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In a series of unfortunate events, bike lane causes tree to fall on car

In a series of unfortunate events, bike lane causes tree to fall on car
Photo by Georgine Benvenuto

The creation of a bike lane on 72nd Street was the first domino to fall in a chain of events that led to a tree crushing a car on Sept. 8, locals said.

“The whole tree was chopped — broken by the sanitation truck, because the truck has to pass by the cars that are double parked in the middle of the street to avoid being ticked for parking in a bike lane,” said Abby Assad, who lives on 72nd Street between Third and Fourth avenues.

The city installed a new bike lane on the block earlier this year. Then last month residents who have been double-parking during alternate-side street cleaning for decades all got tickets — not for double-parking, but for parking in a bike lane.

The next week, locals avoided the $115 tickets by parking in the middle of the street when alternate-side rules were in effect — but that caused mass confusion when drivers idled behind empty cars they thought were waiting in traffic.

In the latest development on Sept. 8, a garbage truck trying to get around cars double-parked in the middle of the block got too close to an overgrown tree, caught a limb, and uprooted the tree, sending it falling onto a nearby car.

Residents contend that the street is too narrow to accommodate a bicycle lane in addition to parking spots and the traffic lane.

But Community Board 10 specifically asked for a lane there in a 2012 study, a Department of Transportation spokeswoman said.

The board plans on revisiting that request, but the real issue is police officers’ predatory ticketing, a board leader said.

“We will schedule 72nd Street for an upcoming meeting,” said CB10 district manager Josephine Beckmann. “But it seems as if traffic agents are targeting these streets for these very expensive tickets. It’s really unfair.”

Traffic agents are not under the 68th Precinct’s purview, but the commanding officer even said the ticket blitz on 72nd street is a little much.

The police department’s public information office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Except for a handful of service calls resulting from specific 311 complaints, the block’s trees haven’t been pruned since 2010, a Parks Department spokeswoman said. That’s within the city’s guidelines, she said.

But the city needs to keep trees clear of the road if garbage trucks are going to hug the curb to avoid double-parked cars, another resident said.

“If you’re gonna do one thing, you’re gonna have to prune the trees too,” said Assad’s husband, Farid.

No one was injured in the crash, a sanitation spokeswoman said.

Reach reporter Max Jaeger at mjaeger@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260–8303. Follow him on Twitter @JustTheMax.
Talk about torque: The truck caught a low-hanging branch and pulled the tree up at its trunk.
Photo by Georgine Benvenuto