Inside the four-year, 2,000 person fight for a bike lane

Transportation Alternatives Queens organizer Juan Restrepo describes Crescent Street in Queens -- where a protected bike lane will soon help tens of thousands of cyclists commute in safety -- as an idea whose time has come. Local streets in Astoria were full of people on bikes. A bridge to Manhattan was less than a 20 minute ride away. There were no direct protected bike lanes through the neighborhood. And Citi Bike had just arrived on Astoria streets.

Despite all that, even after the street was identified as a prime target for a protected bike lane, it took four years and the support of some 2,000 community members for that bike lane to be built. How it finally happened is a textbook lesson in community organizing. The fight for one bike lane can be emblematic of every fight we take up as activists -- a lesson in patience, perseverance, power, and of course, endless talking to your neighbors.

The story of the Crescent Street bike lane begins back in 2016, when Transportation Alternatives organizers hosted a community workshop to identify where people who lived in the neighborhood thought a bike lane was needed.

Listen Up

One crucial part of being a community organizer is listening to your neighbors. By and large, given good options, people know what they want. When you get involved with local advocacy, it is your job to make sure those people are heard.

That is why the campaign for a bike lane on Crescent Street began with a listening tour. Early in the campaign, advocates hit the street in Astoria to hear where people felt safe riding bikes, and where they wanted to ride but felt unsafe.

But really listening to your neighbors often requires more time and concentration then can happen on a street corner. Enter the community workshop. Restrepo helped organize. “We invited people from all over the neighborhood to come spend a few hours with us looking at maps of the community. With all our different experiences at the table, it was obvious where more bike infrastructure was needed,” Restrepo explains.

That night, amid maps and pizza, the local council member showed up. For Restrepo, this was a clue to how the next steps of the campaign would go. Community organizers were listening, but it appeared that elected officials were listening, too. To make this campaign a success, Restrepo would have to prove to elected officials that the good ideas that came out of that community workshop were more than good ideas. He would have to prove their need.

Address Need

The following year, Shannon Rudd, a road cyclist and an ambassador of Specialized Bikes who lives in Astoria, showed up for her first meeting. She would grow to become a driving force for the campaign, but for her, community organizing was new.

“I somehow saw a posting about a bike lane meeting in my neighborhood, and thought: oh cool, other people want bike lanes too!” she recalls. “Juan was very welcoming and it was my first time getting involved in a community based project in my own neighborhood.”

For Rudd, the need for a bike lane was personal. As a road cyclist, rides to and from Central Park were a necessity. Crescent Street was the best route, but without a bike lane, it was a nightmare, especially after an exhausting 60 mile day of cycling. To be safe, Rudd would have to take the only bike lane through the neighborhood -- on the waterfront at the edges of the neighborhood -- adding extra miles to a long day.

Rudd was not alone in her desire. There were countless other reasons for a better bike lane in Astoria. The neighborhood was growing and needed new transportation choices. Ferry service recently launched nearby -- close enough to be accessible by bike, but too far to walk to from transit. Crescent Street was built too wide, and as a result, encouraged speeding. Nearly 100 people had been injured on the street in just the past four years. Then, in 2017, two of these needs rose to the top. The MTA announced plans for an eight month closure of two train stations on the N and R lines, right through the heart of Astoria. And that same year, Citi Bike rolled out in the neighborhood, including stations along Crescent Street.

More than ever, people would need to bike. It was time to amp up the campaign.

To start, Juan laid out these needs in a petition, and the campaign hit the streets. With news of the arrival of bike share and the shutdown of local transit, they quickly found thousands of people in the community who agreed.

Macartney Morris, a longtime local activist and commuter cyclist who lives on Crescent Street took a leadership role in the campaign. He knew that this proof of need would be key to the campaign’s success.

“This was beneficial for the community and we could prove it. It was a prime example of a location where usage and infrastructure disagreed,” Morris explains. “Citi Bike was here in Astoria. There were cyclists, but not bike lanes to match. This was a no-brainer for this neighborhood.”

Recruit Power

No-brainer or not, need is never enough to win a political campaign.

“You can be right or you can win,” Restrepo explains. “Even if the arguments are sound and the needs are universal, without political power, you are not going to win a campaign.”

Political power comes from two places -- the grassroots and the grasstops -- and success is more likely if you have both. So, with the help of Morris and Rudd, the campaign started to collect power by telling a story of community need, and telling it every chance they could get.

Restrepo, Morris, and Rudd presented evidence of the need for a bike lane on Crescent Street all over town -- from community boards to civic associations. They sat down with local elected officials to explain how the campaign fit those officials’ goals. Social media helped ensure that people who were not at those meetings knew what was going on. The endorsement of an elected official could give the campaign power. But so could 100 retweets.

Rudd remembers the meeting where she and Restrepo convinced a local City Council member, Costa Constantinides, to support the campaign. The secret was to show him how the grassroots need that the campaign had recruited agreed with his grasstops legislative goals. “He was not a cyclist himself, but he cared about green initiatives,” Rudd explains. “The key was aligning Costa’s campaign goals to our goals for a bike lane, and having him realize how cycling ties into his platform. Once that connection was made, his support showed up in person at press conferences and meetings, and on social media as well.”

Elected officials are risk averse, so the support of one can lead to more. Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer signed on in support of the bike lane first. Council Member Costa Constantinides, Senator Michael Gianaris, and Assembly Member Aravella Simotas followed soon after. In hindsight, Morris recalls, this part was simple.

“It was easy to bring the politicians on board,” he says. “It was an election year, and you know, you don’t cross the bike lobby. You don’t cross #BikeNYC.”

Work the Streets

For all the need the campaign demonstrated and political power they signed on, Rudd, Morris, and Restrepo agreed that the most important, and most laborious, part of their campaign involved meeting their neighbors. Day after day, volunteers with signs and petitions collected supporters and snapped photos. This, Morris says, was critical.“Our most important tactic is the petition, but what that really means is that you have to get out there and do the work of talking to your neighbors,” he explains. “Three years of petitions, collected by paid ambassadors and volunteers, laid the groundwork that creates such a strong foundation for a campaign.”Creativity helps, too. Like in 2017, when some of those volunteers got outside with a speed gun to see how fast cars were going on Crescent Street. This not only proved the need for the bike lane, but helped the campaign have an amplified conversation with the community by turning the speed gun data into a press story. More importantly, the speed gun was an eye-catching installment on the street. That is a powerful way to start a conversation.

Clearly, working the streets can build support and act as free publicity -- but it can also create space to correct misconceptions about your campaign, Morris explains.

“In those conversations, many people we met were not mad about how cars drove down their street, but about all the people who rode bikes on the sidewalk. Without the petitions that led to us meeting our neighbors and having those conversations, those people would still be against bikes. Through those conversations, I could tell neighbors that they can have a say in a decision about the street that gives them back the sidewalk,” Morris explains. “I was able to help them understand that bikes are not the enemy, but the way we have allocated space on the street is the enemy. You can only change minds by going back out on the street and doing the work.”

Further, and perhaps most importantly, working the streets can create a communication network for the campaign. Being able to call on supporters when you need them can be key to success. “What helped especially was the petitioning,” says Morris. “That gave us the ability to call on these people, to follow up, and to turn them out when we need people in the room to show our support.”

Taking time to build this network of supporters is Restrepo’s top advice for anyone trying to make local change. Proof positive came in the winter of 2020 when, having heard news of Transportation Alternatives’ campaign, the New York City Department of Transportation hosted a workshop to see how the neighborhood felt about the idea. On the days leading up to the workshop, activists distributed hundreds of event fliers, and Restrepo sent a text message to all 2,000 people who had signed the Crescent Street petition in the prior four years, asking them to come out. Even on a rainy winter night, more than a hundred and twenty people showed up to support the project.

“All those folks at the workshop? In large, they showed up after the campaign reached out via text. We turned out so many people to the bike lane workshop that the room was 95 percent supportive,” Restrepo explains. “But that would not have happened without time in the street. With a built-in list of 2,000 people, we completely eliminated the idea of opposition.”

Never Give Up

As of this writing, Crescent Street is being milled for the installation of a protected bike lane. The campaign to get it there took four years, and the support of 2,000 people in Queens. Perhaps more importantly, the fight for this bike lane took the dedication of a team of volunteer and paid organizers, like Restrepo, Rudd, and Morris, and many others. By listening to their neighbors, identifying and addressing needs, recruiting local power in all its forms, and working the streets, this team of community organizers built a wildly successful campaign.

Of course, in community organizing, even victory is not easy. Rudd learned this shortly after Crescent Streets was announced as a “pop-up” bike lane in response to COVID-19, and she decided to test it out.

“I rode Crescent Street when DOT announced the temporary bike lane, aka some barrels in the street in the midst of the pandemic, and was completely dismayed. I had to move the barrels into place, cars were parking in the supposed bike lane, and I feared for my own life,” Rudd explains. What the city created did not match what she had fought for. So, like a good community organizer, she returned to the work of recruiting power -- and started calling elected officials. Soon, the DOT was being asked to provide a timeline for a real bike lane and the local community board was getting official letters of support. A month later, the community board endorsed the lane.

This is the last lesson in community organizing that we can learn from the fight for the Crescent Street bike lane. Be persistent. Do not settle for barrels and danger. Never give up. Morris put it best: “Do not settle for crumbs from officials. They are risk-averse and will always offer what is safe for them. Instead of what a politician feels comfortable giving, always ask for more. Demand more.”

How Crescent Street Came to Be Safe for Cycling