Learn more about ghost bikes from Steve Scofield, a Ghost Bike Project volunteer and lifelong cyclist and New Yorker.
Note: This interview was conducted over email and Google doc over several weeks in February and March of 2024.
My whole life, since November 1950, 73+ years.
I try to ride a few miles every day. It’s my favorite means of transportation. I regret that due to age and a chronic medical condition, I can’t ride as much as I used to, but I still do 8 to 10 miles most days, about 3,000 miles a year. I also love traveling by subway (I’m a retired MTA employee). My only issue with the subway is that stairs are becoming a bit difficult, and I’m anxiously awaiting the installation of more elevators. I used to be an enthusiastic walker, but the aforementioned medical condition has turned me into a slow walker. I own a car, I use it when necessary, but I HATE driving in the city.
The experience of riding in NYC has changed exponentially since I started riding as a kid in the 1950s. There were no bike lanes, very few adults rode bikes (they were viewed as a kid’s toy), there was no way to ride a bike over many bridges to/from Manhattan. Even in the ’70s when I was a bike messenger, there was no bike infrastructure, you STILL couldn’t ride across most bridges, and cyclists (especially messengers) were viewed as kind of two-wheeled outlaws. It’s much much safer now, the number of cyclists has increased exponentially, there’s lots of bike infrastructure (but still not enough) but it’s STILL not safe.
Back in the mid 2000s there was an annual city-wide ride where groups of cyclists visited the site of each ghost bike installed in the previous year, and we then converged at a place (e.g., City Hall) to loudly voice our concerns. I went on my first Queens Ghost Bike ride in 2008, which is also the year that I started volunteering for the Transportation Alternatives Queens Committee. A friend and an MTA coworker both told me about the ride, and I thought it was an incredibly powerful way to both raise awareness about this issue and to honor the deceased cyclists.
As I’ve mentioned, I went on several rides. In 2011, I became chair of the Transportation Alternatives Queens Committee, and I thought I could develop a linkage between the two. That wasn’t very successful, but I still wanted to be a part of the Ghost Bike Project, and I realized that I had some logistical and organizational skills that could be useful.
We learn about cyclist deaths through the media, both mainstream and otherwise. Streetsblog is probably our best source.
The creation of ghost bikes is a long involved process. Read more about ghost bike workdays.
Yes, we will occasionally do a Go Fund Me, some folks in the greater NYC bike community who have the means to do so make donations, e.g., this year we received donations of $1,000 and $500 from friends and activists, and one organization covered the cost of our most recent order of plaques. We sometimes receive random small donations at workdays and even from passersby when we’re putting up a bike. Our work space is donated by a very generous public official.
We occasionally hear from friends and family that they’d rather not have a bike placed—seeing the bike frequently would be too traumatic. There have also been times when the crash location is such that the bike would be removed almost immediately (e.g., busy corner in midtown Manhattan), so we’ll just put up a plaque.
Just after the pandemic, we heard from a woman out in Pennsylvania whose daughter, who was living in Brooklyn, had been killed. She asked if we could put up a bike for her daughter, but we had just lost our previous worksite, and due to the pandemic backlog, we were over 20 bikes behind. She immediately volunteered to collect bikes in her hometown, paint them herself (she and her husband run a truck parts business and have a paint booth), and transport them to NYC for installation. She did, and last spring we installed a bike for her daughter, and six more throughout the city. We did this again in the fall (six more bikes), and she also supplied nine more for us to install—and we will be doing it again in the spring. She has turned her grief into activism and has almost single-handedly saved this project.
The bikes honor the life of the cyclist. We don’t judge how the cyclist died—what the circumstances were, whose fault the crash was, etc. It frequently gives the family some closure—we don’t do as much family outreach as we’d like. Families for Safe Streets at Transportation Alternatives has filled that void to some extent. And, it raises awareness, both to drivers and fellow cyclists, as to just how dangerous things still are out there, and to be careful and vigilant every second you’re on the road, whether on two feet, two wheels, or four wheels.
We don’t have the bandwidth to replace bikes. We can barely keep up with the number of new bikes needed. Right now we’re 11 bikes behind. We only replace bikes if family or friends specifically request it. Our plaques frequently stay in place for years, long after the bikes are gone.
That each bike represents a life—someone’s loved one—and a death that didn’t have to happen, and that we all need to take some responsibility for the loss and for the prevention of future deaths.
We have about eight members, of varying levels of activity. We are desperately trying to recruit more, to help with a lot of the planning, organizing, etc. for workdays and to improve our online and social media presence.
Friends and family frequently put up ghost bikes before we can get to them. Our turnaround isn’t very fast, so if they want a ghost bike up relatively soon after a loved one’s death, they will often do it themselves.
Additionally, a deliveristas group, Los Deliveryboys, has put up two bikes that I know of.
It was originally an offshoot of Times Up! which was kind of a bike activism group that didn’t take part in traditional activism (e.g., working with electeds, etc.). We still have four core members who come from that background. In time, we’ve come to include more folks willing to work within the system, and we mutually respect each other’s approach. We have one victim’s relative in our group (our aforementioned Pennsylvania mom). All but one of us is over 40.
More so in the east. I occasionally hear from folks in New Jersey, Toronto, and New Orleans.
It’s really hard to quantify, but if even one of our bikes caused a driver to slow down and a death or even a crash was prevented, it’s worth it. You can’t measure something that didn’t happen, but you can hope that it has saved at least one life.
No. Our only purpose and mission is to memorialize deceased cyclists, and since many of us have vastly different approaches to activism, that’s all we do. Many of us are activists with other groups (e.g., Transportation Alternatives, Families for Safe Streets, etc.).
We need to attract some new, and younger members. We have no problem getting people to show up as one-offs for work days, but we need folks to be involved in the day to day activities. We had a Zoom meeting earlier this week—we’re planning an information/recruiting event for sometime in May or June. It will be on our Facebook page.
I’ve been biking in NYC for almost 70 years since I was 6 years old. It’s amazing to see that cycling has become more and more mainstream and to see more and more bike infrastructure. It’s good to see that statistically that cycling has become safer on a per-mile-traveled basis, but still we had 30 deaths last year. Even one is one too many, but 30 is horrible. It’s also disheartening to see that the Mayor and Department of Transportation commissioner have become indifferent, if not outright hostile, to street safety initiatives, after two administrations that were mostly (but not 100%) supportive.
On a personal note, when I started becoming more active in the bike community, about 15 years ago, I felt a little out of place since I was much older than the typical activist. But I stuck with it, and now I can say that my bike friends are some of the best friends I have. Truly a life-changing experience for me.