GOODY TWO SHOES: Lies, Statistics, Bogus Bike Lane Statistics
NYC Mayor/Nanny Michael Bloomberg wants his city’s residents to stop eating fatty/salty/sugary/high-calorie foods and has given Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden untrammeled powers to see that they do. In his spare time, he also teamed up with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) – who once opined, “to really get to know New York, you've got to ride a bicycle" - to force bike lanes on unwilling residents and business owners in the tony Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope.
Unintended consequences of his do-goody meddling – traffic congestion, senior citizens almost getting knocked down by bicyclists flying down the two-way bike lane in the wrong direction and an increased number of car accidents - prompted even Schumer's wife, Iris Weinshall, to condemn the bike lane and call for its removal. The way the Bloomberg administration responded to complaints by Park Slope activists "Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes" would make a climate scientist proud: They cooked the data, reports The Wall Street Journal:
[T]he Department of Transportation tried to squash the Neighbors' criticisms by releasing data showing that car accidents had decreased and travel times hadn't changed. But the Neighbors began collecting their own data with video cameras, and their findings didn't jibe with the city's reports. …
The group filed a Freedom of Information Law request to procure the city's raw data and email exchanges between bike advocates and transportation officials.
City officials dragged their heals. The data they did release, however, seemed to confirm the group's suspicions: The department of transportation had spun the numbers. …
The city also masked an increase in car accidents after the lane was installed. There were fewer accidents on the street in 2009 - the year before the lane was installed - than in 2010. (The city used an average of data from 2007 through 2009 to increase the "before" numbers.) …
"This man came into office being the 'king of data.' All of his decisions were going to be data-driven," says [Neighbors' president Louise] Hainline. "Now it turns out a lot of this data were smoke and mirrors." Norman Steisel, a Park Sloper and a former deputy mayor and sanitation commissioner agrees: "They're creating the facts to advance their policy imperatives."
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