NYC Bike-Share Program Left Out of Orthodox Brooklyn Community
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London bike-share program. Photo: wiki commons.
Next month, New York City will join the likes of London and Washington D.C. when an ambitious bike-sharing program is launched, in order to improve transportation where mass transit lacks. However, South Williamsburg, an enclave for Hasidic Orthodox Jews, will not be part of the program.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the city’s transportation commissioner, Janeette Sadik-Khan said the goal of the bike-share initiative is to “meet the needs of the communities” where there’s a high demand for bicycles.
“We’re not really looking to put them where there isn’t a lot of demand,” she said.
At a meeting where residents in neighboring communities expressed interest in the bike program, Steve Levin, a local Council Member, said it was clear the Hasidic residents in South Williamsburg were not interested.
“Nobody showed up to that meeting advocating for a preponderance of bike-share stations on those blocks or in that part of the neighborhood,” Levin said. “If people really wanted to see bike-share stations in South Williamsburg, they would have come to those open meetings and said so.”
Not everyone is in favor of the gap which South Williamsburg will place into the city’s new system.
“In order to have this whole program work, it has to be laid out so there isn’t a hole—and there’s a clear hole,” Ryan Kuonen, a community board member told the Wall Street Journal.
“It’s kind of silly,” Kuonen continued. “They live in New York City. New York City is getting bike share. It should be where they live, too.”
The Hasidic community has cited safety and religious concerns in their quiet opposition to the program’s implementation in South Williamsburg.
3:44 pm
(Jeremiah 4:30) Art is the devil, his woman is her, (1st Samuel 19:13) she is the earthly church, in bed sleeping (Galatians 4:26). *Genesis 3:9 And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? (1st Timothy 2:14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.) Still dont believe God is he? Satan is called even, him in the Bible, so subtile! From *Genesis 3:19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. (*John 8:26*)
12:38 pm
Every society has a right to define itself as long as it does no harm; besides, the excuse “everybody else is doing it” was not valid when you were an ignorant impressionable punk, and so much more so when you’re older and supposed to be wiser.