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Cycling in the United States

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#1 ·
To Ease a City’s Traffic, Shifting From 4 Wheels to 2



Amanda Cruz, on a team from the Department of Transportation that monitors the condition of streets around the
city, inspecting a hole on Court Street in Brooklyn. Team members ride bikes when checking bike routes, and this
hole was not far from one.



By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
September 4, 2007

On many mornings, as commuters pack themselves into subway trains and drivers squeeze onto the streets, Janette Sadik-Khan, the commissioner of the Department of Transportation, rides her bicycle to work.

That the head of an agency long associated with car travel is an avid bicyclist symbolizes what might be a new way of thinking about how New York’s asphalt should be used. In recent months, the city has pledged to add bicycle racks and hundreds of miles of bike lanes on city streets and has been exploring a program similar to one in Paris in which people can use bikes at minimal cost.

The Bloomberg administration says it wants to develop cycling as a viable transportation alternative to ease traffic congestion, reduce carbon emissions and encourage physical activity. But the new attention to cycling has also encountered resistance in some neighborhoods, especially when it threatens to remove traffic lanes for cars and trucks.

Ms. Sadik-Khan said her time on two wheels has become an important part of her work.

“It’s invaluable to get on a bike and see firsthand the conditions that our projects are trying to address,” said Ms. Sadik-Khan, who became the city’s transportation commissioner in the spring. “We are really emphasizing connectivity in the bicycle lane network, because all cyclists, myself included, know that it’s maddening to be coming along a lane and have it simply end and leave you off on your own on a big avenue.”

To that end, the Bloomberg administration has said it will add 200 miles of bike lanes by 2010 — the equivalent of the number added during the last 20 years.

In 2006, for instance, New York — which officials said was the nation’s first city to build a bike path (along Ocean Parkway, in Brooklyn, in the 1890s) — created only two miles of new street bicycle lanes. By the end of the year, it will have added about 50 more.


In its long-term environmental plan released this year, the city said that by 2030 it will have 1,800 miles of bike lanes and paths. There are now 270 miles of bicycle lanes along city streets and 200 miles of bike paths in parks and along greenways.

Because the lack of safe and adequate bicycle parking has become one of the primary concerns of cyclists, the city has said it will also pursue legislation requiring owners of large commercial office buildings to allow a place for bicycles to be parked indoors. Recent zoning changes in Long Island City, Downtown Brooklyn and the West Side of Manhattan have incorporated that requirement.

Also, the city will install 1,200 new bicycle racks by 2009, in addition to the 4,000 existing racks.

To enhance safety, the Transportation Department has begun to color bicycle lanes with bright green paint in neighborhoods where there are frequent complaints about cars and trucks driving or double-parking, forcing bikes into traffic.

Finally, a team of transportation workers is checking the condition of bike lanes in addition to its regular task of monitoring streets. As the workers check bike lanes for potholes and other hazards, they ride bicycles.

“Cycling, until Bloomberg, had been left off the priority list,” said Noah S. Budnick, deputy director of Transportation Alternatives, a nonprofit advocacy group. “But things have really shifted quickly over the past year and a half.”

A number of other large cities, including Berlin, Chicago and Paris, have put bicycling at the center of transportation plans.

In July, for example, Paris made 10,600 bicycles available to the public — and will add 10,000 by the end of the year — for one euro a day, or about $1.40. Riders can get the bikes after swiping their credit cards at bicycle docking stations.

Last year, Chicago officials said their goal was to have 5 percent of all trips carried out by bicycle by 2015. The city is also trying to build enough bike paths so that every resident lives within half a mile of one.

But the attention on bikes usually comes at the expense of cars, and some New Yorkers have not been enthusiastic about the changes.

In Brooklyn, the borough president and some residents have complained about the banning of cars in Prospect Park for most of the day, fearing it will worsen traffic around the park. And residents said that new bike lanes have upset the delicate alternate-side parking routines, as some officers have been quick to ticket anyone double-parking in the lanes.

Bicycling in New York has never been for the timid, with its traffic, potholes, pedestrians, extremes in weather, aggressive drivers and high rate of bike theft.

There is even a cautionary tale among bicycle riders — the veracity of which is unclear — about a young man who had just bought a bicycle and was riding back to his apartment in the East Village, the bike’s price tag still attached to the handlebars.

Two men with knives (sometimes described as two teenagers with guns) steal the bike and ride off. When the man reports the crime, a responding police officer tries to soothe him by saying, “That’s O.K., son, you would’ve killed yourself on that thing anyway.”

Still, Transportation Alternatives estimated that 130,000 people currently ride bicycles in the city every day, up from 90,000 in 1998.

Jason Varone, 31, an artist from Brooklyn who rides 20 miles to and from work each day, said new bike paths have made cycling on city streets less treacherous, but more important, have sent a signal to the rest of the city. “Even if your daily commute is not affected,” he said of cyclists, “there’s a clear message from the government that they’re trying to do something.”

The tolerance for cyclists, however, has apparently not extended to Critical Mass, a loosely knit group of bike riders whose once-a-month mass bicycle rides have been met with squads of officers, summonses, bike confiscations and arrests.

The rides, which a few years ago attracted as many as 2,000 riders, now bring out only about 150, organizers said.

The Police Department, which did not respond to questions about Critical Mass for this article, has said that police enforcement was necessary because the group blocked streets and failed to obey traffic laws.

Bill DiPaola, director of Time’s Up!, an environmental advocacy organization that promotes Critical Mass and other group bicycle rides, said that while the city had improved bike access of late, the gains had not come without constant pressure from bicycle advocates.

“We realized a long time ago that the city is not very friendly to bicycling, so our idea was to create group rides,” Mr. DiPaola said.

“We wanted to overwhelm the city with riders, and we got to the point where we could say: ‘Look, this is the wave of the future. You have to adapt to it.’ ”


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
 
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#184 ·


[UPDATE] De Blasio Built 20.9 Miles Protected Bike Lanes This Year — Yet Falls Short of Record

Updated | Records are meant to be broken — unless you’re the de Blasio administration building protected bike lanes.

The city Department of Transportation revealed on Wednesday that it fell short of its own projection of installing 29.4 miles of protected cycling routes in the city this year — a prediction that would have represented a whopping 18-percent increase from last year’s record 24.9 miles.

In the end, the city built 20.9 miles of protected lanes — or 16 percent fewer than last year’s record.

(...)
 
#190 · (Edited)
I've been commuting year round for the past 5 years from Mount Eden in the Bronx down to the the Upper East Side/Midtown. I gotta say that Second Avenue is the most stressful segment of my commute every morning. Never-ending construction blocking that avenue between 86-96th Streets. There is also a lot of fresh-direct/fedex/service trucks that block the lane along the way.

The worst part is the deadly 64th-57th Street segment where it meets the Queensboro-59th St Bridge. They recently improved that segment with a protected bike lane but the vehicle violations are so common that you cannot ride with peace of mind, many times I find myself having to swirl into traffic lanes. A few weeks ago I got semi "doored" for the first time ever by a vehicle blocking the lane, fortunately the person didn't open the door fully so I was pretty much fine. It took a long time for me to have my first accident but I knew it was bound to happen sooner or later with these absurd conditions.

I understand the complexity of our city. I don't like to crap on our city leaders because I honestly believe they have put a lot of effort in rolling out bike lanes across the five boros. But we definitely need more to be done to create a friendly bike culture in NYC. Also, I think we need to tax these cars out there in Manhattan coming from the suburbs. These cars crowd up our streets and degrade the quality of life of our city residents. If you want to be fancy and commute using your vehicle then pay a nice tax for it. Otherwise use mass transit, walk, ferry, or ride a bike!

Lastly, but not least, our fellow cyclists need to do their best to follow the rules of the road also. I see these delivery guys on eBikes often riding in the wrong directions, skipping red lights, standing on the crosswalks, and even hopping on the sidewalks at times. We need to stay sharp and follow the rules to avoid backlash from the rest of the city
 
#191 ·
New York Was Supposedly Getting Better for Cyclists. What Happened?




Christopher Lee for The New York Times

As the city makes way for more bike paths, there is also more congestion than ever, and cyclist fatalities are on the rise.

On a particularly humid evening this week, hundreds of cyclists gathered in Washington Square Park for an action reminiscent of the years when AIDS summoned so many to protest bureaucratic indifference to tragedy. After several speeches addressing the need for cyclists to be better protected on the road, those who came to the park staged a die-in, lying down in mournful silence — a response to what has become known in the biking community as “the crisis.”

Just two years ago, the city’s transportation department issued an encouraging report on cycling in the city: over the preceding 20 years it had become safer and easier to navigate streets that were increasingly clogged with cars and trucks.

That progress, though, now appeared harder to identify. Between 2006 and 2015, the study noted, the number of bicycle trips made in a single year increased from 66 million to 164 million, and this presumably played a role in impeding the dangers coming from motor vehicles. For years, researchers in the field of traffic safety have posited that the more cyclists there are out on the streets, the safer the riding experience is for everyone. But recently that theory had begun to seem less reliable.

This year, 15 cyclists have died, struck by cars and trucks — more than the total, 10, killed during the whole of 2018. And while the crisis refers in the immediate sense to these fatalities, it speaks more broadly to the continued, reflexive privileging of automotive culture even as the urgencies of climate change mount and terrify.

Over the past two decades, urban planning has demonstrated little will to stem the forces of suburbanization resulting from the choice made by many families to remain in New York with the belief that they should forfeit none of the conveniences of living in Greenwich. Just this week The Daily News reported on one neighborhood’s rage over a financier who manage to carve a driveway for himself in front of his enormous townhouse out of a patch of public sidewalk.

About 45 percent of all households in New York City have cars according to recent census data, with close to 93,000 of them owning three or more. This reality has unfolded alongside the rise of Uber and Lyft and our growing reliance on getting everything — pet food, tennis balls, cocktail shakers, bulk ancient grains — delivered to us within 24 hours via the use of panel trucks. These developments not only threaten the cyclist’s sense of autonomy but also undermine the use of small alternative vehicles that reduce our carbon footprint.

(...)

Perhaps in a different city a highly visible public-education would accompany this kind of roll out but at the moment, New York is not that city. It is a city managed by a mayor who, as Charles Komanoff, a former director of Transportation Alternatives, a prominent advocacy group put it, “is car culture.’’

The description applies not only because Bill de Blasio is chauffeured 12 miles to the gym on mornings that he is not out of town running for president, but also because the values of his administration can seem as if they are buried in the 20th century.

This was especially clear last fall, when a stretch of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway was revealed to be in dire condition. The first impulse from the city was not to eliminate it or to reduce the number of car and trucks dependent on the artery. Instead it proposed shutting down a heavily used pedestrian thoroughfare — the Brooklyn Heights Promenade — for several years as the B.Q.E. was returned to the state of polish in which it was created during the era of Robert Moses. The idea was regressive enough to attract almost no support.

One of the most moving speeches given at the Washington Square rally came from Hindy Schachter, whose husband died five years ago after he was hit by a cyclist while he was jogging in Central Park. She was there, she said, because she blamed inadequate road design and infrastructure for her husband’s death, not the cyclist who ran into him.

Of the city’s 1,240 miles of bike lanes, 337 have been added during the de Blasio administration, which is significant, in theory if not always in practice. The lanes are often obstructed by parked cars and the police, who have long maintained a skeptical if not hostile disposition toward cyclists, blame them in many cases for crashes that are ultimately the fault of motorists.

City Councilman Brad Lander has proposed a bill that would use camera technology to identify the city’s worst offenders — those with many speeding tickets and other infractions on their records — committing them to improving or impounding their cars. The City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, has pushed for the city to increase the number of bike-lane miles it creates each year to 50.

Ideally, New York would be ribboned with continuous bike paths that made street driving virtually unnecessary. But even if cost were not a factor, our system of governance empowers local community boards to have outsize influence over what gets built in their neighborhoods. Communities have fought back against bike lanes on the grounds that they will take away parking spaces, that they are aesthetically dubious, that they are a sign of further unwanted transformations.

At the rally in Washington Square I met a woman named Kweli Campbell, relatively new to cycling but someone who has been committed to expanding biking opportunities in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, where her family has deep roots. The resistance that she and others there have met comes from those who fear that bike lanes signal more insidious forms of gentrification. In neighborhoods where there has traditionally been little investment in infrastructure, bike lanes might feel hard to justify. But the biking world., something obvious from rallies and reflected in the recent deaths — among them an artist’s, a courier’s, a middle-aged man’s from Brownsville in Brooklyn — is huge and diverse, spanning many demographics.

And the dangers do not discriminate.
It’s Shocking How Badly New York City Is Failing Cyclists



DESPITE AN AMBITIOUS VISION ZERO PLAN, A RECENT SPIKE OF DEATHS ILLUMINATES THE CITY’S GLARING DISREGARD FOR CYCLISTS’ LIVES

According to city data, cyclist fatalities in New York City ranged from 12 to 24 per year between 2000 and 2017. At the current rate, 2019 could be at the highest end of that range. The raw number of fatalities somewhat obscures long-term progress, because New Yorkers took 460,000 daily cycling trips in 2016, versus only 150,000 in 2000, according to the American Community Survey, but the recent trend is dispiriting.

“These numbers are going in the wrong direction in a rather serious way,” said Thomas DeVito, senior director of advocacy at Transportation Alternatives, which advocates for better bicycling, walking, and public transit infrastructure in New York City. “It’s clear that Vision Zero is in a state of emergency and there is so much more that needs to be done in order to get us back on track.”

In response to this sense of emergency and to politicians’ lack of urgency in creating a safer city, a coalition of cycling groups staged a mass die-in in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park on Tuesday evening to bring more attention to the issue. Nearby, as protesters gathered, an NYPD vehicle was parked in a bike lane.

Mayor de Blasio has previously defended the practice of ticketing cyclists in the days after a driver runs over someone. (The mayor’s office did not return multiple requests for comment for this article.) But poorly designed streets in New York—especially the wide avenues that run north and south in Manhattan like the one where Hightman was run over—often physically push cyclists out of the bike lane, or make it a less safe option than simply riding in the road. While the New York Department of Transportation has added dozens of miles of bike lanes throughout the city in recent years, they are often unusable for more than a block or two at a time because of obstructions. Over the past two weeks, cyclists and cycling advocates have flooded social media with photos of vehicles—often government vehicles, commercial trucks, and taxi cabs—blocking bike lanes and making it impossible to pass.
 
#193 ·
It's really disappointing the $58.4 million announced by De Blasio for cycling infrastructure, considering that a few years ago the mayor of London had already announced £770 million for cycling initiatives, and other mayors cities are investing way more than NYC.

And I don't know if you have noticed but CBS always try to portray cyclists are the ultimate responsables for accidents, while defending the drivers privileges/car status quo.





 
#198 ·
And I don't know if you have noticed but CBS always try to portray cyclists are the ultimate responsables for accidents, while defending the drivers privileges/car status quo.
Sorry to respond to this months later. But even as someone who usually commutes by bike, I have to admit that cyclists themselves are part of the problem.

I see far too many cyclists do things like ignoring stop signs, running red lights, etc. Yes, it sucks that our roads are designed for cars. But we still have to follow the automobile-focused rules of the road even if we aren't in a car.

Of course if we had better grade separation for cyclists and Dutch-style intersections, there would be much less need for cyclists to break the rules in order to get around a city. And thus far fewer cyclists being hit by cars.
 
#195 ·
It's nice to see the modern generation of policymakers taking leadership in NYC!

Corey Johnson supports increasing cyclist/active mobility infrastructure in the city. And it seems he may run for mayor of NYC in the next election, it could be GREAT to get rig of Bill de Blasio (and Andrew Cuomo btw), and elect someone with a modern and forward thinking vision.



If you want to know more about his Street Master Plan and about the guy, and if you want to support and encourage him here you have his Twitter:





 
#197 ·
Way to go NYC!! :banana::applause::cheers:

City Council Approves $1.7 Billion 'Master Plan' to Revolutionize NYC Streets to favor cyclists, pedestrians, bus riders



A red light in New York City could soon turn green just as a bus approaches, and cyclists could have triple the protected bike lanes they have today as the City Council approved a bill Wednesday that will "revolutionize" the Big Apple streets.

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson says he drew up the Streets Master Plan after hearing from dozens of grieving relatives of those who were killed or injured on New York City streets.

"We need to do everything we can to encourage sustainable modes of transportation, especially with the realities of climate change growing more dire every day. This plan will make New York City a much more livable and enjoyable place to call home," the likely 2021 mayoral hopeful said on Tuesday.

The five-year, $1.7 billion plan includes adding 250 miles of protected bike lanes over five years, adding 150 miles of protected bus lanes, and making buses a priority at 1,000 intersections.

Johnson's plan includes redesigning signalized intersections, adding more pedestrian signals and adding more pedestrian plazas where no cars are allowed. And that's just the first phase of the plan due in December 2021.

The master plan was approved by a vote of 36-10 on Wednesday, with two abstentions.

Supporters of the legislation say the changes will make the streets safer for all New Yorkers.

More Manhattan Streets Could Become Closed to Cars

Harold and Debbie Kahn's son Seth was killed in 2009 after being hit by a bus driver on West 53rd Street. They joined Johnson on Tuesday to voice their support for the bill.

"Ten surreal agonizing years – we will never get to know what he would have accomplished with his life had he been given a chance to live," Harold Kahn said.
In 2019, at least 25 cyclists have died on city streets and advocates say the protected bike lanes are much needed.

The changes already made to city streets include banning cars from the busway on 14th Street. The rule has been in effect since the beginning of the month and has been getting very positive reviews from commuters.
 
#201 ·


A 10-year plan aimed at making bicycling safer and accessible across Pittsburgh includes the addition of 120 miles of new trails, bicycle lanes and other street improvements.

The plan, announced Tuesday, is five years in the making, and it is geared toward not only traditional bikes but also motorized scooters, electric pedal-assist bikes and other personalized forms of transportation.

A draft of the plan, which includes working with neighboring communities to make commuting into Pittsburgh safer and easier, was announced and shared in February. Tuesday’s announcement finalizes it.

“Now more than ever we need resiliency and safety in our transportation network,” Mayor Bill Peduto said in a statement. “People on bicycles, people in vehicles, and people on foot all benefit from a complete network that logically accommodates travelers of all modes.”

Peduto frequently draws criticism for his prioritizing of more eco-friendly travel such as bicycling, and critics say bike lanes usurp on-street parking and clog streets for motorists.

New to the plan is the MoveForwardPGH initiative, which aims to create awareness of the plans, push for a more bike-friendly city and remind drivers of what they can do to help reduce traffic fatalities.

“Imagine a Pittsburgh where all of our neighbors are able to easily navigate the city,” the MoveForward page reads, “getting from their homes to school or work, appointments or just to run errands without the need for a vehicle.”
 
#202 ·
Biking Took Off During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Here's Why | One Small Step | NowThis



Since COVID-19 there has been a surge in interest in biking. On this One Small Step, Lucy takes a deep dive into how we can make the U.S. more bike-friendly. This episode is sponsored by Brita.

The combination of bored Americans stuck in their homes as well as a fear of public transportation’s safety led to a shortage of bikes in the U.S. This interest in biking is great for the climate because biking is a virtually carbon-free way to get around. But just because people are now jumping on bikes, doesn’t mean cities and towns are ready to handle the influx of riders.

To find out how the United States can be more bike-friendly, Lucy connects with biking advocate Doug Gordon, and Shabazz Stuart the founder of Oonee, a bike parking start-up.
 
#208 ·
I laud the intentions, yet question why we should be allocating public resources to pushing e-bike sales instead of improving cycling infrastructure. The only logical argument in favor of this strategy is that Republicans would fight spending tax dollars on bike lanes yet are willing to allow a tax rebate because of an anti-tax ideology.

Bicycles are already cheap. (Unless you buy a carbon fiber everything bike.) Mine was hand-machined for me in Seattle with expensive German-built gearing and electrical equipment (dynamo hub and lights) and it still cost a tenth the price of a good new car. If you can't already afford an e-bike, then you likely aren't paying much in taxes anyway. What is holding back cycle commuting is not the high price of bikes, but the risk of our bikes being stolen, being hit by cars and being doored by parked cars.
 
#209 ·
To some extend I share your opinion. This kind of measures could trigger a virtuous circle, for exemple, more people will start biking even for long distance, thanks to the electric assistance. So as more people bike, local and regional governments will start being under more pleasure to truly adjust the roads to provide safety and confort to their constituents/electorate, in return making biking more attractive for more people.

I'm sure that out-there are legislative proposition to also improve cycling infrastructure, and the new Secretary of Transport has already said that his intention is to improve this mean of transport 👍🚴‍♂️🚲
 
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