Brooklyn Bike Portrait: Ian and Shea

This is Ian Dutton and his wife Shea. Ian is an airline pilot, a cyclist, and an active member of his Prospect Heights community board. Last year Ian got fed up with cop cars constantly parking in the middle of the Bergen Street bike lane and forcing cyclists into busy motor traffic. (Example, courtesy of the CCNY) One day he found some ConEd traffic cones nearby and took it upon himself to partition off the bike lane.

Amazingly, it worked – the bike lane remained unobstructed for weeks afterwards. In a rare example of cooperation between the NYPD and New York’s cyclists, the 78th precinct captain set up metal barriers to further protect the bike lane from encroachment by motor vehicles. “The real shocker,” writes Ian, “is that the Commanding Officer just did it on his own, without us contacting him! I mean, sure he got the idea from my little ‘art’ but the barricades were all his idea.” These went up last November and have stayed up since. Sometimes it takes a bike lane vigilante to set the wheels of change in motion.