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So Danielle started looking for a different kind of justice. In our conversations, both she and Lana returned again and again to the circumstances that had put Lauren on that street on that day. It wasn\u2019t her usual route to work. \u201cShe had called me the night before\u2014she was telling me how the normal road she rode on, which was a street over, was being ripped up, and how it was really messing up her bike,\u201d Lana remembered. Danielle began to think that the street itself was to blame.<\/p>\n
Classon Avenue, where Lauren was killed, is a well-known, signed cycling route, but it wasn\u2019t painted with bike lanes\u00a0at the time. Instead, most bicyclists rode along the extra-wide parking lane on the left-hand side. \u201cThat was the basis of everything that happened,\u201d says Danielle. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t a designated bike lane.\u201d Danielle decided to do something about it.<\/p>\n
A community board had advocated for one in 2011, but Classon Avenue sits on the boundary between two community boards, and the second board opposed the change, with its president later telling<\/a> the transit-news site Streetsblog NYC<\/em> that street safety \u201cis not an issue in our community, by and large.\u201d In 2012, the New York Department of Transportation (DOT) considered the bike lane but decided against it. Instead of a bike lane, the road got the wider parking strip.<\/p>\n Danielle wanted to right those past failures. \u201cWhat does it take?\u201d she says. \u201cIt takes a little bit of perseverance and tenacity.\u201d She pestered elected officials and became an expert in street infrastructure. \u201cI would take voluminous notes on the average cost of a bike lane, what bike lanes do to protect cyclists and also protect cars and pedestrians,\u201d Danielle says.<\/p>\n