First, I apologize for all the riders who cruise through red lights, pedal against the flow of traffic, or zone out with earbuds. And I accept your apology for all the trucks that idle in the middle of the street, the cars that sit diagonally across two lanes at red lights, and the drivers who fail to check their blind spots.
Now we’re straight. You and I both spend decent chunks of our workday getting from one place to another. You drive a car that burns gasoline, a fuel from dead dinosaurs. (Yes, it’s a hybrid, and a puckish one at that. All the same.) I ride a bicycle. I can see your face when I’m pedaling or waiting at a light, and I can see pedestrians’ faces and time their gait. What can you see?
Tailpipes and license plates, probably. And sideview mirrors. Presumably that’s all you can see, because if you could see what other drivers were doing you wouldn’t be honking every time something didn’t happen right when you wanted it to.
I’m sure you agree there are quite a lot of you, and you take up a lot of space. Even when you wave your arms and chin at me because I ride through your blind spot, you rule the road. Except that you and the other drivers are all trapping each other.
Now the city of New York is inviting proposals from vendors who would run a program that gives more room on the road to cars (by promoting the use of bikes by the hour), and you’re quaking. The bikers are disrespectful, you say. Amok. Though when I pull up next to your peers and look them in the eye, they usually manage a wan smile.
Is that really what we’re talking about?
Or is that the overlay of bike lanes on pavement has been undemocratic? Unlike, say, the clearance of thousands of homes for highways in the 1960s or the hush-hush support the Feds have given to petrodictators since the 1930s?
But you’re right- let’s live in the present.
We are so indolent that we order delivery of our lunch from restaurants in the same building. Our trains are so crowded that rush hour often lasts all day, and so old that 24/7 service often excludes weekends.
We are so culturally wedded to fats and sugar that 4o percent of our kindergarteners are overweight or obese, and likely to stay that way.
Our oil purchases are bankrolling both dictators and the terrorists who hate them. Our oil use is throwing our nation into hock and our city into asthma care, and confirming that our children’s June graduation parties in the 2020s will coincide with monsoon season.
And you’re afraid of more people riding bikes? Are you sure?
Well, hey- if it helps, you can borrow mine.
Alec Appelbaum
Alec Appelbaum writes about real estate, true-green business and architecture for the New York Times, Fast Company, New York magazine and others. He has also contributed to Architectural Record, the Architect’s Newspaper, Dwell and the Forum For Urban Design and ...
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DrDaveNYC says:
My wife was hit by a typical NYC cyclist and immediately required brain surgery. The accident was near fatal & the recovery took years. Her accident was far from atypical as she was slammed into at high speed while crossing a Central Park roadway at a green light. Her head hit the concrete curb and she blacked out with blood dripping from her open mouth. Had she not been minutes away from a Level 1 trauma hospital she would be a long forgotten statistic. Just another victim of a reckless NYC cyclist.
For all it's candy coated political correctness & college town nostalgic dreams, cycling in Manhattan's over-congested streets is dangerous & often out of control. Not the least of which it is unregulated, unenforced & totally uninsured. My wife's brain surgery alone cost $15,000 which was just the tip of the medical bills we faced.
NYC cyclists rarely use bike lanes, ride in any direction they please, yell at pedestrians to get out of the way and basically are on power trips with no regard for anyone. There is even an ever growing, non-gender specific, macho cyclist subculture that promotes bikes without brakes & gears...mimicking the urban warrior professional bike messengers from the 80s & 90s who didn't want their preferred Shimano parts stripped. People are shelling out thousands for these dangerous configurations in order to stand out and look cool...in the eyes of their fellow cyclists, of course. Their unwitting victims have a completely different viewpoint after impact.
So for all the idealism, egos and fanaticism behind this project it remains totally impractical for Manhattan. Yes it works in places like Paris or small towns like Boston & Denver where there are large swaths of open space. Manhattan is way too congested requiring vast endless fleets of motorized vehicles to supply it's enormous hunger and thirst that makes it ...Manhattan.
If anything, the wunderkinds of the Bloomberg administration should be real thinkers instead of trying to imitate others. NYC should partner with Google on a Shweeb monorail system that allows short distance cyclists to be above and away from the rest of us. That would be forward thinking instead of dragging us down into the gutter where more victims like my wife are guaranteed to wind up.
Alec Appelbaum says:
Many thanks and deep condolences. I remain pretty sure from my own experience that policies to enforce laws can be effective. New Yorkers used to smoke in bars and protest Union moves in the Civil War, too. What happened to your wife is unacceptable, but I don't see that it's symptomatic of the prevalence of bikes. If anything, more bikes would make for more safe riders.