Editorial
What would Jane do on 14th St. busway?
said, even in those pre-bike lane days,
adding, “She was spunky.” Diether,
on the other hand, preferred walking,
not wanting to ride “in New York City
traffi c.” But the veteran activist doesn’t
recall Jacobs making strong statements
on either bikes or cars. She also doesn’t
remember Jacobs saying anything about
generational confl icts — such as we
seem to be seeing on the busway issue.
Asked if Jacobs believed in compromise,
Diether said, no, not really.
“I couldn’t say which way she would
have gone,” Diether said, of the busway
issue. “Oh, she listened to everybody.
She wasn’t a compromiser. She wasn’t
somebody to cater to somebody just because
they came up with an idea. She
would have her own ideas.”
So, the debate will rage on, at least
for a while longer, in articles, op-eds
and online reader comments. It’s not
clear if anyone’s mind is being changed,
but that’s not always the point. But ad
hominem attacks will get us nowhere.
And we have more than enough of that
on social media — and coming from
the White House — these days.
As seen from these two photos, the top one taken in 1925, and the bottom
one taken now, the view down Minetta Lane from MacDougal St. toward
Sixth Ave. has altered quite a bit in the nearly 100 intervening years. The
buildings on MacDougal are still there today. Among the changes over the
years is the presence of the Café Wha? plus, notably, the addition of many
trees along Minetta Lane.
PHOTO BY GABE HERMAN
The debate over the embattled
14th St. busway — and, to a
lesser extent, the new bike lanes
on 12th and 13th Sts. — continues to
rage on.
A quick look at the reader comments
on thevillager.com over the past few
months and weeks shows how extraordinarily
passionate people are, on both
sides of the issue. On the one hand, Village
and Chelsea residents are fi ghting
for their quality of life. On the other,
transit advocates say they are battling
for better bus service for commuters,
which outweighs locals’ needs.
Many of the comments are very informative,
which is great and is adding
to the ongoing dialogue. However,
other comments do clearly have an
angry tone. We moderate inappropriate
and offensive comments, such as
one addressed to Arthur Schwartz —
the attorney whose lawsuit is currently
blocking the busway — telling him, in
short, “Get out of the way, old man.”
Obviously, that’s ageist — and also
rather ignorant and disrespectful of the
need for public process.
Many commenters bash local residents
as “rich,” when, in fact, many of
these folks simply have been living here
for decades, in rent-regulated apartments.
Meanwhile, irking the earnest
transit advocates, Village and Chelsea
residents never miss a chance to slam
them as “zealots” and “extremists.”
And, of course, Transportation Alternatives
recently protested outside
Schwartz’s W. 12th St. townhouse, demanding
he “Drop the lawsuit!”
In short, this fi ght, at times, has gotten
more chippy than the Bagel Boss
guy versus Lenny Dykstra.
In addition, Schwartz and David
Marcus, another outspoken busway
opponent, have both claimed their position
is in line with the spirit of Jane
Jacobs — in that, they say, Jacobs supported
the community’s position. Transit
advocates are outraged over the audacity
of this claim; they argue Jacobs
was a cycling advocate and would have
endorsed improving mass transit.
We admit we have not scoured Jacobs’s
entire oeuvre to see where she
stood on cars and bikes. What we did
do this week is call Doris Diether,
who was one of Jacobs’s top lieutenants
when they fought against Robert
Moses’s misguided “slum clearance”
and highway projects that would have
destroyed the Village area. Diether, 90,
who is on Community Board 2, is the
city’s longest-serving community board
member.
So, fi rst question: Was Jane Jacobs,
who lived in the Village, a cyclist? Yes,
she rode bikes — quite a bit — Diether
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12 August 29, 2019 TVG Schneps Media
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