I bike, I drive and I walk the streets of New York City, for almost seventy years now. I cycle to neighborhood stores and the library, to visit friends, and for recreation, but I drive to work. While cycling, I’ve been hit by motorized vehicles at least six times and forced off the rode by cars and trucks too many times to count. I always figured one hit every ten years or so is not so bad. My worst accident was when I was riding in a bike lane near Prospect Park in Brooklyn and was broadsided by a delivery person speeding on an electric-powered bike. I had a hip-pointer injury that forced me to use a walker for two weeks.
There have been eighteen “deaths while cycling” in New York City so far in 2019, so I am worried every time I get on my bike and try to be very careful. I am not an angel and will jump a light to get ahead of the cars. I don’t know any cyclists who are angels. I don’t think you can be and ride in New York.
Absentee Mayor Bill de Blasio, busy out-of-state with his Quixote Presidential bid, tweeted “Rising cyclist fatalities are a crisis. We will do everything in our power to stop them.” Mayor “Vision Zero” then announced a $58 million Green Wave plan to add 60 miles of protected bike lanes.
However, the problem facing New York City is not just making the rode safer for cyclists. The city lacks an integrated transportation plan that makes space for bicycles, pedestrians, and motor vehicles. We are moving into a future where we are all strangled by traffic congestion.
Unbelievably, the problem will soon get worse! The city now has a new electric moped-share rental program. Thousands of unlicensed and illegal Revel mopeds with untrained drivers will soon be “speeding” along on city streets. The mopeds can hit 30 mph, 5 mph above the speed limit, and faster than nominally regulated e-bikes are supposed to travel. Don’t worry. An “app” provides first-time riders with a “brief tutorial” on how to operate the mopeds. Clueless de Blasio’s clueless transportation commissioner actually called the mopeds a “good addition to the city’s transportation system.”
While I love to cycle, I drive to work most weekday mornings. A periodic problem I face, and so do thousands of others, are accidents on the antiquated Brooklyn-Queens Expressway during the morning rush hour. Cars and trucks abandon the highway and flood the streets of Brooklyn making them impassable and dangerous for pedestrians, including children walking to school. Congestion produces aggravation, which leads to agitation, and soon frustrated drivers are cutting in and out trying to break free of the herd forcing frightened cyclists onto the sidewalks where they endanger pedestrians. New York City has to find a way, probably by building new highways, to get large trucks off the streets.
I have my pet peeves. Delivery trucks and cars are constantly doubled-parked in bike lanes and police I question tell me they have no instructions on how do address the problem. What happened to tickets? Even when the bike lanes are not blocked, they are obstacle courses made up of potholes, asphalt folds, and manhole covers.
I have some suggestions to deal with congestion and safety, but I recognize they are only a start.
- Tax the delivery truck companies heavily for using the city streets as part of their distribution network. It will probably raise prices for consumers, but it will be worth the decrease in truck traffic and maybe help revive local stores.
- Require that large truck deliver to stores at night when the streets are less crowded and there are fewer cyclists and pedestrians.
- As both the driver of a car and a bicyclist I am constantly trying to avoid colliding with gas and electric motor-driven cycles. They add another level of speed to take into account as they cut in and out on the streets, the bike lanes, and the sidewalks, with no apparent consequences. Drivers of all powered vehicles should be licensed and owners should be required to carry insurance. Police should confiscate illegal powered bikes.
- New York City needs to limit Citibike rentals and new e-scooters. They add to the people who do not know where they are going or the rules of the road. They place themselves and others at risk. Instead, New York is busy expanding the Citibike program to new neighborhoods.
- The city is swarming with alternative for-hire vehicles. Many of the drivers have no idea where they are going and are constantly looking at G.P.S. devices rather than the road and making dangerous last second turns. Issue a new category driver’s license and require drivers to take map, tech, and rules-of-the-road tests. This would help regulate and limit the expansion of companies like Uber. Displaced drivers should be assisted in finding real jobs.
- There need to be limits on human powered bicycles too. Keep bicycles off of the Brooklyn Bridge where they collide with pedestrians. Cyclists should use the Manhattan Bridge. It is an easier roadway.
- New bypass highways and improved regional mass transit will be expensive, but in the end they are the best way to get traffic off of the city streets and to save lives.
Follow Alan Singer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ReecesPieces8