Accusing city government of a lack of commitment to bike safety, the head of a city-sponsored cycling advocacy group has resigned.

The announcement by former Bike Friendly Kingston Rosemary Quinn comes five weeks after her partner, John “Host” Lynch, was struck by a car and killed while cycling across Washington Avenue.

“I don’t want to be any part of any propaganda surrounding positivity in bike infrastructure in Kingston right now when there are so many glaring and serious safety and public-encroachment issues that are being swept under the carpet,” said Quinn. “It’s smoke and mirrors.”

Bike Friendly Kingston is a city sponsored volunteer commission which promotes bicycle safety and access. The group hosts bike repair clinics, safety education events and bike bell, light and helmet distribution programs.

Quinn, a traffic safety educator at Ulster County Community College, was appointed as BFK president. In the letter announcing her resignation, Quinn said that she was proud of her work with the group but felt that the city had failed to enact policies to make the city safer for cyclists, despite well-publicized efforts to build bike lanes, install public bike racks and otherwise tout Kingston as a bike-friendly community.

Quinn cited a police crackdown last summer where officers used arcane and rarely enforced provisions in the city code to stop and question cyclists in the city’s Midtown neighborhood. Also mentioned was the failure of the Common Council to approve a funding request from Mayor Steve Noble for a traffic safety campaign to educate residents about upcoming changes in traffic patterns on Broadway.

Quinn also cited the case of Darryl Savage, who was killed last November when he rode into the side of a school bus at the intersection of Greenkill and Wilbur avenues. At the time, the 54-year-old Savage was riding on a two way-cycling path that had recently been installed by the State Department of Transportation as part of the Empire State Rail Trail.

Quinn called the path’s design “experimental” and “ill-advised.” She also took issue with city officials who, on the advice of legal counsel, have remained silent about Savage’s death — even as they moved ahead with plans to remove a traffic signal at the intersection where he was killed. But Quinn wrote that it was the death of her partner, 57-year-old John “Host” Lynch, that was the final straw.

Lynch, a dedicated lifelong cyclist who refused to participate in what he believed was a toxic car culture, was killed on July 25 as he and two friends biked across Washington Avenue near the Dutch Village apartment complex. Lynch was struck by a car driven by city resident Terry Clark, who was making a turn at the time.

Quinn said that a police report on the incident indicated that police did not conduct a chemical test on Clarke despite witness reports from Lynch’s friends that he appeared “confused” in the moments before the crash. Quinn added that Lynch had been riding on a much-used, but unofficial, bike path through the city that makes riders cross a heavily trafficked section of Washington Avenue that lacks signage or other features to warn drivers of their presence.

The failure to address the crossing, she wrote, was just one example of “bike friendly” efforts more focused on making the city attractive to tourists than considering the safety of everyday riders.

“There is a deliberate, important alternative biking community here in Kingston,” said Quinn. “And two members of it, in the past year, are dead.”