Alex Goldmark

Early adopting gadget lovers tend to love transit, but for once, they're feeling left behind by Apple.

Transit directions as they currently appear, screen capture via trilliumtransit.com

As we reported earlier in the week, Apple launched a fancy new Maps application for iPhone and iPad with all kinds of new features, like 3D aerial imaging, and voice activated Siri-powered turn-by- turn driving directions.

But Apple's developers  also dropped transit directions, something the old Maps application included because it was powered in part by Google Maps.

We've reached out to Apple multiple times this week by phone and email to find out when and if they'll add transit back to Maps.

Mum. No response. Nada.

Meanwhile the social media petition started by WalkScore generated some attention in the transit blogosphere, but the because company is asking people to tweet and post to Facebook about this, they don't have an exact number of supporters, just that "thousands" have expressed support so far. (See them all here.)

Seeking clarity on what's to come, a few of the Apple monitoring tech blogs have begun to parse Apple's wording more closely around bus and subway map integration. Apple Insider points out that the release notes for the operating system say third party apps "can now register as a routing app" if they offer turn-by-turn directions, and that will permit those apps to open up the official Apple map more easily.

Phillip Bump at Grist used his access as an official Apple developer to test out the new Maps and returned with an optimistic assessment (and lengthier excerpts of Apple release notes) of how third party apps like HopStop might be easily integrated

Yet, but Bump also cities the blog InformationDiet with a thoughtful post that concludes the exact opposite: that outsourcing transit routing to third party apps could lead to a balkanized, second tier set of routing apps different for each city.

Either way, that means iPhone users won't have transit directions come standard on their phones.

Instead, they'll need to take action to get them, like downloading Google Maps.

UPDATE 6/15/2012: We've been trying to get comment from Apple to no avail. Latest details here.

ORIGINAL POST: Early adopting gadget lovers tend to love transit, but for once, they feel left behind by Apple.

The tech giant rolled out a slew of new products and features on Monday including a new operating system for iPhones and iPads. As part of that upgrade, a new Maps feature is being hailed as the centerpiece. The NY Times technology critic David Pogue called Maps "the gem of iOS6," the new operating system.

But when Apple revamped the mapping application from the ground up it left  transit directions on the side of the road.

That has sparked cries from transit advocates and a petition campaign by WalkScore, the website that rates neighborhoods on how friendly they are to life without a car. WalkScore is calling for a social media campaign to  pressure Apple to restore transit directions.

"We believe that having transit directions on your phone helps public transit work better for everyone, so we’re asking you to join us in requesting this feature from Apple," the WalkScore website reads.

Tech bloggers took note as well. TheNextWeb praised the upgrade, but still focused a post on missing transit routing, lamenting how inconvenient it will be to ride to San Francisco without timetables integrated into a smartphone app: "This could mean that Apple will leave this functionality to third-party apps, but if that’s the case, we’re not sure when that will happen."

There's a new voice activated Siri-centered driving directions feature and walking directions are still there.

Subway and bus mapping became collateral damage in the fierce business competition between Apple and Google. Until this version of Apple's operating system, its products relied on licensing agreements with Google and other map providers. Now, as part of a broader effort to shed Google apps from iPhones and iPads, the Apple Maps app has been rebuilt, and it seems, transit directions weren't the top priority to include in this beta launch.

That move seems out of step with the Apple ethos. Long ago when the company was rebuilding its brand as the hip cool computer for the next generation it heavily courted teens and college students, banking on winning over lifetime customers while they were young and still forming consumption habits. Considering how young people are driving less and taking transit more, launching the new Maps without this feature is a rare moment when Apple's magic touch is slipping from the pulse of the cool kids. Some millennials even cited a preference for transit over driving so that they have more time to use smartphones!.

Apple didn't return calls for comment, so we don't know when or if transit will be added to Maps. The best we have to go on is speculation in from Apple watchers based on hints in the product announcement: PC World says transit directions may have to be third-party apps, not integrated into the Maps app itself. Gizmodo called that solution a "cop out."

Then again, when Google maps launched it didn't have transit mapping either. Google only added them in February of last year, and upgraded to real time directions a few months later.

So when will transit directions come back to Apple products, it's cliche but true: we'll have to wait and see.

Click around the map above to see the photos of the bikes and the latest updates on their status. You can update the map yourself, so please let us know if one of these gets removed, or tagged.

Listen to the radio version of this story:

WNYC listeners submitted over 500 pictures of abandoned bicycles in New York. But most of them will not be removed by the city. Here's what happened when we tried to bring the issue to the city's attention with what we thought were all the modern tools necessary: a stack of pictures, a spreadsheet of geocodes, and a veritable army of crowd-contributors.

The life cycle of a bike left to rot on NYC streets is long, and intentionally so.  The complaint process is as clunky as the cast off bikes themselves and the criteria for removal is stiffer than the U-lock holding this pilfered cruiser to a bike rack on Bleecker Street.

The first obstacle is that what you consider an abandoned nuisance taking up your prime bike parking is property to someone else. Most bikes reported to the city as abandoned aren't abandoned enough to be removed (see definition below).

Before we started collecting abandoned bike photos, the City received 429 official complaints since July, the start of the fiscal year. Of those, just 60 bikes were removed, less than 15 percent.

That's because a bike has to be more than abandoned to be claimed by the city. It has to also be officially derelict, as Henry Ehrhardt, director of customer relations at the NY Sanitation Department patiently explained to me while I showed him my stack of hundreds of bikes in various states of decay.

“I think it’s important to remember that the Department of Sanitation’s job is to, essentially, remove junk and garbage from the city’s streets,” he told me.

Like these two, which were tagged and removed after we submitted them.

After a bike complaint is called into 311, a sanitation inspector heads out to the scene to determine if the bike is junked enough.  Most bikes just don't make the cut.

There are many obstacles that prevent the Sanitation Dept from removing a seemingly abandoned bike. First the regulations:

The bike must be affixed to public property (not your front gate or a privately-owned bike rack).

To be derelict a bike must meet three of the following five criteria:

• The appearance is crushed or not usable;
• Have parts missing from bicycle other than seat and front wheel;
• Have flat tires or missing both tires;
• Handlebars and pedals are damaged, or the fork, frame or rims are bent;
• 75 percent of bicycle is rusted.

These bikes, while seemingly derelict were not removed -- possibly because the Sanitation Department inspected a different nearby bike instead.

And of course, many people call in bikes that just aren't abandoned or derelict at all.

“When we’re taking it we’re essentially recycling it, it’s going to be taken away and put in the recycling truck and processed as scrap metal,” Ehrhardt said.

That's a shame to some bike advocates who argue the city should be more proactive in claiming abandoned bikes for recycling or sale. A nonprofit, Bike Rescue Project, has proposed claiming the bikes while still salvageable to repair and sell for charity, but by the time they fall under the jurisdiction of the Sanitation Department, it's already too late. The city of Hoboken does a yearly sweep and collects about 50 bikes a year that get put up for sale at auction. That city's DOT tells Transportation Nation it gets no complaints about wrongfully removed bikes.

Vito Turso, a deputy commissioner at DSNY, says the criteria are strict to make sure no bike gets removed that is still someone's property. Changing that would mean changing the law. “That sounds to me like something a person who is interested in having these removed might want to bring to the attention of their local elected official and then have that local elected official take it the next step.”

He doesn't want to run the risk of claiming property. He deals in junk.

The green mountain bike below, for example, isn't derelict by the criteria. Though partially rusted, it’s in usable condition and the only parts missing are the seat and front wheel, possibly removed by the owner for security.

This green mountain bike didn’t meet the derelict criteria at 97th and Riverside.

However, this is an example of the tricky business of reporting abandoned bikes. Our submission was not intended to be this bike, but rather this insectile black former-road bike across the street and a bit into Riverside park. At this intersection there are actually two streets named Riverside Drive (see map) so an address and intersection weren't enough, and wasted a trip by a Sanitation worker, he wouldn't have seen a copy of a photo, just a written description because there is no official online or digital submissions process.

That's the other obstacle to action, and the main hurdle we encountered. Calling in a complaint takes about 14 minutes and involves speaking with two operators. 311 handles all the intake then forwards the information to the Sanitation Department.

That means a bulk submission of 500 bikes had nowhere to go. Neither agency had the staff to take a spreadsheet and enter it into the correct databases for action. 311 agreed to take two spreadsheets -- after Transportation Nation agreed to filter out the non-derelict looking bikes.

After two batches totaling 150 bikes (or bits of bike parts), 100 of them are being investigated this week. From the first batch of 50 bikes, 24 could not be found on location. Several weren't derelict despite my best vetting efforts, and in the end, 19 were tagged and removed, either by owners or the DSNY.

Of the 350 remaining bikes in our database, they have to be called in.

If you do so, please update the map above. Here's the full gallery of photo submissions.

The NYPD fails to thoroughly investigate when pedestrians and cyclists are struck by cars, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Brooklyn Monday.

The New York Police Department fails to thoroughly investigate when pedestrians and cyclists are struck by cars, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Brooklyn today.

As previously reported by Transportation Nation, the Police Department has just 19 detectives assigned to crash investigations and it's Accident Investigation Squad only responds when a crash victim is killed on the scene or officially declared "likely to die" by a medical professional. Often paramedics or emergency room doctors do not realize their designation will mean the difference between a full criminal investigation and a cursory police write up.

At issue in the lawsuit is the death of Clara Heyworth, who was struck last July while crossing a Fort Greene, Brooklyn street. The driver may have been drunk.  Because no doctor declared Heyworth likely to die that night, police called off the investigation while she was in the hospital. She died the next day.

"Unless they get that statement from the doctor, NYPD walks away and the evidence is not preserved, it's lost, the video tape, the tire tracks on the ground, witness statements, all of that is lost and that's what happened here," said Steve Vaccaro, who is representing Heyworth's husband Jacob Stevens.

The lawsuit argues state law requires police to investigate all serious injury crashes, not just near fatalities.

NYPD did not return a request for comment, but has said in the past its a question of priorities.

For a full explanation of this issue, listen to our previous investigative radio report aired on WNYC.

Stevens v NYPD Clara Heyworth Case_June 2012

(Photo by Stephen Nessen)

Friend of TN, Stephen Nessen sent us this pic from a subway car in Seoul.

When the New York subway system coats a car in advertising, or plasters an entire station with one ad campaign, they call it "full wrapping" and "station domination." Aggressive terms.

This trompe l'oeil Korean interior ad campaign struck us as less dominating than destabilizing, as fitting for a flood warning as for a beach vacation daydream. Why shouldn't your commute feel like a walk on the beach crossed with a disaster movie.

If you have fun subway (or any transpo) pics, send them to us at transponation at gmail.

Some data for your weekend: Here are the ridership numbers for the the ten biggest subway systems in the world. Click the chart to see the tallies. Data via NY MTA.

1. Tokyo: 3.151 billion (2010)
2. Moscow: 2.389 billion (2011)
3. Beijing: 2.180 billion (2011)
4. Shanghai: 1.884 billion (2010)
5. Seoul: 1.769 billion (2010)
6. Guangzhou: 1.640 billion (2011)
7. New York: City 1.640 billion (2011)
8. Paris: 1.506 billion (2010)
9. Mexico City: 1.410 billion (2010)
10. Hong Kong: 1.378 billion (2011)

Taking a page from the addictive WalkScore rankings, we now have ParkScore. The Trust for Public Land has ranked big cities in America by access to, and investment in parks. It's similar to WalkScore. Except the rankings are by city, and the winner is: San Francisco.

Unlike WalkScore, which lets you enter any address in the country, ParkScore lets you glean information by looking at a map.

Top Ten Cities for Parks:

• 1) San Francisco
• 2) Sacramento
• 3) Boston
• 3) New York
• 5) Washington
• 6) Portland
• 7) Virginia Beach
• 8) San Diego
• 9) Seattle
• 10) Philadelphia

Full list here.

The Trust for Public Land ranks cities on a scale of 1 to 100 that is meant to represent how well a city is meeting residents' needs for parks.

You can zoom to see what neighborhoods are "serviced by parks" and which aren't. More interestingly, you can overlay that with demographic data, land use categories and low income neighborhoods. Not surprisingly, there is significant overlap between "need for park" and poorer residents.

The formula calculates park acreage, spending, number of playgrounds and number of residents living within a ten minute walk to parks.

Play around with the stats, see charts and find your city's ParkScore here.

The most conspicuous collection of forgotten bikes in one photo comes from the well-to-do Upper East Side at Lexington Ave and 67th st.

We've received more the 400 photos of bike blight around New York City in our mapping project. That's about 10 times the total number of abandoned bikes the city has removed in the past 18 months.

Tomorrow we submit them all to the city for inspection and potential removal. We'll ask you to you check back and see how many of these rusted frames (or saran wrapped beach cruisers) are eventually removed. For now, have a gander below at our favorite busted bikes chosen for photographic merit, level of "abandonedness," fun factor, and just because we liked them.

Pick your own favorites from the full gallery here. See the map, and read all about derelict bikes, the laws and stats here.

THE "MOST ABANDONED" BIKES:

Some parts remain, mild street trash tumbleweed factor. Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Bent frame, creeping rust, sun bleached belly. Pretty abandoned in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

BEST PILE OF KIDS BIKES:

We've found many piles of bikes -- which we fear tell sordid (or at least hoarding) stories. This was the most flagrant from Central Park North.

UNIQUE CASTOFFS:

Part art project, part bulletin board, this Williamsburg fixture hosts flyers, string, saran wrap and a teddy bear. Does that make it less abandoned or more?

That's a twofer. Photographer comment:  "I mean? This also has been here for over 6 years." From 9th Street and Ave C, Lower East Side.

More wheels does not always mean less abandoned. 10th street and 6th Ave, Brooklyn.

How long does it take to grow a few feet of vines? Tribeca.

 BEST PHOTOGRAPHY:

Deceptively unrideable in Midtown.

We call this one: arsty arcs. Downtown Brooklyn.

BEST COMMENT:

Though far less abandoned than other bikes, this one comes with a standout caption. "If NYC can also remove the dudes selling crack at this location, that would be great, too!" 167th Street, Manhattan

If the Department of Sanitation of NY finds a bike to be abandoned, it is tagged for seven days, then removed.

Reagan National Airport just outside Washington, D.C. is one of the most convenient "big city" airports in the world: accessible by subway, less than 20 minutes from downtown. So it's something of a pain to D.C. residents -- along with lobbyists, lawmakers and government jet setters -- that a so-called "perimeter rule" from the Department of Transportation has prevented airlines from running direct flights from DCA to many major airports. Most passengers wanting to fly farther than 1,250 miles need to do so out of Baltimore or Dulles International Airports each at least 30-60 minutes from downtown D.C.

As the Economist points out, exceptions were granted in 2000 and 2011 allowing "one flight a day to Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, with two flights to Seattle, four to Denver and three to Phoenix." In total, since Congress first created slot exemptions in 2000, the DOT has approved 20 round-trip flights beyond 1,250 miles, the DOT said.

Today we learn of the next four exceptions.

According to a DOT statement:

The U.S. Department of Transportation selected Alaska Airlines for service to Portland, Ore.; JetBlue Airways for San Juan, Puerto Rico; Southwest Airlines for Austin, Texas; and Virgin America for San Francisco. This is Virgin America’s first service at Reagan National. The other carriers currently have only limited service at the airport. Each city will receive one new nonstop roundtrip per day.

The FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, signed by President Obama on Feb. 14, allowed four more daily round trips to receive exemptions to the perimeter rule.

(Photo CC by Flickr user Nick Busse)

The buses stay at the sidewalk... right in front of the bus station.

That's what New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan told reporters Monday: discount bus carrier Megabus can continue to pick up passengers at the curb right outside the city's main bus terminal. "For now, they're going to stay," she said, before adding a caveat: "This is not a permanent solution."

As curbside bus ridership--including so-called Chinatown bus companies--has risen faster than any other mode of transportation, the prevalence of idling motorcoaches on city streets around the country has caused frustration. Neighbors bemoan the crowded sidewalks. Fellow drivers say the buses clog traffic and take up parking spaces. And the proprietors of bus stations, along with the companies that pay to use them, cry foul when a curbside carrier picks up passengers just a block or two away from the terminal. That's  what Megabus has been doing near New York's Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan.

The Port Authority of NY/NJ, the agency in charge of the terminal, is one of those complaining. Executive Director Pat Foye has called for Megabus to move to another location.

Sadik-Khan said she hadn't spoken to the Port Authority about the problem. But she explained that, "we moved [Megabus] there because of the safety and congestion concerns that we got in front of Penn Station," about 10 blocks away. "What we really need is a comprehensive solution." NYC DOT has long petitioned state legislators to allow it greater control over where curbside carriers can stop. Right now the state holds that power. It is not clear how the NYC DOT would comprehensively re-order curbside pickup locations if it had the authority, but the agency is in talks with local community boards about suggested locations.

Washington D.C. started charging a fee last year on curbside buses for using parking spaces, which  are city real estate. Shortly thereafter, D.C. moved discount carriers off the curb into a special section inside the parking lot of Union Station train terminal, a few inconvenient blocks away from the city's lamented bus station. That plan has generally been well received.

We're mapping abandoned bikes in New York City.  So WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show took calls from listeners who have left their bikes to rot on city property.

Like pets at the pound, every orphaned bike has a story, and an excuse,  it seems.

Alex from Forest Hills, NY lost the key to her lock. Megan from Brooklyn was injured while riding and couldn't bring herself to ride again. "I left the bike chained up in front of a bar," she said. "I couldn't bring myself to get back on up on it for a really long time. I actually did move it about a year later and the basket was filled with old paper and coffee cups."

Alex from Chicago used the method of abandonment to gift his working bike parts to the world after his frame broke while riding through Manhattan. "I left it unlocked ... to get cannibalized and in a few hours it was gone."

Listen to the audio for the full details of other tales of abandonment from bike blighters, including a vigilante bike liberator who used a sledgehammer to "free" allegedly abandoned bikes.

It's a better idea to report one to the city. Or us!

If you see an abandoned bike in New York, email a picture of it to bikes@wnyc.org. Use geocoding if you have it on your phone, or type in the location. It will show up on this map. We'll submit all the claims to the 311 and the Department of Sanitation to see what happens.

Full details on abandoned bikes in NYC in our original post here.

<iframe src="http://project.wnyc.org/news-maps/abandoned-bikes/index.html" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="640"></iframe> (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wnycbikes/" target="_blank">See a gallery of all the pictures here</a>)

Top Stories on TN:

In Detroit, you can wait three hours for a bus. (Link)

Tolls remain a sticking point in the Dulles Airport rail project. (Link)

Transpo Secretary Ray LaHood says the DOT should oversee transit security. (Link)

A brief look at European firms using cargo bikes to replace trucks. (Link)

Though the NYC DOT hasn't released a map for bike share dock locations, we pieced together one neighborhood map. (Link)

Parking meter 1951, courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives

TN's Alex Goldmark will be on WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show (with listener calls) about our abandoned bike mapping project. (Link)

Forget chewing gum, can you walk and work at the same time? Could that be a road to health? (NPR)

Washington, D.C. approves a plan to raise parking meter prices at peak times calling it "performance-parking." (WAMU)

Spirit Airlines announced they will charge $100 for bags not paid for in advance. (Marketplace)

Geographic errors discovered in NYC's famous subway map three decades later, which has two men reviving their dueling claims over who made the map. (NYTimes)

48 transit workers will stay on the job even though the SEPTA employees won a $172 million lottery jackpot. (Daily News)

The world's first circumnavigation by solar powered boat was a success. (Wired)

To go with our vintage transpo pic of the day: A history of how parking meters came to Seattle. (Link)

(Chart via University of Michigan)

Americans bought more gas guzzlers in April than in previous months. A University of Michigan study found that the average fuel economy (according to the window sticker -- more on that below) is at 23.9 miles per gallon. That's .2 m.p.g below the March average, and the first drop since December. Overall fuel economy for American cars sold has been trending higher over the years with occasional dips and drops (see chart). April's average is nearly 20 percent higher than in 2007 when U. Mich started tracking the gas mileage of autos Americans buy.

The authors posit that a slight drop in gas prices spurred this slip backwards on m.p.g. as Americans felt more comfortable plunking down cash for bigger cars.

As you digest this American m.p.g. news, consider a German study from earlier in the week that finds automakers are exaggerating fuel efficiency claims for their cars, and doing it more boldly then in the past. The study finds that in 2001 carmakers claimed 8 percent more fuel efficiency than drivers got in practice. In 2012, that jumped to a 21 percent gap between promise and practice. Something a few drivers have taken seriously enough to sue over, and win.

Now it can be told:  there are objective standards for measuring how good your Bus Rapid Transit system is.  The Institute for Transportation Development Policy has issued new scoring system to see how good BRT systems around the world are.

Among the criteria for making a good BRT -- off board payment, segregated bus lanes, level boarding, and good integration with biknig and walking.

The scorecard will rank BRT corridors as Gold, Silver or Bronze Standard -- apparently every BRT deserves a medal. A BRT Standard committee will confer the rankings on bus systems akin to the Green Building Council bestowing different LEED level certifications.

2012 is a pilot year to test the scorecard.

Last year ITDP did a more informal ranking of systems worldwide. Bogota's got a 93.  New York, the lowest rated system, got a 35.

TOP STORIES ON TN:

Keep on helping us map all the abandoned bikes in NYC. Or just browse the 150+ pics. (Link)

President Barack Obama is getting pointed on the transportation bill. (Link)

Young people are driving 25 percent less. 70 of them explain why. (Link w/fun audio)

In case you haven't seen, NY's new cab color is... apple green. Yellow stays too. (Link)

A gruesome car crash, killing seven, landing in a zoo, leads to safety calls in NYC. (Link)

Soon to be a thing of the past: bus tickets in Tallinn, Estonia. (Photo CC by Flickr user Karen V. Brown)

Delta Airlines buys an oil refinery to save money on gas. (NPR)

As the auto industry recovers, workers struggle without that old time safety net. (Marketplace)

The gap between real and advertised fuel economy has doubled in the past decade. (Gas2)

KPCC rides L.A.'s new Expo subway line on the first regular day of operation and finds some color confusion. (Link) But businesses along the route are already trying to cash in. (KPCC)

Estonia's capital city votes to make entire transit system free starting in 2013. Not everyone is happy. (BBC via Atlantic Cities)

Obama's biggest legacy for cities "may be a holistic rethinking about the way agencies work together." (NextAmericanCity)

Calif. punished NRG Energy for price gouging by making them operate an EV charging network. Critics and competitors say that's practically a reward. (Sacramento Bee)

According to this fascinating map of London's transportation habits since congestion pricing: car use is down, cycling and bus use is way up, and ... there are MORE light trucks downtown than before. (Guardian Data Blog)

"I'm not a U.S. company, and I don't make decisions based on what's good for the U.S." That quote and more explained in a look at ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company. (Marketplace)

Should first generation HSRail in the U.S. be 125 m.p.h. or 110 m.p.h.? That could be the difference between a U.S. firm getting the contracts or not. (Politico MT, PDF)

A Chevy Volt marked NYPD patrol car (Photo: NYC Dept. of Citywide Administrative Services)

Forty percent of New York City government vehicles are hybrids or run on alternative fuels. The New York Police Department is exempt from the aggressive environmental vehicle procurement requirements of other city agencies and yet, they have at least one marked patrol car labeled for traffic enforcement.

As a commenter notes, this will be for meter maids and intersection control, not armed police officers.

UPDATE 06/11/2012: We have received over 500 submissions. We have submitted 151 locations of abandoned bikes to the City of New York. They won't accept more at this time unless we call each bike in, one by one. Here's that story, with a new map you can use to update or help us call those in.  

For now if you want a derelict bike removed, be sure it meets the criteria below, and then call it in to 311. 

ORIGINAL POST: Bike carcasses are a common site around New York City -- a dented frame chained to a street sign, wheels pilfered, seat long ago appropriated, rusted chain and remnants blighting even the swankiest of sidewalks like a broken window. What's a citizen to do?

Call 311.

We are no longer taking submissions. Or email a picture to bikes@wnyc.org and we'll add it to this map:

(See a gallery of all the bikes here)

In late 2010, the Department of Sanitation of NY was given jurisdiction to remove derelict bikes (they also remove derelict automobiles) from public property like street signs. In January of this year, that power was extended to bike racks too. In 18 months, 40 have been snipped free to make room for functioning bikes to park.

The process is clunky: you call 311, must answer a series of questions confirming the condition of the bike, and explain to what it is locked, then you are transferred to a Specialist who takes the claim. DSNY then tags the bike, and seven days later returns to claim it as abandoned, removes and recycles it.

Forgive us this quick bit of math to make a point. There are about 500,000 occasional bike riders in New York City (they ride several times a month according to an NYC estimate). The bicycle advocacy group Transportation Alternatives estimates 200,000 daily riders. There's no official daily estimate for bike ridership, but the DOT counts six busy locations once a year for a snapshot, and at those six hotspots alone there are almost 19,000 commuting bike riders a day. There are a bit over 13,000 official Department of Transportation bike racks in NYC.

Some racks hold more bikes than others (let's say around two to ten). Many buildings also have bike storage or private bike racks, and of course there's the more common street sign, railing or, unfortunately for at least one city initiative, a tree to chain a bike to. So there's space to lock up in New York, but not enough prime space. Especially near busy subway stations where racks fill up, abandoned bikes are in the way.

What counts as an abandoned bike? That is determined by these criteria set by the DSNY. Three of the five must be met to be removed:

• appears to be crushed or unusable
• parts are missing other than seat or front wheel
• bicycle has a flat or missing tires
• the handlebars or pedals are damaged, or existing forks, frames or rims are bent
•  75 percent or more of the bicycle is rusted

The bike must be locked to public property including: light poles, bus stop signs, parking meters, trees, tree pit railings and bike racks.

DSNY says they receive many calls about possible abandoned bikes, "but upon inspection by our field supervisor a large percentage of the bicycles don’t meet the criteria to be classified as derelict."

ADD TO THE MAP

So if you spot an abandoned bike, snap a picture and send it to bikes@wnyc.org. If the location feature on your phone or camera is enabled for photos, we can pinpoint the exact location right away. Otherwise, include information in your email about where the bike is and what else you know about it, and we'll manually put it on the map.

We'll also add it to the open-source database maintained by SeeClickFix for non-emergency, civic issues. There, you can comment on and update information about abandoned bikes in your area in the days and weeks to come.

The map here is fully embeddable, too. Just use the link on the map itself.

As we reported in an hour-long radio documentary, transit choices often carry civil rights implications. Now, activists in Los Angeles are claiming that the LA MTA has violated the rights of 500,000 low income and minority riders, as KPCC reports.

By cutting more than 800,000 hours of bus service around Los Angeles, the agency knowingly discriminated against bus riders from ethnic communities, say protesters.

“Did ten years of civil rights oversight not teach the MTA how to perform civil rights analysis?," Barbara Lott-Holland of the Bus Rider Union asked rhetorically. "The MTA did exactly what they promised the courts they would not do -- they went back to their old habits of stealing from bus riders.”

The Federal Transit Administration conducted an 18-month review of the cuts, resulting in a recommendation to the MTA to review the choice of services to cut.

The FTA review was in response to a claim from The Bus Riders Union and Public Advocates, a civil rights nonprofit. The groups argue that LA Metro discriminated against minorities in focusing transit service cuts solely on bus routes used primarily by people of color, during a time when service on rail routes increased. A statement from the groups sent to TN notes that "Metro Bus riders are less than half as likely as Metro Rail riders to be white, and Metro Rail riders are 30 percent less likely to be Latino than Metro Bus riders."

The MTA says the decisions were economically motivated and adds it were planning it's own review of the decisions anyway.

For more details, links to the letters, documents and statements from all sides, as well as an audio report, visit KPCC.