Bike messenger Cassandra Castillo sent us this photo of a New York Blood Center blood donation bus parked in the dedicated bike lane on Broadway, near the intersection of 19th Street. Is it okay to block a bike lane if it's not an emergency, as long as it's for a good cause? Maybe sometimes in order to save lives you have to put other lives at risk! And considering how fast motorists race down Broadway (the deadliest street in NYC), this bus is definitely putting cyclists' lives at risk, by forcing them to swerve out into traffic. So we asked the Blood Center if bike lanes routinely serve as parking spots for their buses.
"We hope the photographer donated blood," quipped Rob Purvis, the Blood Center's Customer Service VP. "We always work closely with the city and the police when special arrangements are made for parking our bus during a blood drive. We always have permits issued for unusual parking instances and will move the vehicle if an issue arises." We asked Purvis if the NYPD issued this bus a permit to specifically park in the bike lane, and he told us, "The buses are in a different location every day, and sometimes in two locations a day, so there is no site-specific permit."
The NYPD has not responded to our inquiries. It's worth noting that after the recent snowstorms, the city's blood supply was critically low. But on Tuesday (two days before this photo was taken), New York Blood Center ended its emergency appeal for blood donations and returned to its normal collection schedule.
