OK with that too!

REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED.

Register here: Rider registration link

(Please note that, while we?d also LOVE you to click ?Going? on this Facebook event page, to show everyone how huge this is going to be, that does NOT register you for the tour.)

More About the Ride

The Tour starts downtown at Exchange Place and travels up Montgomery to Grand Street, heading south on Garfield Ave. to Greenville, where it hooks west via Danforth Ave. and back north on Westside and Mallory Avenues to Lincoln Park, where we take our long break. It then heads north along Kennedy Blvd. to North Street and Palisade Ave. in the Heights, eventually coming down Newark Ave. and Seventh Street, winding through downtown, and finishing back at Exchange Place.

We ride on streets (or sometimes on one side of a street) that are closed to motor-vehicle traffic by the Jersey City Police Department. Officers on bikes and in motor vehicles will escort us throughout the ride.

Riders must be age 10 or older, and must wear helmets. (Younger children may be carried securely on an adult's bike in appropriate child seats, bakfiets buckets, trailers, etc.)

All riders must also be able to maintain a pace of approximately 10 mph for 15 miles. This is a fairly relaxed pace. We also take some short breaks to catch a breath to allow for smooth traffic control, and our one long break roughly at the halfway point, after the only steep uphill on the course (so you can just walk your bike up that hill if you want).

Please note that the Ward Tour is not timed and is not a race, in fact, we strictly limit the front of the tour to a maximum of 10 mph.

The tour rolls out at 11 a.m., but you will need to pick up an official tour bib before the start, 9:00?10:30 a.m.

We encourage you to dress up yourself and your bike colorfully!

Rain date: Sun., June 14.

Other Attractions:

Sirelo Entertainment?s Community Drum Circle will again give the riders a sendoff, approximately 10?11 a.m.; bring your favorite percussion instrument and join them!

Lineup of musical acts at the Finish-Line Festival (times are approximate):
1 p.m. Sandra Small and the Smallworld Band
2 p.m. Kiwi
3 p.m.The One and Nines
4 p.m.The Defending Champions

And MUCH more to do at our Festival:

?Beer truck from White Star Bar
?"Gastro Alley" with food trucks and vendors
?Art activities
?Activities for kids
?Extensive showcase of outreach/information tables from numerous local community nonprofits.

Bike JC is a citizen-based advocacy organization that aims to make Jersey City streets welcoming for bicyclists, by promoting bike-friendly policies, including bike lanes; bicycle education; and traffic law enforcement.

We hope to see you June 7! With bike lanes already in use, new bike racks being installed all over, and a bike share system due to roll out in September, this is shaping up to be another banner year for biking in Jersey City. Come celebrate with us!

Register here: Rider registration link

P.S.: Want to help us make this tour great? We?re looking for volunteers to help out with spreading the word about the Ward Tour beforehand, by putting up posters and staffing our outreach table at other festivals. We?ll also need LOTS of volunteers throughout the day of the tour, for early-morning setup, rider registration, marshals on the ride, festival events, and afternoon/evening teardown/cleanup.

Sign up here to volunteer: Volunteer signup link

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN for Bike JC's 6th Annual Jersey City Ward Tour!

Registration for our biggest event of the year is required, and it's free ($5 suggested donation).

Click here to register.

More details about the event will follow here.

We also need volunteers to help before and during the event:

Click here to volunteer.

Dunno about today, but they had bands playing there last night.

There's a group bike ride Saturday at 2 p.m. through the park, the Cherry Blossom Ride, run by the Brick City Bike Collective cycling and advocacy group. It was dormant for a while, but now it's back!

Hopefully another week will give the blossoms time to bloom.

Cherry Blossom Ride event page on Facebook

It was a bomb threat, but nothing was found and the roads have been reopened, per Hoboken's Twitter account.

Then, when you have found the shrubbery, you must place it here beside this shrubbery, only slightly higher so you get the two-level effect with a little path running down the middle.

>> ... too many people are invested in "what is" and lack either the imagination or incentive to look at the problem and see what could be. << True. And much of the resistance has been very deliberately cultivated and baked into our brains by the monied players in this game. They invented the idea of jaywalking to convince us to stop sharing the streets, and they love to promote "be seen" and "bike safe" campaigns for bikes and peds because, while they may genuinely help safety in the short term, they also keep us peons scared and in our place at the curb line, while safewashing their ghastly record of carnage. In a sense, though, the good news is exactly that: We're causing so much harm to ourselves by worshiping the car, that as soon as people get a taste of more urban walkability/bikeability/transit, most of them love it and ask for more, despite their early kicking and screaming against it. When they get clean, the urban car addiction is quickly seen for what it was. Remember when Citi Bike was about to start up in NYC? Pundits, comedians, cranks of all nations confidently predicted that dead tourists would be stacked in the streets like cordwood and the gutters would run red with biker blood. Either that, or noooobody would be crazy enough to ride the stupid things in NYC traffic. Remember that? Over 20 million miles and nearly two years later, exactly zero people have been killed on a Citi Bike, or by a Citi Bike. None. None people. The system's biggest problems were that it had some balky software (since updated), and that it was too popular: too many residents and commuters bought memberships at too low a price. And now that system is about to double in size, with essentially a branch office here in Jersey City. The biggest pre-emptive complaint we hear is that everybody wants a dock on their block! Eventually, people here will realize that the real aberration, the really bizarre, dangerous, tragic Frankenstein experiment, was the one we tried over the last 50 years, when we turned our great cities from places to go TO into places to go THROUGH. It's all reversible.