Biking in New York City

[NewYorkDoc]

I have a spontaneous interest in cycling lately. I'm going Sunday to bike in Central Park, I'm pumped! When I move to BK I want to get my own bike to ride around in Prospect Park.

[NewYorkDoc]

City Still Sending Mixed Signals on Bike Parking


A tipster sent us these photos of the City's new indoor bicycle parking facility at 280 Broadway. A couple of months ago cyclists who work for the City suddenly found themselves and their bikes turned away from their office buildings, leaving few options aside from locking up to street signs and unprotected outdoor racks. This new facility, free to any City employee with a valid ID, should help commuters who work near City Hall.
Despite the new space at 280 Broadway, and promises of more to come, Streetsblog got word that a cycling commuter at the Health Department was recently escorted from the building by security and told to park elsewhere. Stay tuned.

[ZippyTheChimp]

August 19, 2007

New York Up Close

Hue and Cry



By GREGORY BEYER

SOME years ago, a Park Avenue socialite named Mrs. Austin Hancock thought it would be nice to organize a series of boat cruises up the Hudson and transplant to New York the gaiety of the Mississippi River soirées of her youth. She arranged this with Daniel McAllister, a local sea captain, who agreed to provide one of his steamboats for the festivities.

But as the first sailing date approached, Mrs. Hancock informed the captain that there would be one more thing: For the cruise to conjure the authentic Mississippi spirit, the boat — had she forgotten to mention it? — would have to be painted pink.

That was in 1933. The coverage in The New York Times included two articles, one outlining the ensuing dispute and another announcing that on the first cruise, in a compromise, only the boat’s stack would be painted pink; partygoers could vote on whether they wanted more pink on future trips.

New Yorkers have been arguing about color ever since. In June, for instance, a new residential building on West 11th Street in the West Village, designed by the artist Julian Schnabel, became controversial not just for whether its color was reasonable but also for what the color actually was. Because the surface is mottled, the 17-story structure seems to fall somewhere between pink and bright red. A similarly conspicuous color showed up last month in Brooklyn Heights, where residents watched city work crews paint the full width of the bike lane on an eight-block stretch of Henry Street an experimental hue: bright green. Reactions were strong.

“I despise it,” complained Mary Kavanagh, a women’s clothing designer who was sitting on a stone bench along Henry Street, tearing ads out of a copy of Vanity Fair. “It’s a very historical neighborhood. It’s a travesty.”

A neighbor didn’t share her feelings. “I don’t mind them,” said George Davis, who lives on Henry Street. “I like that they’re trying to do things. It’s good to have some imagination.”

In 2001, the city’s Transportation Department tested a light blue bike lane in Downtown Brooklyn and found that in terms of making the lane sufficiently visible to cyclists and drivers alike, it did the trick. But at the urging of the Federal Highway Administration, the department has forgone blue for the Brooklyn Heights bike lane and decided to experiment with green, echoing a growing national movement to make green the official bike lane color.

Other streets are getting paint jobs, too. Last week, in an experiment in making bus lanes more visible, the city laid down coats of terra-cotta-colored paint on bus lanes along part East 57th Street, and it will soon do the same for lanes on Fordham Road in the Bronx.

After the Second Avenue subway finally rolls, it also may eventually bring a new color. The Web site of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority shows a T — the letter tentatively chosen to denote the new line — sitting in a circle of turquoise. (According to Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman, the agency has not yet chosen a permanent color for the circle.)

The choice is of special interest to Lynne Lambert, whose New York City Subway Line is an official licensed maker of subway-themed merchandise. Whatever color is chosen will make its way onto T-shirts, hats and other items Ms. Lambert produces, and she said she would be happy to see the choice on the transportation authority’s Web site become permanent.

“Turquoise is very in right now,” she said, “though I’m not sure if it will be by the time the T train comes out.”

Though debates over color may be fervent, the stakes are often less than earthshaking.

Case in point: A town house on West 101st Street near West End Avenue is painted an eye-catching lilac. At night, changing colored lights from the second-floor windows transform the building into a beacon of color on the sleepy street.

The owner is Paul Gregory, who runs his business, Focus Lighting, on the first floor and lives upstairs. The building was painted lilac when Mr. Gregory bought the house in 1990, and he has since received a mix of compliments and complaints, expressed, on occasion, in notes slipped under his door.

“Some people love it and think it’s great and exciting, and others don’t because it’s not traditional,” Mr. Gregory said. “You know, it’s the color of a house. It’s not critical to the free world.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[NewYorkDoc]

Anybody ever see the painted lane above? Does it keep drivers out?

[NewYorkDoc]

Cyclists Throwing Selves Under Cars in Brooklyn

The Daily News reports that more cyclists are getting hit by cars in Williamsburg and Greenpoint -- an increase of 38 percent and 188 percent, respectively, over last year.
While Transportation Alternatives cites dangerous conditions created by the lack of bike lanes, the News draws a different conclusion:

[T]he numbers don't lie. Stats show that in most incidents, bicycles are to blame.
Out of 29 bicycle accidents in the 94th Precinct during May, June and July this year, the cyclist was found at fault in 17.

Numbers don't lie? Traffic policing can be awfully subjective, particularly in a precinct that has made its bias perfectlyclear as of late.

[kz1000ps]

^ I don't know, NYDoc. Like I said before, I'm a courier up in Boston and I'm around tons of people who are on their bikes for hours upon hours each day, and so many bikers ignore just about every vehicular law there is, let alone blink at a stop sign or red light. It really wouldn't surprise me one bit to find out that these numbers don't, in fact, lie.

[NewYorkDoc]

Survey Finds That Buffered Bike Lanes Are Better


A buffered section of Manhattan's 8th Avenue bike lane.

Bike lanes that separate bicyclists from motor vehicle traffic are safer and encourage more bicycling, according to a recent survey by Transportation Alternatives. The survey of 147 cyclists was conducted along the 8th Avenue bike lane in Manhattan, one of the few bike paths to integrate both “buffered” and “unbuffered” segments.

Transportation Alternatives found:

• Buffered bike lanes are are perceived as being safer than conventional lanes.
  52% of respondents feel safe in buffered lanes, versus only 21% in conventional bike lanes. Conventional bike lanes are more dangerous than buffered lanes -- 44% of respondents find the conventional lanes dangerous or intolerable, versus only 19% of respondents surveyed on buffered lanes.

• Buffered or not, bike lanes encourage more bicycling.
  Seven out of ten cyclists use 8th Avenue more often since the lane was installed.

Despite its recent commitment to install more than 200 miles of new bike lanes throughout New York City by 2009, the Dept. of Transportation does not routinely buffer lanes along heavily trafficked roadways. Most of the bike lanes along Manhattan’s 1st, 2nd, 5th and 6th Avenues, for example, are not buffered.

On the other hand, bike-friendly European cities routinely stripe buffers and build barriers to separate cyclists from traffic and reduce the amount of street space available to motor vehicles. The City of London has even established a set of detailed Cycling Design Standards to help planners and engineers determine when and where to implement different bike lane designs.

New York City, it seems, could use a similar set of guidelines.


Filed by Aaron Naparstek under Transportation Policy, Urban Design, Bicycling

[NewYorkDoc]

Ich bin ein Bicyclist


In a report for CBSnews.com on Berlin, Germany's booming bike culture, Christine Lagorio expresses shock at the sheer number of bikes she saw in Berlin and the way in which motorists and cyclists share the road "gracefully." This, she says, is something she has never experienced in her home town of New York City.

In this city where less than half of residents own a car, bicycles are not only in vogue; over the past two decades it has become downright common to ride one every day. They are chained to every pole or knob on every major thoroughfare. They crowd apartment building lobbies. They dominate the flow of traffic in intersections. Bicyclists have power in numbers; a major fantasy of U.S. cyclists has come to pass in Berlin: cars yield to bikes.

Lagorio, who rides a bike in Brooklyn, thinks of Manhattan as a "death trap" for cyclists. She wonders what exactly makes Berlin and New York so different:

"The biggest difference riding in Berlin is that the drivers know what to look out for. There's no right on red here, so the drivers wait for the pedestrians and the bicyclists to pass at every intersection before going, " says Wolf Schroen, an avid cyclist and expat who moved to Germany seven years ago from bike-friendly Austin, Texas.
“Some are just shocked at the amount of other bikers on the roads – that riding is so casual here,” he said.
In Berlin, the city has taken action and its philosophy seems to be "build it and they will come." Two years ago, city officials pledged to work toward bikes comprising 15 percent of the city's traffic by the year 2010. After devoting 2.5 million Euros last year to expanding on the bike lane system, the goal isn't far off. The city already has 80 kilometers of bike lanes in the streets and 50 kilometers of lanes on sidewalks. Recent numbers showed that cycling has doubled in the past decade, and now the city's 400,000 riders each day account for 12 percent of total street traffic, according to the green-living blog Treehugger.

Photo: bisschenbissig/Flickr

[TimmyG]

If the congestion charge goes into effect and reduces the number of cars, maybe there will be room for a few more bike lanes.

[milleniumcab]

Anybody ever see the painted lane above? Does it keep drivers out?

I have seen it, they are pretty recent.. It feels like it is a sidewalk or something, like a part of the roadway you are not supposed to be in... I think they are a good idea but I wonder what kind of paint the city is using.. Some painted roadways can be very slippery when wet..

[milleniumcab]

The city can try to do all it can to make biking safe but it is ultimately up to the bikers themselves..They must obey the vehicular rules of the road..

[brianac]

The city can try to do all it can to make biking safe but it is ultimately up to the bikers themselves..They must obey the vehicular rules of the road..

I watch the bikers on the Times Square Web cams and amazed that they can ignore traffic and pedestrian lights. The biggest shock to me was to see them cycling the wrong way, against the traffic, up Broadway and 7th. Av.

[lofter1]

Come on MC --

One of the biggest hazards to cyclists in NYC are cab drivers who pull over where ever the hell they want with no signal or notice -- and often right in front of someone on a bike.

Another major hazard are passengers swinging open cab doors into the lane of bike traffic.

Both of the above are the major reasons (add a thrid: theft) why I no longer use my bike as a means of transport -- it's just for fun and exercise these days

[Hamilton]

Add to that the way car drivers bully bikers into pulling over to the side of the road--even when there is no room--so they don't have to switch lanes to zoom by. Don't even try taking the left lane (on a road with no bike path such as Riverside Dr.) when you want to make a left turn if you're afraid of getting honked at, insulted, and your intelligence questioned.

But yeah, I got cut off by a cab pulling to the side the other day. What a jerk.

[ZippyTheChimp]

New 9th Ave bike lane - buffered by safety zone and parking lane.

Painted safety zone contains parking signs and muni-meters. Street segments with left-turn cross streets have reduced parking spaces. A more permanent configuration is planned.



NYC DOT presentation

Cycling Gains Ground in NYC

By KAREN MATTHEWS – Oct 7, 2007

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City, with its convoys of cabs, miles of subway track, fleets of fume-belching trucks and hordes of harried commuters, is a long way from Davis, Calif., with a University of California campus and not much else.

But the concrete jungle and the college town were both honored recently by the League of American Bicyclists for bike friendliness.

New York City's bronze medal from the Washington-based bike group represents an endorsement for the city's efforts under Mayor Michael Bloomberg to promote cycling for a cleaner environment and a healthier populace.

"The way we think about transportation and how we use our limited street space is changing," said Janette Sadik-Khan, the city's transportation commissioner.

The city is installing 400 to 500 bike racks a year and plans to have more than 400 miles of bike lanes and paths by 2009. There will then be 1 mile of bike lane for every 10 miles of road; the ratio is now 1 to 15. In San Francisco, it's 1 to 7.

In Brooklyn's hipster-heavy Williamsburg section, the city reduced the space for car parking in favor of bike parking — a first — when it widened the sidewalk to fit nine new bike racks over the summer.

"It's better because people used to chain their bikes to trees and house gates," said Pedro Pulido, an architect who parked his bike at one of the new racks last week.

A seven-block length of Manhattan's Ninth Avenue is now being remade into the city's most bicycle-oriented stretch of roadway ever, with a bike lane separated from car traffic by a paved buffer zone and a lane of parked cars.

Bloomberg also has proposed legislation to make it easier to bike to work by requiring commercial buildings to provide bicycle parking.

"According to surveys the number one reason why people who want to bike don't is that they can't park their bikes indoors," said Noah Budnick, deputy director of the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives. "You just can't park your bike on the street all day in New York."

If theft is the No. 1 challenge facing New York cyclists, safety is No. 2.

According to the city health department and the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are 2.8 bike deaths per million people annually in New York City, compared with 2.7 deaths nationally — a not particularly bad ranking.

But potholes and aggressive drivers can make it feel more dangerous.

"You have to always be alert," said Barbara Ross, who bikes to work and volunteers with Time's Up!, an environmental group that promotes a group bike ride called Critical Mass. Ross said she was once "doored" by a parked car — a term used to describe when the passenger door flying open without a thought for bikes.

"You can't just ride," she said. "Because no one's going to be looking for you."

A study conducted last year by the city health and transportation departments found that 3,500 cyclists were injured by cars between 1996 and 2003 and 225 were killed.

Following up on its analysis, the city announced a $1 million public service ad campaign last month to remind drivers and bike riders to watch out for each other. The city also is promoting safety by giving out thousands of free bike helmets, which are required for children and for bike messengers and delivery workers.

It was the city's commitment to study bike crashes and prevent them that persuaded the League of American Bicyclists to bestow its bronze medal. (Davis, which has an old-fashioned bike on its city seal, is the only platinum-level community. Another college town, Palo Alto, Calif., is gold.)

Andy Clarke, executive director of the league, called New York's 2006 survey "the most extensive study that we know of" into bike accidents.

Transportation Alternatives says there are 130,000 bicyclists on the road in New York City's five boroughs daily. Because New York is the nation's largest city at 8 million, that's more total cyclists than any other U.S. city can claim.

But according to Census figures, just 0.5 percent of New Yorkers ride bikes to work. That compares to 2 percent in Seattle and San Francisco and a whopping 34 percent in Copenhagen. How much higher could New York push its number of bike commuters?

"We can certainly do better," said Sadik-Khan, who visited Copenhagen a few months ago to study the Danish city's bike-promoting policies.

If there are obstacles, there are also advantages to New York for cyclists. It's flat, it's relatively temperate and you can bring your bike on the subway. Thousands of bike messengers and Chinese food deliverymen weave through gridlock Manhattan traffic daily.

"It's the fastest mode of transportation," said Sarinya Srisakul, vice president of the New York Bike Messenger Association, noting that it can take half an hour to traverse 10 midtown blocks by car but just five minutes on a bike.

Sadik-Khan, who often bikes to work, said cycling not only reduces air pollution but also is "a great competitive sport" that is gaining ground with "the hedge fund crowd."

"The line I've been using," she said, "is, 'Bike is the new golf.'"