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Cycling soars but rule hamper riders

BY CHRISTINE ARMARIO AND GRAHAM RAYMAN | STAFF WRITERS

December 23, 2005

Anticipating the transit strike a week ahead, Peter Onghena figured the best way to get to work from his home on the Upper East Side to his job in midtown would be to bike. But when he called up his office's building manager, they told him that the commuting idea was his first strikeout.

"If we let you go in the building with a bike, we'd have 200 other people" with bikes, Onghena said he was told. When he asked why they couldn't make an exception, the manager said, "that's just the rules of the building."

Instead, Onghena, 33, walked down 36 blocks and across five avenues. He wasn't the only one. Though the number of New Yorkers using bicycles to get to work soared during the strike -- jumping 500 percent according to one survey -- managers of some office buildings refused to allow others in, even though the city's contingency plan encouraged them to.

"It was a huge problem," Noah Budnick, a spokesman for Transportation Alternatives, said. "People who left their homes on their bike and pedaled to work arrived at their office buildings and were barred from entering."

Budnick said the advocacy group received about a dozen complaint calls.

"It was they and their coworkers, entire offices of people" Budnick said. He said people were discouraged from parking their bikes out on the streets because it was unsafe, with about 60,000 bikes stolen each year.

Budnick's group has been pressing the city to pass a law to require office buildings to provide indoor bike parking. The lack of indoor parking is the number one reason people don't cycle to work, he said. That bill has been pending in the City Council for more than a year.

Manhattanite Brett Berkowitz, 35, a telecom specialist, said he was also rebuffed during the strike by his building manager.

"He told me he had received hundreds of calls making the same request and he turned them all down," Berkowitz said. "This is a perfect example of why you need to change the rules."

Onghena said his walk took about 35 minutes, and wasn't all too bad.

"I ended up with blisters in my feet, though," Onghena said. "And tomorrow, if the trains aren't running, I'll have to do it again."