The ride was organized to highlight the gender gap in the city’s cycling community.
Joelle Galatan, 17, of Bayside, Queens, sporting an
Joelle Galatan, 17, of Bayside, Queens, sporting an orange vest, gets ready to begin the Women's Ride through Queens on Sunday, March 25, 2018. Galatan helped organize the event with Transportation Alternatives and other groups to help women feel 'empowered' to ride, she said. Photo Credit: Vincent Barone
By Vincent Barone and Lauren Cook
[email protected], [email protected] @vinbarone
Updated March 25, 2018 3:56 PM
More than 100 cyclists took to the streets of Queens Sunday for a Women’s Ride organized to highlight the gender gap in the city’s cycling community while also advocating for the continuation of bike lanes along Queens Boulevard.
Joelle Galatan, 17, of Bayside, Queens, helped organize the roughly seven-mile ride with Transportation Alternatives and other groups to help women feel “empowered” to ride in an city where men account for 65 percent of cyclists, according to a city report published last year. Wearing a knitted pink “pussy hat” over her helmet and a cycling jersey depicting Rosie the Riveter, Galatan attributed that imbalance partly to harassment, like catcalling while out on rides, or “mansplaining” at bike shops.
“As a woman being a cyclist, there’s a lot of gender discrimination that you get that men just don’t get,” said Galatan. “Women should feel strong; they should feel powerful; they should feel like they have the power within themselves to ride.”
The ride, inspired by Women’s Marches that have been staged across the country, welcomed girls and gender nonconforming riders to join in the brisk, early-spring tour winding 7 miles from Queensbridge Park Greenway in Long Island City to Queens Plaza North, then onto Queens Boulevard toward the Women’s Plaza at Queens Borough Hall where a rally was planned to cap off the day’s events.
Organizers chose Queens Boulevard for the ride in order to showcase the connection between the gender gap in New York City cycling communities and street safety, said Laura Shepard, a member of Transportation Alternatives’ Queens Volunteer Committee.
“One of the many barriers for people is safety of the roads,” she added. “When we remove these barriers a lot more people ride, including more women, older people, younger people — not just the stereotypical road warrior.”
As cycling popularity has boomed in New York over the past two decades, women have remained underrepresented. A 2015 report from the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University pointed to another potential reason for the discrepancy: unsafe bicycle infrastructure.
The report found that women are more likely to ride in areas that are connected to bike lanes or greenways, separated from traffic. They also tend to ride on more residential streets, like those in Brooklyn, with lower traffic volumes and on streets that tend to have fewer cyclist injuries, when compared to trips taken by men, according to the report. ...
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