When Citi Bikes Are Faster Than Taxis in New York City | Hacker News Reader

When Citi Bikes Are Faster Than Taxis in New York City

toddwschneider.com

204 pointslil_tee287 comments

Not much love for biking here; You'd almost think that most of the people on Hacker News are from Californian suburbs...

Seriously though, biking in cities is great. It's one of those critical mass problems where the more people that do it the better the infrastructure gets, the more aware drivers become and there is a herd mentality where bikers tend to flow together making them more predictable and therefore safer to be around.

I bike and drive in Toronto [i probably drive more than bike, depends on the weather and somewhat the mood i'm in], both have big up and downsides, just be considerate to everyone which ever you're taking part in!

Edit: I forgot to say, those Citi bikes in NYC [Bikeshare in Toronto, Santander in London] have a special cohort of people riding them. The bikes are so slow [heavy!!!], and the riders are casual riders. I love that it gets people moving, and I use them from time to time, but damn the whole experience of riding next to one is scary even as another biker.

What I have found is there is a tiny minority of people who _hate_ bikers. They tend to pop up and make wild claims about how dangerous bikers are, or how much they dislike how bikers use the streets since streets are for cars, and bikes are for children. What I have found in actually talking to people is most people support and encourage bikes, and would love to bike, but don't feel safe. Bikes make everything about traffic better, and most bikers observe the traffic laws. The best response to people who protest is to continue biking just like you would normally. As bike use grows everyone is safer, and more people feel safe biking. That grows the bike community and helps make a safer place for biking for everyone

As a pedestrian in a dense Californian urban core, I have mixed feelings about bikers.

Most bikers are reasonable, sensible bicycle commuters. They stay in the road, wear helmets, and follow laws. No skin off my nose. (ecologically friendly, fights obesity, blah blah blah blah blah)

But I've also had multiple encounters with bicyclists who feel they are entitled to switch back and forth between a wheeled vehicle moving significantly above normal walking speeds and a pedestrian who just happens to be on a bicycle. Usually with no notice and as is convenient for them. Not infrequently such enhanced-pedestrians can top 20 mph barreling down the sidewalk. Sometimes with cargo in tow. I have literally never even heard of there being any real consequences for such irresponsible and reckless behavior.

I understand why they do it. It's so convenient! Roads certainly aren't always designed for the safety of bicyclists. Yet, these are perhaps less than adequate reasons for irresponsible behavior.

More troubling to me is the role bicycles seem to play in the underground economy of the Bay. But that seems more an issue stemming from law enforcement's general disinclination to be interested in bikes and bikers at all.

> But I've also had multiple encounters with bicyclists who feel they are entitled to switch back and forth between a wheeled vehicle moving significantly above normal walking speeds and a pedestrian who just happens to be on a bicycle. Usually with no notice and as is convenient for them. Not infrequently such enhanced-pedestrians can top 20 mph barreling down the sidewalk.

because they can. trying to pigeonhole cyclists as either cars or pedestrians is exactly why so many confrontations occur. its not that a cyclists prefer sidewalks as they are horrible to bike on (bumpy, uneven, inconsistent, obstacled), its that on some roads a distracted driver can mean near certain death. Its not irresponsible, its moving a 20 pound object around 100-200 lb people (if pedestrians cant be avoided) instead of holding their own against 3 ton cages.

Are there douchey cyclists? yes. But just try getting down one block of SF only in the bike lane. You’ll be stuck behind a ups truck or broken muni for days or pop a tire on a broken bottle some hobo left there or get hit in the face with a door.

Moving a 20-pound chunk of metal at 20 mph with a 100-200 squishy on top amidst a bunch of unsuspecting and unexpecting other squishies may be less than maximally safe for all squishies involved. We're talking about 40-some-odd times more kinetic energy than your average squishy walking at 3 mph.

If you're forced to move into pedestrian space for safety from giant metal cages, the safest option is to actually become a pedestrian. For you and for the other squishies around. I understand that it's slow, uncomfortable, and an unpleasant cycling experience. I appreciate the sacrifice you make for the safety of your fellow squishies.

I'd also be happier with Bay biking culture if it didn't consistently make excuses for douchey cyclists.

Yes, or at the very least, slow down to a reasonable speed instead of weaving in and out among the pedestrians. It's incredibly disorienting to have someone fly right by you at 20mph with zero warning. Scares the hell out of me every time.

If they are riding 20mph on the sidewalk, THAT'S the problem. At a more appropriate speed, it's safer for everyone.

In SF you're legally not allowed to ride on sidewalks if you're over age of 13.

seems like a bad law. i won’t ask anyone to risk their lives over a bad law

you're also allowed use of full lane

Mostly issue with city biking is drivers who think that roads are strictly for cars

Seems perfectly reasonable to me. Biking on the sidewalk is not safe.

you can't possibly know that for a vast amount of situations right?

Certainly it depends on the road, but the most common type of accidents are cars failing to yield while turning, either into other roads or driveways.

Cars are looking for road traffic when they’re turning, so to be most visible you should be on the road. They’re not looking for cyclist riding 15-20 mph on the sidewalk.

And in my experience, all of the close calls I’ve had have been while riding on the sidewalk. The closest I ever came to getting hit was a car turning while I was crossing a crosswalk at speed. I had to swerve and jump the curb to avoid getting hit.

Also, cars and cyclists are much more similar than pedestrians and cyclists are. Pedestrians can stop and turn instantly, while cars and cyclists cannot. Pedestrians also are likely to be on their phone, walking a dog, or pushing a stroller. Or all of those at once.

I enjoy cycling as much as anyone, but I detest a fairly sizable portion of cyclists I encounter throughout the city. In my part of the city it's assumed by most drivers that if a cyclist is riding through the neighborhood that they will completely disregard the stop sign and act accordingly. It can be confusing to them when a cyclist observers right-of-way.

I'm no saint, I practice the Idaho Stop too but if I'm at a four-way stop and two cars stop before me, then of course they get to go.

> I'm no saint, I practice the Idaho Stop too

There are two parts to complying with a stop sign:

1. Come to full stop

2. Yield to any traffic that has the right-of-way before proceeding

The problem with a lot of stop sign installations in the US is that they're largely unnecessary since it's possible to yield to traffic that has the right of way without having to come to a full stop first (since there's plenty of visibility of approaching cross traffic). That's why cyclists do "Idaho stops" and car drivers do rolling stops.

If authorities would only post traffic control devices in areas that are absolutely necessary, instead of having a blanket rule for using them, then compliance would go up substantially and complaints about cyclists and cars running stop signs, for example, would be next to non-existent.

> can top 20 mph barreling down the sidewalk. Sometimes with cargo in tow.

I would be very surprised to see that on a side walk. 20mph is above the speed limits for cars in cities here in Sweden, and I recall reading that while the police can catch people speeding on bikes that its not very likely event.

> Usually with no notice and as is convenient for them

Seems similar to parents with strollers. I have never heard of a parent being confronted by police for reckless engagement of children when walking on the bike road, and it is almost as if people do not view it as reckless. I am pretty sure through that people would react if a parent started to walk with the stroller onto the road against car traffic.

I would be very interested to know how many people would confront a stranger that is walking a stroller on a bike road, or even just quietly consider it reckless.

> I would be very surprised to see that on a side walk

I don't walk to work with a radar gun, but sidewalk-bikes barreling down on me are a daily occurrence (San Francisco). Not people coasting down the block, people actively pumping and dodging. I've been run over by a bike twice, and while I'll take that any day vs. a car, those shitheads need to stay off the sidewalk.

I am very pro-bike. I road one to work daily, until a couple of scary incidents put me off it. I no longer ride much[1].

That said, the jerks on the sidewalk, along with some of the more aggressive bikers, really need to be locked in a room with the entitled auto-rageoholics. The survivors can enjoy the nicer streets with the rest of us after they graduate from the reeducation camps.

[1] Had a couple bad incidents nearly back-to-back, and am probably doing that thing where one's risk aversion increases with age, but I don't feel safe riding anymore.

Is that down a big hill? Naturally local phenomenon can be at any part of a variance, but it seems very odd. Even on a large stretch of leveled road, few bikes get close to 15 mph and the only time I have seen one go faster is from a professional biker, on a racing bicycle, doing a training run, and I would assume that their training paths don't generally include cargo and sidewalks.

The average bike speed, as far as I know, is average 10 mph on city bike roads. Seeing a bike going 20 on a city sidewalk is like seeing a car going 150 on narrow city roads. I am sure it happens, but it is illegal, very dangerous, and not something most people will ever see in a life time. I think it is just fair to treat both forms equal and address it for what it is.

San Francisco has a number of large hills and other slopes where natural local phenomena can significantly enhance velocity.

Places with many large hills don’t tend to get many bikers.

You may find that San Francisco is an unusual place in a number of ways.

In which case we shouldn’t be using it as an example to argue about what should be done in the general case, e.g. nationwide.

Years ago in Oslo the police and the national broadcaster (NRK) set up and experiment where they would radar the bikers coming down a small bike road incline.

The fastest they clocked were nearly 80kmh. If you go that fast on motorcycle you are expected to wear a massive helmet and suit, yet the person likely did it wearing spandex and a bike helmet (if that).

now that speed was highly unlikely to be maintained, but do not underestimate the kinds of speeds a bicycle can get up to under the proper circumstances.

> Bikes make everything about traffic better, and most bikers observe the traffic laws.

Anecdata time.

Practically every single day I'll see bikes casually going through red lights, usually moving between pedestrians crossing. Now, I'll freely grant that they're usually paying enough attention to be safe - but you can bet motorbikes (and even cars) could make those very same judgement calls - except they'd get done by cameras/police.

Bikes are not obviously safer than a car to me as a pedestrian. They're less predictable, less regulated, and typically less careful of pedestrians. Heck, they also probably travel faster than cars most of the time in central london since the speed limit is 20mph everywhere on the rare occasion there's no traffic.

Then of course there's the idiots riding along on the pavement because they can't easily filter through traffic and why should they have to wait in line to move on etc etc.

I'm actually pretty solidly pro properly segregated bike lanes, but if I had to rate drivers vs cyclists in a "most likely to have a collision with as a pedestrian" I would easily go with the cyclist.

> I'm actually pretty solidly pro properly segregated bike lanes, but if I had to rate drivers vs cyclists in a "most likely to have a collision with as a pedestrian" I would easily go with the cyclist.

Possibly, but if you'd pick a more reasonable metric, such as accidents that actually result in serious injury, cars are apparently ahead, by a 6000% margin; http://road.cc/content/news/109269-are-drivers-and-cyclists-...

> but if I had to rate drivers vs cyclists in a "most likely to have a collision with as a pedestrian" I would easily go with the cyclist.

I don't want to start an argument, but I bet we could look up driver -> pedestrian accidents, and see how many were reported vs cyclists -> pedestrian accidents.

Personally, I would much rather get hit by a cyclist as a pedestrian, than a car, and that's simply physics. I've been hit as a pedestrian multiple times by cars (thankfully, at low speed), but never by a bike. I've been hit by a car while riding a bike.

You do not want to get hit by a car, while riding a bike. The car always wins. Thankfully, I survived.

>> if I had to rate drivers vs cyclists in a "most likely to have a collision with as a pedestrian" I would easily go with the cyclist.

I'd weight it by, well, mass and associated likelihood of actual harm, personally.

I'm a fairly keen (but casual) cyclist. I wouldn't cyclce in London by preference, and I have seen some terrible behaviour by cyclists in London.

One day at 9am in the City, I saw a cyclist swearing loudly at everyone and pushing through the crush as people tried to cross Liverpool Street, at a pedestrian crossing, when the lights were red for traffic.

Total arsehole. I thought to myself "this is why people think cyclists are all bastards, people like you".

They are obviously safer though, as evidenced by the differing rates of pedestrians injured by cyclists vs cars drivers.

>most bikers observe the traffic laws

Not in Philadelphia, at least. I walk everywhere, and racking my brain for bike encounters I can only recall one of maybe 20 instances in which a bike actually stopped at a red light. I can recall at least a third of those instances where bikes were travelling the wrong way on a one way street, and another third with bikes on the sidewalk.

That being said, I still think biking is a net positive. It would be better if the roads were designed with bikes in mind. The problem with bad human behavior is almost never the human, but the system that's designed to disincentivize the good behavior.

As a biker in Philly - I'll start following the rules of the road when the cars do. I've lived in other cities where I obeyed every traffic law, just like I was in a car. If you do that in Philly, you get run over by a car or hit a jay walking pedestrian.

This attitude is exactly why some people hate bikers. It's not productive, if everyone takes this attitude then nothing is going to get better. Step up and be a model for the behavior you want to see around you.

I'd rather not die.

Don't be so dramatic. Waiting at red lights isn't going to kill you, in fact it may do the opposite.

I do stop at red lights or at least slow down and make sure the way it is safe to cross, that isn't the problem. I just have to constantly jump up onto sidewalks. After stopping at the light - especially if there are cars trying to take a right and the way is clear - I will go before it turns green. I rarely stop at stop signs for four way stops.

In general, traffic isn't paying attention. They will swerve blindly into the bike lane to get around other cars to take a right and I can't depend on them to be watching out for me.

Once I stop moving I remove the option of swerving out of the way. After my first month of biking here and almost getting hit several times, I just gave up and I ride as aggressively as everyone here drives. I hate it. Biking in New York, Portland or anywhere else I've lived is just a different game. Philly is the most stressful place I've biked.

Just an FYI in many states, cities, etc. It's legal to move to the bike lane for a right lane. That's why it's often a dotted white line.

Not saying that's safe... But it is legally accepted

It is legally accepted, after checking to see if the lane is clear.

Waiting at red lights _can_ be more dangerous than not waiting. Ask motorcyclists how they feel about being the lone vehicle at a redlight.

Are you going to elaborate on that, or should I conjure up a motorcyclist from thin air and ask them how they feel?

It can be dangerous to be the only person or vehicle at a red light if you are a motorcyclist or bicyclist because cars can fail to notice you until they are quite close. Many motorcyclists apply and release their brakes, and sometimes add modifications to their tail lights so that they flicker when coming on to make it even more noticeable.

I pay at least as much attention when I am the lone cyclist at a red light (particularly at night) as when I am actively moving and riding in traffic, and have had a number of vehicles come to a stop a bit close or a bit too quickly for comfort. This is in an area with _a_lot_ of cyclists.

Thanks for elaborating. It sounds to me though that the solution is modifying your tail lights to be more apparent, rather than running all the red lights.

I will also concede that motorcyclists are generally much better on the road than "analog" bikes, at least when they aren't in a group and their loud-ass bikes aren't waking me up at 1 AM.

> It sounds to me though that the solution is modifying your tail lights to be more apparent

My tail lights on my bike are rather bright and flashy. It's still happened before. There isn't really "a" solution. It's better awareness, better visibility, everyone being more proactive, etc.

If that's a riddle to you, you are the danger

Come on, I don't even drive. Get out of here with your pretentious angle, none of this helps your cause.

I obey stoplights on my bike, but it's really punishing sometimes. Bikes don't trip the sensors so the light will ignore you until a car pulls up behind you. This can require three or four cycles of the lights if traffic in your direction is sparse.

I mean, this is a very good example for the kind of care taken by the people designing and overseeing roads in respect to cycling.

Can you fucking imagine shipping a product that just plain doesn't work for a large part of what the law defines as a vehicle? For something as crucial as a light? Can you imagine installing that as the government, not in some test locations, but all over?

I'm not quite sure what specifications lights need to conform to but a good fricking starting point seems like the law. These things are just plain defective.

In the UK at least, you can often see a rubber strip in a square where the sensor has been added to the road (they cut a slot then re-seal it). I try to stop with my wheel rims right on strip and it often triggers the lights. In fact, I wonder sometimes if it actually senses stronger because the metal wheel rim is so much closer as I've had the light turn immediately if I get it just so. (the specific junction I use is only detector triggered, it doesn't time back and forth at all)

Sadly, the roads around here don't have visible seams where the sensors are. I'm going to have to guess.

They sell magnets for motorcycles that are supposed to help trip the light sensor. Might be worth checking out?

I've heard that if you get off and lay the bike on its side, it can help trip the sensor. Usually they're electromagnetic, so on its side the bike is a good inductor, but not in its normal position.

I'll give this a try. It should be pretty obvious if it works.

I am from philadelphia as well so I know there are bikes who stop at red lights and stay on the streets. I am not so nieve to think everyone does as I have also run across people who don't obey any traffic laws, but over the last 15 years biking in philly has grown up a lot, and people who used to rationalize their behavior because of lack of infrastructure are changing their ways and coming in line with what is expected of bikers in an urban setting. There will always be those who don't follow the rules, just like there are pedestrians and cars who don't follow the rules, but the situation in that city has gotten so much better, not because new laws were passed or cops cracked down on people running stop signs. The situation got better because more people bike, we put up bike lanes, and drivers got used to bikes being in the street with them.

I obey traffic laws when it is safe to do so. There are some dangerous interections around here where the bike lane disappears then starts up again. If you ride with the traffic as you're supposed to, cars behind will try to pass in the middle of the intersection. In those cases, sometimes I will ride up on the sidewalk to bypass the dangerous part of the itnersection. I would feel better if there was a separate light in the bike lane that allowed the bikes to proceed first.

This is the correct answer.

One of my safety heuristics is "clear the intersection". Sometimes that means jump the light, or follow a car thru a 4-way, or full stop (foot on ground) to clearly signal I'm waiting my turn.

> > most bikers observe the traffic laws

> Not in Philadelphia, at least.

This is mostly solvable by building better infrastructure. Just visit Netherlands or Denmark to see how well things could be organized.

When the infrastructure is bad, bikers (or people in general) will resort to odd behavior just to get by.

I cycle myself and also enjoy the pedestrian life.

Some bikers in the city are irresponsible and ignore traffic laws. The same treatment given to cyclists by some drivers is meted out to pedestrians by some cyclists. Something to do, no doubt, with that pesky issue of power imbalance.

In terms of risk assessment as a pedestrian in NYC, I always watch out for (1) MTA bus drivers, (2) any sort of livery, and (3) people on bikes, in that order.

Uber drivers are working their way up the list for me

"Any sort of livery" would include Uber drivers too, right?

> Bikes make everything about traffic better, and most bikers observe the traffic laws.

In California, bikes seemed alright enough. Lane splitting is legal, most use bike lanes, etc.

That being said, bikes are supposed to act like a vehicle on the road. I.e. stop at stop signs, and go through the stop signs one at a time. Not once have I ever seen this happen. There's also stopping at lights, which happens usually, but typically they then try to act like pedestrians...

Now outside of California, lane splitting is very rarely legal, especially in the Midwest, South, and East. Which means a bike literally has to act 100% like a car, or motorcycle. They can't ride next to a car or pass a car (or line of cars), without moving to another lane. The only exception, is typically if there is a bike lane.

So no, most bikes don't follow the laws. The "minority" of poeple who make "wild claims" are the people who have to drive next to them.

For the record, I've had 5 bikers hit my car (one got a ticket), at least 2 bikers try to squize by and scratch my car, and 1 idiot try to pass me on the right while I made a right turn. That person got pissed, but cop agreed I was in the right. I've lived in Alameda and drove to SF and Oakland regularly, but half of this happened in Champaign IL (on a college campus, where the bikers don't know how to ride or the laws).

In regards to pedestrians, twice I've been hit by a bike where both of us fell down and we were at least shaken. My wife, while in college, was straight up laid out when crossing the street once. The biker needed to be hospitalized, and she was injured (urgent care worked).

Point being, i don't think my opinion are wild. Bikers need education, and currently, riding a bike (especially inappropriately) in many places is dangerous for everyone. I agree that bikes can be more effective. However, in practice I think people should get a biking license. Just a 2 hour class, and a simple test. Know the rules, before you kill yourself or hurt others.

I don't want to negate your personal experiences, since they sound pretty horrific, but from a data perspective, I can't find a single person who was killed by a cyclist in California since 2014. They might be there, but considering the amount of coverage I am finding of the crash in 2014 and another in 2012 I am led to believe they don't happen that often. In 2015 alone San Francisco reports 24 deaths due to cars. So while you personally might have had some bad experiences, the majority of bikers are following the rules and people are safer as a result of them biking.

I would be a huge fan of collecting additional data as I am a firm believer that we would see trend lines down where we invest in infrastructure and where biking become more popular.

I agree with your idea that bicyclists need to be educated. As a non-car driver, I remember the first time I went riding in the city with my wife she was shocked that I didn't know how to make a legal left turn. But how was I supposed to know? It is not like the logic behind left turn rules is obvious.

I love biking and I'm a cyclist myself. But I once lived in a small mountain town where it seemed like a big percentage of the cyclists there had an attitude of entitlement about how they cycled. I've never had so many unsafe encounters with bikes, and at slow speeds too (speed limit was 25mph). I think the point I'm trying to make is that there are probably cultural differences between locations and the people who hate bikers have probably had some awful encounters in the past.

I still love cycling and I think it's the best way to get around. It sucks because my city is extremely bike-unfriendly and I don't feel safe biking here.

Crappy humans are crappy, no matter the mode of transport they use.

As a pedestrian I would have a lot more sympathy for cyclists if they stopped at red lights like cars do.

Crossing the street in NYC is more dangerous than it has to be because you always have to be wary of a person on a bike coming out from behind a truck or something.

I don't think the data supports your assertion. Car drivers injure and kill a couple orders of magnitude more pedestrians in NYC than cyclists do.

You're unlikely to report every time a bike runs into you. Most of the time you won't even be really injured - just some bruises and pain. That's not big enough for statistics, but it still sucks as an experience.

My guess is that's the same for cars (minor injuries go unreported). It's hard to speculate about unreported statistics. The fact remains that for reported statistics, motorists injure far more people than cyclists, thus I say fear of cyclists is irrational.

What I have found is there is a tiny minority of people who _hate_ bikers.

I walk 4 miles a day on city sidewalks. The number of times I have to yield to bikers on the sidewalk is disgusting[0]. And some of these bikers are going fast. I once saved a child that was about to run out of a store. I could see, from my vantage point, the biker and the child set for a collision course. I stepped in front of the biker, doing about 20 mph on the sidewalk, to stop them. I got an earful of 4-letter words not a thank you.

Of course, there was the 20-something woman killed in a crosswalk by a biker running a light in SF a few years ago.

As a pedestrian, I have no love for many drivers or bikers, since they are a constant source of danger.

EDIT:

[0] I had an argument with a young woman at a light once, where I told her politely that she wasn't supposed to be on the sidewalk. He response? To tell me I was a selfish person not wanting to share the sidewalk.

Better bike infrastructure keeps bikes off the sidewalk.

As a biker you can't win. Drivers try to run you off the road, pedestrians don't want you on the sidewalk. Bike lanes are a solution, but the political will needs to be there.

That being said, in places where bikers feel they have to use the sidewalk, they should absolutely yield to pedestrians.

In places where bikers feel they have to use the sidewalk, they should absolutely walk their bikes. It's what the law says and its very sensible all around. If you have to go the wrong way up a one-way street or if the road is blocked, you can just get off your bike and walk it for a block. It's not the end of the world to have to walk for a minute.

As both a biker and a pedestrian in NYC, this seems so glaringly obvious that it never fails to make me angry when I see a biker blithely biking down the sidewalk. In a city of impatient people riding your bike on the sidewalk is taking things to an anti-social extreme.

That said, I do find it frustrating (as both a biker and a pedestrian) when pedestrians fail to yield to bikers when the biker has the light -- New York pedestrians are opportunistic jaywalkers by nature, but so many people fail to look for bikes or yield to them, even when they have the light, if the street is clear of car traffic.

> they should absolutely walk their bikes.

In many places of the US you have sidewalks built because they were mandated by law but are rarely used.

A typical example will have a 4-lane 45+mph road next to big box retail stores. This type of road is unpleasant to bike on but the adjoining sidewalk is empty and, assuming it has sufficient visibility to allow the cyclist to avoid left and right hooks, is much safer than the road.

NYC is a fascinating and important place but for better or worse is very different from the typical US city.

> It's what the law says

The law varies city by city. Where I live bikes are prohibited from the sidewalk only in the downtown area and it's legal elsewhere. Not that it stops anyone from biking on the sidewalk even downtown or that it ever gets enforced.

> As a biker you can't win. Drivers try to run you off the road, pedestrians don't want you on the sidewalk

you're right, but the attitude that arises from that problem is what most people don't like about city bikers

pedestrians don't want you on the sidewalk

It is illegal to ride a bike on the sidewalk in every city I know of.

Pedestrians don't have lanes. Pedestrians don't have rules. They might turn suddenly to get into a car, or pop out of a shop. It is just selfish of bikers to think they should be on the sidewalk. It's very dangerous for us pedestrians. In the last 20 years, I've been hit twice on the sidewalk and had to jump out of the way, to avoid serious injury, many times.

> It is illegal to ride a bike on the sidewalk in every city I know of.

While I agree that riding on the sidewalk is generally a bad idea, it's definitely not illegal in all places. For example, in Austin it's explicitly legal except in these locations [0].

[0] https://www.austintexas.gov/sites/default/files/files/Public...

Im surprised to hear about bike and pedestrian collision in a city. I bike each day and commonly see on bike roads everything from strollers, wheelchairs, to kids who has only barely learned to walk. Each of those would be a fatal if they had a collision with a 20mph biker, and yet not a single death have been reported in my city as far as I know. Its a bit strange, given the number of potential times that this situation occur, especially during winter half year when the road should be extra dangerous.

So I must ask, how much of a freak accident is a traffic death caused by a biker crashing into a pedestrian? I recall looking into statistics for it a while back, but it seems that only data I could find was death caused by people falling down from bikes or into cars, not crashing into other people. The national statistics here in Sweden over road accident, the one which famously has a zero death goal, do include bikes and car collision (3 people died last year) but has no data at all over deaths caused by bike hitting people. Assuming that number is 0.

Is it possible that the 20-something woman killed was a freak accident? 20mph is about 50% faster than the legal limit of a electric bike, would be classified as a illegal moped at those speed if it has a engine, and it is even above the legal limit for cars inside Swedish cities. A bit unusual to see in city traffic.

Why would you think a 20 mph collision with a bike is likely to be fatal? Even a car ped collision at 20 mph is quite survivable; that's why mostly evidence governed countries like Sweden have 20 mph limits, as you get faster you may save time linearly (doubtful in a city, your average is way down there) but chance of survival diminishes by the square.

That said, it happens, but only on the order of 1 or 2 deaths, and in some years none at all. The incidence is extremely low so no meaningful statistics. And then of course it mostly involves an old population who are susceptible to dieing from even a simple fall after stumbling on a tree root. It tells us more about the elderly than risk of cycle collisions.

Where do you live? I'm in Manhattan, and people rarely cycle on the sidewalk here. There's simply no room to do so, as there's so many pedestrians. You end up going more slowly than if you stayed on the street where you belong in nearly all circumstances.

Don't be too mad at the cyclists, though. Usually they're doing it because the city isn't providing the proper level of bike infrastructure. With more high quality bike lanes that people feel safe using, you'll see a lot fewer cyclists on sidewalks. It works in Manhattan.

I'm a longtime NYer who recently moved to SF. for the past 10 years I've commuted by running each way, ~3-5 miles each way. plenty of experience with bikes and cars in urban areas.

Biking on the sidewalk is WAY more common in SF than in NYC, especially in manhattan. In SF, there seems to be a few main reasons:

1 - Biking on the street would clearly be unsafe. An example here is 3rd st between portrero and soma.

2 - Biking on the sidewalk on the block where you are stopping. These are people that usually bike on the street, but pull onto the sidewalk when they are leaving/entering a building. I understand this, but wish it wasn't so common.

3 - ignorance of, or just not caring about, biking rules and conventions.

It's easy to assume that #3 is always the case and get angry about it, but it's frequently #1 or #2 and I do think some empathy is called for.

I'm curious to hear more about your commute. I live ~3 miles from work, and would love to run there, but there isn't a good way for me to store my towel, a change of clothing, etc at work, and it doesn't seem feasible to carry all of this in a backpack. We do have showers, but they don't have overnight storage.

Sure. The basic answer is that I use a good running backpack and it's easy for me to carry all that stuff. When I first started, I was sparring (boxing) in the morning before work, so I used a eagle creek overnight hiking pack. it was bulky but not too bad for a 3 mile run.

Once I stopped sparring in the morning, I switched to a Black Diamond Dart. Easy to run with, and ample room for all the stuff you mentioned.

I now use a super light pack, and only pack my lunch, pants/shirt/socks/underwear. I live in SF, and generally don't shower unless I get really sweaty. Some people find this gross in theory but I don't, people in NYC get sweaty as hell walking from the subway to work in the summer in their regular clothes, so I've never really seen the difference.

Two big things I do come to mind: I never take my laptop to/from work everyday. I also keep dress shoes at work under my desk.

I do #2 every day because my apartment building doesn't have a curb cut anywhere near its front entrance. Simple fixes like this would improve lives not just for cyclists but also for the handicapped.

When I'm on the sidewalk, however, I'm only going at a brisk walking pace when pedestrians are present.

> I'm a longtime NYer who recently moved to SF.

on HN is there seriously only two places to live in the US?

I don't know about HN, but, I moved to NYC after college because I'm a jazz musician, and NYC is that jazz capital of the world. I've also always worked a day job as a software engineer.

moved to SF last year for work.

Both NYC and SF have a relatively high concentration of tech folks, which is probably a lot of the HN readership.

> Where do you live? I'm in Manhattan, and people rarely cycle on the sidewalk here.

NYPD ticket like crazy for sidewalk biking. Bay Area cops in the cities don’t really ticket for ‘quality of life’ crimes (or even blatant things like busting out car windows and such).

My understanding is that NYPD stopped going after frivolous violations after the Eric Garner incident a few years ago. I myself was ticketed ($40) once for wearing headphones on both ears, but I haven't seen cops enforcing such rules recently.

When I am a pedestrian I would much rather take my chances with a inconsiderate biker than a inconsiderate car driver.

Bikers killing someone are extremely rare. Bikers getting killed by drivers is more common (citation needed).

When I am biking I'd much rather be riding slowly on a sidewalk than getting killed by a inconsiderate driver.

Where I live it is legal to ride on sidewalks in streets with no bike lines. So instead of taking my chances on a busy street I'd much rather ride slowly(10-15 km/h) on a sidewalk.

In an ideal world the cities would have specific bike only lines which cover all areas. I hear Copenhagen and Amsterdam are good with this.

When I am a pedestrian I would much rather take my chances with a inconsiderate biker than a inconsiderate car driver.

It's not a choice. Every pedestrian must deal with both.

When I am biking I'd much rather be riding slowly on a sidewalk than getting killed by a inconsiderate driver.

Here's the thing: the amount of risk you are comfortable with is probably different than it is for me. What bikers who ride on the sidewalk are doing is forcing their risk tolerance on me. Given where I walk it is illegal to ride on the sidewalk, I feel a certain amount of righteousness in asking bikers to get off the sidewalk.

A woman killed a few years ago by a bike? That's terrible.

Not quite as terrible as one pedestrian being killed every 1.6 hours by cars though. (2015 figures for the USA)

Nice change of subject. I never said cars aren't dangerous to pedestrians.

> most bikers observe the traffic laws

Funny, this is the exact opposite view from mine. Just last week I was hit by a bike crossing a street with a walk sign. Those assholes wouldn’t stop for you if you paid them.

Citations? Forget about it. The streets will just get too dangerous for peds and cars.

The majority of bikers I know freely admit, and even take pride in, blowing through stop signs and red lights. “You’re not supposed to stop!”

So you had a run-in with an idiot biker last week. If you live in a busy city, that sounds like a pretty good statistic and you probably have been in several dangerous traffic situations with drivers in that same timespan. This strongly feels like confirmation bias to me.

> most bikers observe the traffic laws

Why the fixation with traffic laws whenever bikes come up?

I bike to work and I don't follow the rules, I run reds, blow stop signs, ride on the sidewalks and so on.

However, I am courteous and polite to everyone. My goal is to not startle or inconvenience any other user of the road (or sidewalk).

Why should I stop at stop signs like a boyscout? That's just false piety.

The rules don't keep us safe, because the rules weren't designed in a perfect world.

What would help is if everyone just paid attention-texting while driving creates a huge hazard.

You are why we can't have nice things. If you don't follow the rules, others don't know what to expect from you. That means you are more likely to cause an accident. You're right the rules weren't designed in a perfect world - if it was perfect, nobody would have accidents. Instead we need rules so you know what others are likely to do.

Meh, I'm courteous and watching for people as I said above. There is no problem.

I found that for many people this concept makes them feel uncomfortable, and that they then explain that discomfort by appealing to rules.

I remain unmoved.

IMHO we need less rules, not more.

I'm a daily cyclist in Manhattan. I just took Citi Bike to work today, though usually I take my own bike. I have both because they're useful for different kinds of trips.

Biking in the city is great. We still need lots of infrastructure upgrades to make it safer, but progress is being made on a monthly basis. Just last month a particularly dangerous section of 5th Ave had its bike lane converted from, essentially, a standing/loading lane for vehicles into an actual protected bike lane (with parking separating it from vehicle traffic) that is safe for use. And they even painted it green!

For every one complaint others here have about cyclists, I have ten complaints about drivers and pedestrians. Every day on my commute I see dozens of infractions, the most common types being vehicles parking or driving in bike lanes, not yielding safely, pedestrians walking/standing in bike lanes, and pedestrians jaywalking through intersections. People who jaywalk at every light without thinking, and don't even yield to cyclists who have right of way while doing so, will then hypocritically turn around and criticize cyclists for doing things that are much less unsafe.

Just this morning I had to navigate through a veritable horde of people standing around in the bike lane at Union Square. I had the green light and they were all waiting to cross across me, except they were six feet too forward and were completely blocking the bike lane. This is a daily occurrence that you see while biking.

Any Dutch old enough to remember when Amsterdam was full of cars and almost zero bikes ?

I wonder how the transition went and what effects were ?

I was mind wandering the other day:

- biking is less stressful than driving [1]

- promotes human contact

- promotes prolonged activity

- has very low cost

- almost zero carbon emission (keep breathing people)

- allows more capacity / density in urban environments

But it's all bedroom speculation so if anyone can give his own experience.

[1] considering no dangerous vehicles near, you're less hurried, and less angry at others for no reasons, enjoying the view rather than ruminating the traffic jam

> Any Dutch old enough to remember when Amsterdam was full of cars and almost zero bikes ?

For those interested, some history about Amsterdam cycling and "Stop the child murder" protests:

"How the Dutch got their cycling infrastructure": https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/how-the-dutch-...

"How Amsterdam became the bicycle capital of the world": https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...

Disagree somewhat that Citi bikers are scary. Yeah, they're slow and usually amateurish but they're also easy to spot. If you bump into one it's probably going to be a chuckle-worthy low speed collision.

Tail them for a bit, wait patiently for a safe opportunity to pass, and off you go! It's not like they're crashing into things left and right. Cars are typically more of a real threat, IMO.

There's two things that actually scare me as a biker: kids and dogs. Both are prone to completely unpredictable and sudden movement right into the bike path. If it's a kid holding a dog? FULL STOP.

> i probably drive more than bike, depends on the weather and somewhat the mood i'm in

A lot of bikers won't bike when the weather reaches a certain point (too cold, too much rain). This means that even if you build infrastructure for bikes, you're still going to have to build just as much throughput for other modes of transportation as you did before (they have to handle situations where no one is biking).

That's not true in places that have good bike infrastructure. E.g. Belgium, the Netherlands or Denmark get plenty of rain. That doesn't stop bicyclists at all. Cold and snow doesn't stop most people either. You just wear a couple of extra layers and go a bit slower if it's slippery.

> That doesn't stop bicyclists at all.

It seems to stop at least a number of them, even in places like Denmark. Look at the answers to this question, "Do Danes ride a bike in heavy rain?"[1]:

> Yes, though fewer will than in nice weather.

> Bus fill up more then usual in rain, though

Or this blogpost about people from Copenhagen biking through the winter[2]:

> As mentioned before, 80% of Copenhageners cycle through the winter. That number is surely lower when we have hard winters with snowstorm after snowstorm, but the numbers are still impressive.

And keep in mind the number we'd be interested in would be lower - not just how many people generally cycle throughout the winter (which seems to be ~80%), but how many of that 80% still choose to cycle on particularly cold or snowy winter days.

So even if we could have infrastructure on par with Copenhagen, and even if we get a corresponding cultural shift (neither of these are easy or quick tasks), we would still need the other forms of transportation infrastructure to be able to handle the spillover that occurs when large amount of bikers don't feel like biking.

[1] https://www.quora.com/Do-Danes-ride-a-bike-in-heavy-rain [2] http://www.copenhagenize.com/2011/01/cycling-in-winter-in-co...

Adding bike lanes doesn't remove other infrastructure. In most cases we already have all the other infrastructure. Nobody is arguing we should replace every form of transportation with biking.

You're right, it stops some. But only a minority.

> we would still need the other forms of transportation infrastructure to be able to handle the spillover that occurs when large amount of bikers don't feel like biking.

Not necessarily. If you don't have (enough of) that infrastructure, less people will be tempted by it. I imagine the 20% in Copenhagen switch to public transportation because it is well developed and convenient. When I commuted by bicycle, weather wasn't a factor because I had no convenient alternative. Ditto for my colleagues who commuted by bicycle.

I agree that the biggest problem is cultural.

When you are exercising hard heat is much worse than cold. A light sweater is enough for - 30, but at just over 25 you run out of things to take off.

Utilitarian bicycling is not necessarily the same as exercising hard. Most people here in Belgium cycle at about 15-20 km/h. With the added breeze it's often more comfortable to cycle than to walk if it is really hot.

I'm not sure I want to see you out riding when it's over 25 :)

Just like you can adapt to exertion in cold, you can adapt to exertion in heat. I regularly do both. It helps if you aren't overweight.

Many transits are actually flexible, and people can react to weather and traffic conditions by postponing or canceling their plans. Often, that's exactly what happens completely independent from the transport options because, for example, any outdoor activity is going to be less fun when it's cold and rainy.

If you somehow get people to try, they also discover that biking in really bad conditions is actually quite a lot of fun, provided you are wearing the right clothes. In the cold, your usual jacket is almost always enough because you're exercising anyway, but you'll need the best gloves and hat you can find. The days where I got to work in a snowstorm are actually my most productive :)

The real problem in bad weather conditions is that the threat from cars is amplified: it's usually dark in winter, snow and rain further deteriorate visibility, and snow/ice are dangerous because both bikes and cars are less predictable. Bikes are also extremely vulnerable to blocks of hardened snow that often get shoved right onto their usual path by cars.

I ride my bicycle all winter. When the weather gets bad, I go a longer route with better bicycle infrastructure where it's safe to go slowly and I'm not being tailed by a car. If I lived in a city where no such route existed I would resort to other means of transportation.

Why do you "have to" build more car infrastructure? If traffic gets worse when the weather gets bad then there's even more incentive to bicycle despite the weather. That's the whole point of cycle-first, transit-first, pedestrian-first city planning: Cars don't scale, so stop trying.

Oakland has installed a bunch of "Ford bikes". I thought about using them the other day for a quick one way trip and to check out how they work. $10 a day minimum cost. Is it similar with Citi bikes in NYC? Why not have a one or two dollar an hour option, especially outside of commute hours and weekends.

The daily passes are aimed at tourists. If you live there then you want the monthly or annual pass. If you were to enroll in Citi Bike and paid for the annual pass up front today, you'd be paying what works out to 37.8 cents per day over the next year. That's worth it even if you only replace one cab ride per month with biking.

I kinda enjoy the build quality of Berlin's shared bikes. "Heavy" is usually attributed to cheap materials, but for these bikes, it's a result of the requirements of their typical usage. I've heard prices of around $4000 quoted for these bike, meaning most of their components are better than almost all other bikes on the road.

They seem indestructible, and, once moving, can roll forever without slowing down. Yes, because of their high weight. But also because they're well-maintained and have low losses in components such as bearings and gears.

The weight is obviously far too high, and I wouldn't buy anything with these characteristics for personal use. But it's fun once in a while Used to be even better when they had suspensions that basically allowed you to take the curbs without slowing down.

I used the nextbike while visiting berlin last weekend. Best way to get around!

Agree that the build quality is really good (picture here: https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5619/22110033485_a7ab045bdd_b...)

Eventhough they're rather heavy, the nextbike actually cycles rather well. Was pleasantly surprised.

Your edit is my one problem with the bike sharing programs in cities. As an everyday commuter if I see someone on their own bike it's usually a pretty safe assumption that they're aware of their surroundings. The casual riders make a lot of dangerous decisions because of their lack of awareness and I usually just end up waiting for some space to pass them as quickly as possible.

You should ask your local government for dedicated biking infrastructure then.

Dedicated bike lanes have actually been going out of style. Especially those using half of the sidewalk with only symbolic separation from pedestrians are plagued by the inattentiveness of pedestrians, and are usually too narrow to pass other bikes. The pavement is also at higher risk of damage, because these lanes are usually right next to any trees lining the roads, and their roots quickly create breaks, bumps and potholes.

What's now preferred is a marked lane in the rightmost car lane, or to just dedicate a complete lane to bikes.

A painted strip in the rightmost car lane is the worst bike-lane solution, it's too easy for cars to drift into it. It doesn't feel safe, especially as they're often too narrow.

Proper, separated lanes, with kerbstones between both the cars and the pedestrians is best. It's also the most expensive.

There are some examples from Copenhagen here: http://nyc.streetsblog.org/2006/10/04/notes-on-bicycling-in-...

That reminds me of my times riding the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, coming back south against the flow of hundreds of rental bikes. It's great that they chose an outdoor activity over riding taxis everywhere, but please stay on the right, and DON'T RECORD THE WHOLE THING ON YOUR PHONE! Wind is often strong and gusty, and there are lots of people...

Yeah totally agree. The only plus I can get from it is that they're easy to identify as the higher risk riders. I've seen cities where you can just rent a regular bike [often old, beaten up a bit], and those people just blend right in.

Having said that, they don't seem to cause anywhere near as much of a problem when there are bike lines, but obviously that is not something available everywhere.

I've done a little walking in Toronto, never biked. The streetcars' recessed tracks in the road look like a nightmare.

I'm sure they're easy to cross perpendicularly, but riding longitudinally with them and getting your tire into a crack could end very badly. If you have to go through an intersection where streetcars turn and the tracks snake all over, it would be hard to ensure you're always crossing them perpendicularly.

Do you ride on those streets, or somewhere more bike-friendly? (I suppose a fat tire bike might have no problem with those road features, and such bikes are getting more popular with cyclists who commute through the winter).

Streetcar tracks are definitely a challenge in the city. Probably the root cause of ~1/3 of my friends reported crashes (unabashed anecdata). I ride on fatter tires than I would like in order to avoid getting stuck in em. Certain intersections are just a total mess of tracks (Queen/King/Roncesvalles for example), so I just go to pedestrian mode and walk my bike across the crosswalk there.

So yeah, it's definitely top of mind if you're riding on those streets, but there are things you can do to mitigate risk down to a level that's acceptable for me. For the record I live in Toronto, drive to work, all other trips are on my bike unless there's snow on the ground.

(I live and bike in Toronto)

The streetcar tracks are definitely something you need to be aware of. If you do your best to cross perpendicularly and avoid rapid swerves when it's raining, it's pretty safe.

I spend most of my time on separated bike lanes, which are increasingly becoming A Thing. It's great.

The only time I really have to deal with streetcar tracks is if I'm on Queen St and I need to pass a stopped car on the right. It's fairly rare, maybe a few times per year. The rest of the time I'm just passing over them going on Richmond/Adelaide across Spadina which is orthogonal and easy.

Overall: The tracks are not great, and they're the #1 thing I warn new bikers about, but they're not a huge issue once you're aware of them and know how to deal with them.

With streetcar tracks if you hit them at about a 30 degree angle you can roll right over them. On a bike no matter what you got to constantly be scanning the road surface before you to watch for potholes, ruts, gravel and ice patches, puddles and whatever.

Usually I do a little bunny hop over street car tracks, and taking some time to learn these sorts of handling skills is very much worth the trouble if you intend to make a habit of commuting by bike.

I used to have to navigate tramway tracks daily in Nantes, but luckily never got my tyres caught in them. I have had two friends loose teeth there, though!

They're not only dangerous because of the cracks, but they're also extremely slippery when it rains.

I had two bike crashes in Brussels, Belgium in the last year. Both times because of tracks.

They should simply offer (assisted) e-bikes, instead of regular ones, while limiting the top speed to something like 15 mph. It would allow "casual" drivers to go fast enough, and behave like a "proper" bike rider.

As a pedestrian crossing the straw in NYC, you will typically wait for cars to stop, then walk about 2/3 of the way into the street, then peer into the bike lane to make sure no bikes are coming, then complete your crossing. Most of the bikers, from my experience, do not follow rules such as stopping at a Stop sign or for pedestrians or at their own bike designated stop lights.

It may be nice to bike in the cities parks or on its outskirts, but it's a dangerous proposition in the city itself. NYC is an urban jungle with a web of cars pedestrians, delivery trucks, garbage trucks and construction zones all over. As a biker, if you are not going to follow the rules, you are going to find yourself in trouble at some point.

I would encourage anybody who thinks cyclocommuters are particularly bad actors to stand on a busy urban street corner and count the percentage of drivers who are actively engaged with their mobile phone. You can identify them easily because they will be shiftily looking downward at sporadic intervals, rolling stop signs, and failing to notice traffic light changes.

In addition to the phone-related dangerous behavior, I would encourage people to count the number of unsignaled turns that happen at an urban intersection. As a pedestrian and a bicycle commuter in Chicago, I have to operate under the assumption that cars will jump in any direction at any moment (especially after having once been hit by a truck making an unsignaled right turn).

People who ride bikes in the city seem to attract extra scorn from the public for their supposedly higher rates of scofflawism. Cyclists do not have true impunity because they are in constant danger, whereas drivers have de jure and de facto impunity. A drunk driver in Chicago received no jailtime for actually killing a cyclist last year, for example. The rulebreaking of the cyclist is always taken as less acceptable. For motorists, there is no strong social expectation to follow the rules. I hope this will change as bicycle commuting gets more popular.

> I would encourage anybody who thinks cyclocommuters are particularly bad actors to stand on a busy urban street corner and count the percentage of drivers who are actively engaged with their mobile phone.

Also, every single time I see a complaint about cyclists, it neatly ignores that a dangerous cyclist would be orders of magnitude more dangerous driving a car. Based on mass alone, stopping distance will be much higher as well as incurring more serious injuries (including much more likely death) and property damage. Every time I bicycle instead of drive, I'm doing drivers and pedestrians a favor. Of course, I stay off the sidewalks and try to do the safest things possible.

I treat it as a game now. How many minutes until I see someone playing with their phone. Rarely more than 60 seconds in stop-go traffic.

It is striking how much safety is dependent on pedestrians accomodating distracted drivers. It seems quite unreasonable that so much responsibility is placed on users who are are no risk to anyone. And any pedestrian that does not comply is treated as if they are introducing the danger themselves. Classic victim blaming.

I wonder how much of the rise of bike culture and disdain of driving in some of the young demographic comes from the problem of smart phone addiction. As highlighted in your first paragraph, many people don't seem to have the discipline to be able to just not look at their phone for 30 minutes while they drive somewhere. Biking could actually be a relief for some of these people as they have a socially good excuse to be out of contact for some part of the day. Sort of like how some people enjoy airplane trips because no one can call them.

Not sure why you're voted down. I personally really enjoy an occasional ride around a few blocks just to clear my mind, get some fresh air and come back relaxed. Working from home, especially with a toddler around, can be taxing in novel ways.

A million times this! I live in Chicago and am an avid biker (been doored by a cab, right of passage i guess?) I am one of the few who stops at stop signs and slows down or stops at cross walks to watch for pedestrians. I attend my local alderman's meetings to push for more protected bike lanes which we are now getting, but my fellow bikers are making us all look bad wrt following the rules of the road. I can't tell you how many times I've almost gotten hit crossing a cross walk by a biker flying down the street without looking or stopping for pedestrians. We are now at the point where bikes are truly getting to share the road, but we are forgetting that we don't just share with cars, but with pedestrians as well. That fact seems to elude most bikers and they are operating like they have total impunity when riding. I'd love to see cops out ticketing bikers for blowing through cross walks with pedestrians present, I'd love to see big fines for running red lights; lord knows our city needs the revenue.

As a cyclist yourself, I'm sure you're familiar with intersections where the sensors controlling the lights do not sense bikes. I think the best way forward is for more states to adopt Idaho's policy: cyclists can treat stop signs like yield signs, and treat red lights like stop signs. [1]

If I'm riding toward a stop sign at a clearly deserted intersection, I would very much like to roll through at 10~15 MPH without risking a ticket. If I'm stopped at a red light and there are no cars making use of the green, I'd rather not dismount, walk over to press a pedestrian crossing button, walk back into the road, and wait. Or stay in the road, wait, and hope that I'll get a green light from a timer instead of a sensor.

It's possible to implement these changes and still be safe on a bike (it has worked for nearly 30 years in Idaho). I think we agree that flagrant violations, especially those that put pedestrians at risk, deserve fines.

[1] https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/Title49/T...

I also follow the "red light stop, stop sign yield" rule. I'm as annoyed by bikers who just zip through stop signs as everyone else, but when riding attentively and respectfully, I believe the Idaho stop safer and more efficient for everyone, not to mention waaayyy more considerate of bikers (who, until recently, have just been given the finger by norms, laws, and infrastructure in America).

Couldn't agree with you more, and I think the only part of my post that hit a nerve with you was related to fines for running red lights, which I should have been clearer about. (in Chicago we don't have those fancy stop light sensors) I too do an Idaho stop when approaching a 4 way stop that has no traffic, it makes the most sense. My main complaint as I live on one of the main bike corridors of Chicago is after a light turns red there are normally a herd of bikers that roll through causing traffic to sit still while waiting for them to exit the intersection. This screws up traffic and makes me irate, just as it would seeing car after car run the red light. We also have a lot of street retail which leads to a bunch of crosswalks, with tourists and children abound. Bikers come flying though crosswalks here and I've seen multiple accidents because of it. When a car hits a bike, the bike always loses, just the same as when a bike hits a pedestrian, the pedestrian always loses. I don't understand how my fellow cyclists can't see that as we complain about cars and their behavior.

Milwaukee Ave I guess? Yea as someone who bikes everywhere in Chicago, I hate going down Milwaukee on a bike too (partly because of all the bikers, definitely the pedestrians and cabs, partly the cars on a relatively narrow strip). At peak times Elston is faster and less stressful for a trip of decent distance anyway.

While we're complaining though, cars need to use their effing turn signals. I always check the signal as I pass through a line of cars at an intersection to let them get over in front me, but usually they'll just cut me off. So far no real issues, but I do have a policy of slapping the car hard as I can as I jerk around it. They're still full enough of that weird baseline road rage/driver anger to cuss at me rather than apologize though. (For those who don't live in Chicago, we have bike lanes on most main streets now, and my complaint is about cars turning into bike lanes without warning...)

> If I'm riding toward a stop sign at a clearly deserted intersection, I would very much like to roll through at 10~15 MPH without risking a ticket

Surely that should apply for cars then int his case. If the intersection is clearly deserted, cars should be able to clear the junction too.

I agree, and judging from the many rolling stops they undertake, so do drivers. When any vehicle has to come to a complete stop for absolutely nothing, they're just putting wear on their brakes and wasting energy. I'm happy to see 4-way stops (which people are terrible at) being replaced by more roundabouts. A roundabout features the desired intersection rules without having to wait for the state to enact Idaho-style bike laws.

As a cyclist, I'm in a very good position to assess how empty an intersection is: no windows isolating me in a sound bubble; low speed, so not much wind noise in my ears or tire noise on the ground; no A pillars obscuring my vision ahead; and my eyes are usually about as high off the ground as those of an SUV driver.

Motorists will tend to be in a worse position for assessing the emptiness of an intersection, and their vehicle is much more dangerous, so the onus to slow down is greater, but coming to a complete stop is often unnecessary. Slowing down to make sure there really is nothing there is sensible.

If I were on a recumbent bicycle, or in a little sports car, I'd have to be more cautious when approaching an intersection because my eyes are lower, and farther back from the front of the vehicle. (I hate riding recumbents in the city, but they're pretty awesome on long distance rides).

> As a cyclist, I'm in a very good position to assess how empty an intersection is: no windows isolating me in a sound bubble; low speed

Also: your head is closer to the front of your vehicle and thus to the intersection.

You can assess the situation long before any part of you or your bicycle enters the intersection.

You can also hear.

If that were to apply to cars, drivers would interpret it as 25-35 mph being okay.

In many circumstances, drivers could easily defeat a failure to stop ticket in court based on lack of hard evidence that you were going over 15 mph.

It should, and in most places it essentially does... as they don't have the American obsession with stop signs, and will indeed mark the sort of low-traffic residential intersection with....nothing at all most of the time.

No, it shouldn't. If the junction is marked as a stop, all users should stop. If you have a low traffic junction like that, then the stop sign Shouldn't be there. But that's a different argument to allowing vehicles/bikes to blow a stop sign.

Unlike bicycles, cars have significant blind spots with the A-pillar and such. Also unlike bicycles, cars are significantly more able to seriously injure other road users.

Cars aren't reliant on the driver's own power to get going again after an intersection and don't tend to fall over sideways if stopped.

If you can't stop your bike without falling over, you have no business cycling on roads.

"sensors controlling the lights" -- yeah, Chicago doesn't have those.

> where the sensors controlling the lights do not sense bikes

Not real bikes, anyway; they might be able to sense some 75 pound piece of pig iron from Walmart.

It's a struggle sometimes as a biker on a daily commute when you get to really know your route. There are a bunch of lights and stop signs on my route that very rarely have pedestrians and cars so I'll take it slow through them (about the same speed as a car not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign), but usually not stop. I'm very thankful that 90% of my commute has bike lanes, but would definitely love for them to be more protected and maybe even get some lights devoted to the bike lane like NYC has down a few of its avenues.

Bicycles do not need to come to a full stop at most stop signs, due to their slow speed.

On a bicycle, by the time I'm at the stop line, I have already checked that everything is clear. My face is closer to the intersection than that of a driver. I'm still coasting and have plenty of time to come to a full stop, if necessary, before entering the intersection.

Why would I stop, other than to obey the law on paper?

[Edit: just saw mohn's sibling comment revealing that Idaho codified my above reasoning into law: cyclists can treat stops like yields.]

I brought my bike to Chicago during a conference... you're not kidding. I don't mind rolling a stop sign carefully when there's no traffic, but cars, bikes, and pedestrians alike in Chicago seemed to be making up their own rules.

The difference between bike accidents with pedestrians and car accidents with pedestrians is that the victims of car accidents aren’t alive to complain about how cars are so dangerous anymore.

The only reason I look both ways on a one-way street in NYC is because I've almost been hit by cyclists going the wrong way on a few occasions (and then been yelled at by that cyclist for not looking).

As an everyday commuter in Boston, I'm definitely guilty of not stopping at stop signs that I bike through everyday and not stopping when there is a pedestrian in the crosswalk (usually trying to get as far away as possible from them), but whenever I have to go down the wrong way of a one way street (Charlestown has is a bit confusing and it happens whenever I'm there) I go slow and sometimes even dismount.

You cannot seriously expect the rules of the road to be the same for multi-ton vehicles capable of 50+ mph speeds and human-powered vehicles that weigh 200lbs tops / max out at 20 mph.

I appreciate the full throated defense of cyclists, but there are days when I max out above both 200lbs and 20mph with my bike :)

Even if you do, the bikes are not going to kill you. Someone on a bike breaking the "rules of the road" is pretty much only risking his own safety, someone in a car it's almost always other people that die.

   Even if you do, the bikes are not going to kill you.

This is not true. It is less likely than with automobiles, but pedestrians are killed by bicycles from time to time. Obviously bicycle-bicycle accidents that happen in traffic are also dangerous.

Yes and people die from drinking too much water too.

Irrelevant to the case of killing other people in avoidable accidents.

Like automobiles, lots of cyclists (and I am one) believe that they are able to safely perform maneuvers they cannot, in fact, safely perform.

It's sensible to ask if there should be different rules for bicycle and automobile traffic. But if we change the rules, it shouldn't be based one what cyclists want or don't want to do, but on analysis of the safety and efficiency for everyone involved, including pedestrians.

Sometimes you just have to suck it up and lose momentum.

Bikes can do pretty bad damage to pedestrians. Even if it isn't your fault as the car driver being involved in a crash with a biker is a pretty shitty experience. Yes, they are not as bad as cars, but it's a bad excuse.

I can expect it, because in large part the rules of the road are precisely that.

I'm a cyclist in NYC. Here's the other side of that: I see you. Let me describe a common scenario:

I'm biking toward an intersection. I see a pedestrian moving into the street from 30 yards out. They're looking down at their phone. I see them the entire time. I know they don't see me. There's no chance we're going to collide, because I see exactly what they're doing and have been tracking them as I approach the intersection. At the last second, as I pass by them, they become aware of my presence and jump back, surprised.

How do you think they tell that story?

I'm sure it has something to do with the maniac cyclist who almost hit them.

You should wait till they cross the intersection instead of timing your cross with the pedestrian. You need to yield to the pedestrian as soon as they enter the cross walk - that's the law and what all road traffic is required to follow.

As others have said, biking infrastructure in NYC (and in basically all U.S. cities) is an afterthought. It's been tacked onto an environment that was totally given over to cars (rather absurdly, given New York's status as the only truly pedestrian city in the U.S.).

What you're seeing is the cyclist's attempt to navigate an environment that's directly hostile to their interests. As long as nothing about that changes, this is what it's going to look like, because I'm not going to follow rules that make no sense for my mode of travel.

With respect, of course, to the fact that this is an unpopular opinion in some circles, I'm still just not going to do it. And, crucially, I'm comfortable with the social and legal consequences of my position.

As a cyclist crossing the street in NYC, it's much the same experience. Pedestrians jaywalk willy-nilly and you frequently end up having to thread your way through an entire jaywalking horde even though you have right of way.

TBF I think it all depends on how much people in the city generally obey rules of the road. I don't think I've ever seen a New Yorker walk more than 2 blocks without jay-walking.

And if you do follow the rules on a bike you often end up sitting in traffic with the cars anyway.

Exactly, because both the rules and, even worse, the infrastructure are made for cars, and only shoehorned for bikes afterwards.

Even following the rules you still save time because you're at the top of the queue with the lead car every time. When I bike into work I never have to wait 3-4 turns of the light to proceed.

Yes, I do follow the rules: lights, stop signs, etc. Whether driving my car or riding my bike, I'm sharing a resource and we are all trying to get somewhere. It's only fair.

It's a similar situation in Philly, every day I watch bikers run red lights and stop signs or speeding in a 25.

I've yet to see a cop pull over someone on a bike

Philly here as well.

There are practical reasons for bikes going through red lights and stop signs.

1. We want to clear the intersection and get to the other side ahead of the traffic. Car-bike accidents occur most often at intersections rather than mid-block. Getting through the intersection before the light turns green is a way to relieve worry about getting right hooked or sideswiped by a car. Cross traffic, if any, is visible and avoidable. Cyclists choose to "risk it" because the real risk at intersections comes from oncoming and in-flow traffic.

2. It takes a lot of energy to start up again from a dead stop. Average speed will drop A LOT from stopping unnecessarily, moreover, it is far more tiring to get back up to speed. It means more sweat and discomfort.

Some people feel, especially on forums such as this, that all traffic laws need to be observed "to the letter" by every vehicle including bicycles. That's overly strict and impractical. It is why cops almost never "pull over" cyclists who run stop-signs. There is no good reason to do so unless the cyclist was deliberately precipitating emergency evasive maneuvers from motorists.

>There are practical reasons for bikes going through red lights

I'd hardly call "I have a desire to be killed by a car" or "I harbour a blatant disregard of the saftey and wellbeing of those around me" practical reasons. The laws are written for the protection of everyone, not solely to inconvenience you.

Stop signs aren't something we really have in my country, but cycling through red lights has been the cause of death and injury for both cyclists and pedestrians.

I find it horrifying that you're so quick to disregard even the most fundamental rules of the road and worse yet aggressively defend your anti-social behaviour.

Here's a good article that links to a study on Scofflaw cyclists:

https://www.treehugger.com/bikes/new-study-shows-scofflaw-cy...

“Bicyclists, perhaps despite popular conception, really don’t break the rules at any greater rate than any other modes: pedestrians or drivers,” said Aaron Johnson, one of the authors. “When there’s a disregard for the rules it tends to come from efforts to negotiate infrastructure that really wasn’t built for them.”

    > quick to disregard even the most fundamental rules of the road and worse yet aggressively defend your anti-social behaviour.

Such behavior is, actually, the norm. It has been going on since the dawn of traffic control. Cars and bikes are intrinsically different. Traffic laws can't address everything and are broken (or deliberately not enforced by police) for pragmatic reasons all the time.

You see bikers speeding in a 25mph? Are all the bikers in your city national-level endurance athletes on TT bikes?

It's so sad that people born into a world where cars are everywhere just have no concept anymore of what is human. You put a random dude on a bike and they are never going to average 20 mph, struggle to even get to 18 mph. Barreling up 15% inclines in SF at 30 mph is not normal.

It doesn't make sense to penalize bikes the same way as cars. A car is deadly, a bike isn't. It would be like assigning the same penalty to throwing a punch and a gun shot.

You can definitely kill someone with a bicycle. And a punch.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/gay-basher-ge...

http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2014/10/stanley-park-pedestrian-d...

This is just recent local news from my neck of the woods, off the top of my head.

Just because you can do it, doesn't mean it has anywhere the same likelihood of happening. Not even sure what argument you're trying to make.

This is why concealed guns are banned in most states and fists aren't.

> Just because you can do it, doesn't mean it has anywhere the same likelihood of happening. Not even sure what argument you're trying to make.

Ok, go stand in the street and I'll hit you with a bicycle. I can come to the emergency room later and you can tell me how it didn't hurt that much.

> This is why concealed guns are banned in most states

False, by the way. They just require a license... like a car.

You're likely confusing the (intuitively low) probability of someone being hit by a cyclist with the conditional probability of someone sustaining a serious injury or being killed given they've been hit by a cyclist.

The fist cannot be banned because it is a configuration of the human hand.

> It's a similar situation in Philly, every day I watch bikers run red lights and stop signs or speeding in a 25.

I've yet to see a vehicle not speeding in a 25. It's honestly infuriating when people are actually going 24 in a 25, because despite these limits being in a mostly urban area, there are almost zero pedestrians there and it's a 3 lane wide road in good condition.

How much can a bike possibly be speeding in a 25 to be a danger? 28mph? Come on.

Running a red light is a big no-no however.

When's the last time you saw a driver doing 25 or under in a 25 zone? I ask because my commute has drivers who will threaten your life for doing the speed limit.

Being from the Netherlands I am not at all surprised by this. It is very well known here that bikes get you places quicker than cars do. Especially within cities you can go to the city center without having to worry about finding a parking spot and paying a huge amount of money when you do.

I have lived in New York and have driven a car there and based on that experience I wouldn't really find driving a bike there problematic. I have also lived in Brussels (Belgium) and used citi bikes there and was generally happy about the experience, even though the Belgian roads are a lot more dangerous due to the fact that Belgians don't have the slightest clue about anything that has to do with driving or traffic: they can't drive cars, they can't plan roads properly, they can't maintain them, etc. New York is grid based so traffic situations are easier to oversee.

I am a zealous citibike convert here in NYC and I'll take one over a taxi any day but I think there's a systematic error in these numbers.

I assume the taxi times are pickup to drop-off (ie encompasses the entire trip) while bike are station to station so there is walking time that's not accounted for on either end of the bike trip. There are times where the nearest station doesn't have bikes or free docks so the walk may be non trivia and add up to more than the 5 minutes median difference for cross town.

On the other hand sometimes it takes a while to catch a cab and that's not included in the data either so perhaps it averages out.

The author is right, bikes are great for reducing variability (on the bike you can get around most obstruction, even if it means walking the bike on a sidewalk for a quarter of a block while the taxi gets stuck)

The one advice I disagree with is taking the bike when the President is in town. Trump was here last week for the UN and with all the street closures, detours and crazed drivers, biking was much more dangerous than usual.

I'm from Sweden and have been biking in NYC as a tourist. I must say, it is one of the most scariest places I have biked in my life.

Huge cars, almost no biking lanes, a lot of people and other traffic. I admit I was also a bit drunk but still, in Stockholm we have biking lanes almost everywhere and you feel a lot safer. Also there is a lot more people that use the bike when you give them a lane to bike on.

Please, create more biking lanes. It's better for the cars, it is better for pedestrians, it's better for the environment and public health.

You can get to most of Manhattan under 125th st and almost all of northwest Brooklyn without leaving a bike lane: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/bikemaps.shtml

Even in my neighborhood in Queens I can get into Manhattan with only a 3 block stretch outside of a bike lane.

Obviously there is going to be more traffic than Stockholm, we have almost 8 million more residents.

There is a already a large effort to create bike lanes in the city. The city website lists current bike lane projects: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/bike-projects.sh...

A bike lane is just paint on a road. Biking in Manhattan is still perilous, because cars and people routinely occupy the parts of the road with that green paint on it. A bike lane is an improvement, I guess, but it's the minimum a city claiming to care about cycling infrastructure can do.

That's not necessarily true either, many of the new bike lanes being put in are protected lanes. That still runs in to the issue of pedestrians but they're a problem for car traffic in Manhattan too. Take this stretch of 7th avenue where they are removing a whole lane of car traffic to add in a new protected bike lane: https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20170925/chelsea/seventh-av...

Was mostly biking in Brooklyn, not sure exactly where I went but from my experience at least, I didn't get to bike on a lot of biking lanes.

Of course, there were some and some just painted on the road which cars drove on. So that didn't help much.

> Huge cars, almost no biking lanes, a lot of people and other traffic.

When were you in NYC? We have more bike lanes than Stockholm these days. :)

Proof:

http://www.amny.com/transit/new-york-city-to-reach-1-000-mil... vs http://www.fourteenislands.com/bicycle-paths/

According to Google the Stockholm area is 188km^2 with 760km bike lanes and NY is 789km^2 with 1609km bike lanes.

Looking just at the installed capacity isn't a great way, if you do not control for overall area. Better to compare the relative space dedicated to cars, trains and bikes.

Couldn't find data for Stockholm, but here is a NY-Copenhagen comparison: black lines are the relative NYC allocation spaces, orange bars is Copenhagen. Relatively speaking, Copenhagen has much more biking space: https://whatthestreet.moovellab.com/newyork/results?bike=0.1...

Copenhagen is #1 on the list of bike-friendly cities. Of course it's going to outpace NYC.

Sure, but you're making my point against your original one. Copenhagen has a bit more than 400km of bike lanes [0], which is less than a fourth of what you reported NYC has. Which was my point: NYC should have much much more than 1,000 miles of bike lanes to be even comparable to Stockholm or Copenhagen.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_Copenhagen#Infrastr...

I don't know about that. NYC has Staten Island and huge parts of Queens which are effectively a rural village, whereas Copenhagen as well as most of Europe is highly urban. If you mapped population density to bike lane coverage, NYC would come out pretty favorably.

As an avid bicycler and Swedish expat in Taiwan I gotta say I think one of the key things to feeling safe biking in Stockholm and Sweden in general is that Swedes are _fantastic_ at following traffic rules. Very predictable drivers. The Taiwanese bikes and scooters, on the other hand, act like schools of fish. Predictable as a mass but not as units.

That sentiment rings true for most of Europe to be honest. Americans are just not trained to be polite to transport other than cars.

The spring of 2017.

What can I say, there were some but not a lot. And many of these lanes were just painted on the road.

I think this is the big difference, cars drove on the biking lanes but in Stockholm the overwhelming majority of these lanes are protected so cars cannot drive on them.

>I think this is the big difference, cars drove on the biking lanes

Yes, that's the unfortunate reality of NYPD policing. They basically park in bike lanes with little or no consequence. However, with dedicated lanes a lot of progress is being made. Already there is a dedicated bike path that will allow you to drive for hundreds of miles north with little contact with cars.

I would love to bike, but the major issue is that every single person I know who's biked for more than 1 year has gotten into some type of accident (around 10 people), whether car, car door, or poorly maintained road. These are all 30s and work-at-the-office types so maybe they're not the most coordinated, but they are also not doing stupid shit.

Counter-anecdote here. I've biked to work on and off for a total of about 5 years worth over my career, at distances of about two miles each way, in a dense city. I've never had any accident with a car. My one collision ever was with a pedestrian who started into his crosswalk against his light (I had green), thinking he could cross ahead of me but I was already leaning to go ahead of him; we both fell over but no injuries or damage.

It's really not that hard to bike safely. Most accidents involve the cyclist putting themselves in a vulnerable position somehow. You can't get right-hooked by a car if you don't put yourself on its right side. Keep alert with your head up, not looking down at your phone or cycling computer or pedaling cadence. Watch all the traffic around you. You read drivers' minds when they're going to turn without signaling. Look an entire block ahead of you for any parked car showing signs of activity and potential dooring. Forget about trying to assert your right-of-way and ignore trying to make speed and time records; those don't matter; slow down and look everywhere at every questionable intersection or turn or when in a dooring zone. Keep alert and read your entire environment, and you can go years without any cycling accident. I've done it.

> It's really not that hard to bike safely.

I have to disagree. Depending on the infrastructure and drivers you face, staying uninjured as a city cyclist is as much luck as skill.

In many places, you can do everything mentioned and still get in accidents, or the things you mention are impossible.

It's now generally thought that, even without a helmet, the positive health effects of biking outweigh the dangers from accidents.

And while everyone who bikes will take a fall at some point, the vast majority of those actually result in only a few scratches. I know it seems terribly scary to imagine falling of a bike. But I've done so twice in about 12,000k, and the joy of biking far outweighs the pain I've suffered.

I think that's probably true of all biking, but do you know if that's true for biking in NYC specifically? Also, if there's a 100% chance of a 1 year increase in lifespan, but a 3% chance of a 33 year loss, would you take it? If you are optimizing for maximum years over a large population the answer is yes, but I'm only optimizing for one life. It's also not necessarily true that e.g. age 50 -> 51 is equal in value with age 80 -> 81.

My concern is that everyone I know has had an accident, even if minor. It sounds like you have had accidents too. Although we can go slower, be more aware, etc., this suggests that the fundamental issue is structural -- if every single nurse in your hospital as accidentally administered the wrong medication, you should improve the identity verification process rather than just sending them for more training.

By nature of it being an accident, it seems hard to control whether it's a minor scrape or more serious injury. In any case, every person has their own risk tolerance -- hard to say what is objectively correct -- and subjectively it's too high for me.

Maybe the problem is with the word accident?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puK5CwThaq4

I cannot help but witness the effects of traffic calming:

> a taxi trip in 2017 took 17% longer than the same trip in 2009.

> The same regression applied to Citi Bikes shows no such slowdown over time, in fact Citi Bikes got slightly faster.

Obviously when you dedicate more street space from cars towards bikes, bikes get faster and cars get slower. The article goes to mention this, but also downplays it.

What the article seems to ignore on a major scale is the effect of traffic calming, or traffic impeding. By civilizing traffic to the appropriate rules and procedures via hardscapes, you make vehicle travel more unbearable and a test of patience. If the intentions behind doing this weren't derived from anti-car sentiments, I could respect this move. But Janet Sadik-Khan is a bicycling enthusiast and after her appointment, car travel became really bad.

If the intentions behind doing this weren't derived from anti-car sentiments

New York City isn't nearly anti-car enough! It's the only place in the U.S. that has any chance of reclaiming its streets for pedestrians and it should absolutely do so. Those who like to drive can choose literally any other U.S. city and, without exception, it'll cater to that preference.

But New York City should be implementing all kinds of car-hostile policies, including an all-out ban on private vehicles in some parts of Manhattan.

I was thinking about your post, and was trying to imagine the difference between anti-car and pro-human-life.

Cars provide a lot of benefit, but without 'traffic calming' or anti-car architecture, there are more and more of them going faster and faster, killing pedestrians, cyclists, and other drivers.

It's a balancing act, but I think there is not a big city in the USA that would be considered to actually favor pedestrians and cyclists over cars. (yet.)

As I understand it traffic has gotten demonstrably worse in NYC over the past few years at least in part because there are so many cars on the road driving for Uber et al: http://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/02/27/its-settled-uber-is-ma...

There have been some pedestrian safety changes made in Manhattan but traffic is really the biggest impediment. Most cars are moving less than the speed limit much of the day because of all the traffic.

Actually the article points to the fact that other studies have shown that bikes have either no effect, or improve traffic speeds, because one of the biggest misconceptions in traffic planning is the solution is to increase roadways, when in reality, the answer is usually to reduce.

Actual relevant reasons may be the growth of Uber, the change of speed limits, and/or the increase in population.

I have been comparing biking and driving to work in Derby (UK) for my 7 mile commute. Biking can be quicker for me depending on traffic. I have just ordered an ebike that should shift the odds more in favour of this bike.

I always feel better having commuted on bike though

I wish you luck with the ebike, but personally i feel like they're problematic.

It could just be our roads here though; the issue I find is that they're too fast for bike lanes [risk to cyclists], but too slow for the road [cars frequently pass them at higher speeds and very close-by]. It seems like everyone is frustrated and the ebikers are just being pushed around by everyone.

What kind of e-bikes do people have in Canada? Electric-assist types, or ones with a throttle?

In Europe the assist-type is way more common, limited to 25 km/h and at least in Germany the stereotypical user is an elder person that now suddenly can go a bit faster and go comfortably up hills.

I've seen both, the Electric-assist seem less common [or maybe just harder to identify?]. The ones that I see as not really fitting in are the larger ones that look kind of like an electric Vespa.

That's not a bike but an electric scooter. They shouldn't be on bike paths nor pedestrian sidewalks. They have more in common with a motor bike or dirt bike than they do with a bicycle.

EA bikes just can really only be identified by their battery packs. The motor can be embedded in the wheel hub or in the pedal crank.

They seem to be the worst of both worlds, I think there has been a lot of controversy about them using bike lanes in The Netherlands lately.

Ah, yes, those really don't mix well with neither bike lanes nor cars.

In the UK they are limited to 25km/h in the USA it's 32 km/h. Although a lot of grey market imports are much faster

In the UK you only get assistance up to 15.5mph on an eBike (legally) so they're generally no quicker than a normal bike

I've had one for a few weeks now, my bike mileage has gone through the roof, they really are good especially if you are in a hilly area.

Or... walk? For a lot of trips in central Manhattan, walking ten or twenty uptown blocks or cross-town for a few blocks is often the easiest way to get from point A to B. Personally, I don't really bike but I'm not sure the last time I felt I needed to take a cab in NYC.

As a daily commuter in NYC, often on Citibike, one of the most concerning discoveries has been the ability (if you are willing to pedal hard) to consistently beat out ambulances over stretches of 15 blocks -- specifically without running red lights on the bike whereas the ambulance is going through them -- due to the slow speed in which traffic clears a path for them. I really wish the streets were not so congested with vehicular traffic to prevent emergency vehicles from getting to their destinations.

Do people use bikes to get anywhere faster? I would use one to save on emissions and/or get some much needed exercis

edit: so many replies!

I guess I stand corrected, although the more I think about it, the less I'm surprised. I live in Japan, obviously known for its public transport. Interesting to note though once I travel abroad, thanks for the replies everyone :-)

My commute in London is faster by bike than any other mode of transport. The distance I cover in 30 minutes of cycling would take 45 minutes to drive (most of that stuck in traffic) and around 50 minutes on public transport. During the day cycling is very frequently the fastest way to get somewhere. Driving is also incredibly variable - one broken down bus or accident and you're looking at a 30 minute delay. Cycling is incredibly consistent - you do get slowed down by more traffic, but only slightly.

Traffic congestion and red lights often make it so that it's actually just as fast to go anywhere on a bike (at least in major cities, I know for a fact that it is in Paris at least). Though, it really depends on the ability to go between lanes and pass through red lights (which is actually legal in Paris on some corners if you take a left/right turn).

Absolutely - it's fair to say that in many cities bikes will often get you there faster (or at least, more reliably) than vehicles at rush hour (and for a lot of journeys, most other times too.)

If I had to prioritise the reasons I cycle to work, speed and cost would come above the other things you mention - although they're nice bonuses.

Absolutely! I'm in DC, not NYC, but..

Driving means: walk 1-3 blocks to my car, drive it in slow(and extremely variable based on time) traffic, circle the block a half dozen times to find a parking space, probably having to pay.

Biking on the other hand means: I walk outside, bike where I'm going at the same speed every day, and lock up when I get there.

I've frequently beaten my friends when going places in the city and I have my bike and don't wanna leave it behind so I bike and they cab/drive.

Yes. My door to door commute by bike takes about 30 minutes but by public transport takes about 60 minutes. In fact, being able to commute by bike is the reason I moved out to a nicer, larger place than I would have considered if constrained to public transport only.

For reference, this is South West London to West London (6 miles).

Definitely. I've cycled in London for a long time (though I'm slightly out of town now) and depending on the time of day, it can be the fastest way to get across the city.

There are a few factors to consider. There are places you can go by bike that aren't always available to cars (cycle paths through parks, for example). You'll get from the exact starting point to exact finishing point. And general congestion will take care of the rest.

In a slightly different way, where I am now, the fastest way to get to work is to cycle 20 minutes to a more convenient train station and take the train in. The alternative is a) much less reliable and b) takes an extra 45 minutes (minimum).

On my skateboard I can commute through SoMa in SF faster than cars during rush hour. Actually my 30 mile commute between Palo Alto to Oakland is 10 minutes faster by taking a train and skateboard than driving.

Used to cycle in Dublin - My journey was usually 40 minutes, sometimes 15 minutes, and sometimes an hour. Cycling was pretty much consistently 15 minutes.

My girlfriend started commuting by bike last year and cut her travel time by almost half. There are real savings to be had in congested cities.

I live in a much, much smaller state-university city - but I bike between campuses and beat my coworkers in cars every time.

Anecdote in Toronto: I bike to a beach volleyball game with some friends from the same place in the downtown core. It takes me 16 minutes to get there by bike, it takes the rest of the team about 30-45 minutes to get there by car.

In Seattle, many trips of 3-6 miles are fastest by bike. Faster than transit or car even without including parking time. There are quite a few dedicated bike paths that make it smooth sailing for most of the trip.

Unfortunately Seattle is also not an especially flat city. It makes it hard to get started.

If it helps as motivation, it is quite common to cycle on Swiss cities, and the Alps aren't properly flat.

A light bike with a good set of gears helps a lot.

Novice American cyclist here: what makes a set of gears "good" for usage in Swiss cities?

For example 3 gears on front and 6 behind, allowing for a relatively good combination of cycling effort (18 levels), which permits not being wasting too much energy when going upwards.

At a medium-sized, college campus with no internal roads, my bike is the only way I can reliably travel the 1.5 miles from one side of campus to the other, in less than 15 minutes, laden.

And generally speaking, bikes are just like any other non-public transit method: the purpose is to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, fsck everything and everyone else.

I do, for sure. It's the only sane way to get around Boston without going totally insane.

IMHO, for the most ideal city experience, transit options should be prioritized in this order: 1) pedestrians, 2) buses, 3) bikes, 4) cars. Biking being faster than motoring is excellent news towards this ideal.

You got 2 and 3 switched up. It's very simple:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C5j6rPlU4AEizP6.jpg:large

kneejerk, i tend to agree..but bussing is really necessary to for people with accessibility issues.

My reasoning was a bus can transport many more people than one bike, but sure, I am agreeable to switching 2 and 3.

It's not just the quantity; it's the overall efficiency, of quantity compared to the cost of infrastructure and operations. Buses hold more but cost a lot more to build and drive, including stations and maintenance facilities, and externalities like emissions and gridlock. Bike infrastructure is cheap and operations are free to a city.

The way it is being achieved is disgraceful.

"'The oaks are just too greedy / We will make them give us light' / Now there's no more oak oppression / For they passed a noble law / And the trees are all kept equal / By hatchet, / Axe, / And saw"

Are electric scooters and other small electric vehicles such as balancing boards or the Qingbu pocket scooter (a ripoff of the Walkcar?) legal in the US? They seem to be getting cheap now (saw the Xiaomi M365 for less than $330). Unfortunately in Germany you may not yet use them on public roads and sidewalks.

I can see them having an advantage over bikes (and cars) because you can just fold them up and carry them with you into a cab, the subway, your office or your home.

Rally nice analysis. It is a pity that open access to data like this is still exception, not a rule. I wish to have such data for my city.

I'm in Shanghai at the moment and it's definitely the same here, especially during peak hours. Lots of bikes for rent here too, you can see them on many sidewalks, not unusual to see a few hundred in a row. Students and office workers alike are using them. Ofo and Mobike are the big players here, they are also expanding to other continents now :)

NYC is not a bike friendly city at all (some parts of certain boroughs might be). Biking in NYC is also a quick ticket to ER room. I have already eye witnessed multiple altercations and accidents of bicyclists in this city. Scary.

From the article:

> The same regression applied to Citi Bikes shows no such slowdown over time, in fact Citi Bikes got slightly faster.

I suspect this is mainly due to better bikes. I've been a yearly subscriber to Citibike since the very beginning - and I can attest that the quality of the system and the bikes has improved tremendously since inception. Quality of the bikes is judged in part by their durability and sturdiness of individual items - but also the gearing. The newest bikes have the NuVinci continuous variable gear system - which is amazing to use but also allows you to get into a lot higher gear than the original bikes.

What is the life expectancy of getting in a taxi and getting to your destination vs getting on a bike? Probability of surviving if you get hit by a car: being in both? The other thing this article failed to mention is that NYC implemented slower speeds for cars. Overall this is true, but safety should be a factor and bikers nor drivers obey laws. Make the fines super expensive and use that money to educate people about the rules of the road. Drives me bonkers that they collect so much money in tickets from drivers but do not educate the people about it because they want the revenue haha. So stupid.

When you're trying to get to the morgue? I'm sympathetic to cyclists - I am one myself - but the average CitiBike rider rides like an 8 year old who just got their first bike.

Many people predicted citibikes would be dangerous, but they were surprisingly accident-free for quite some time. You might have the impression that they're badly ridden, but the data suggests they're actually safe.

There might be a bit of memory tricks going on -- you remember the things that stand out, but not the boring riders stopping at the light.

In virtually every crosstown route during working hours in lower Manhattan. It's not even close, Citi Bikes are 1.5x - 2.5x faster than a cab.

If you are commuting on Caltrain in SF, it is way easier to take the citibikes. Only a relatively short distance in SOMA and way faster. When I went south to the tech campuses, I brought my own bike on the train.

There are a few bikers that cause problems. I was driving in Palo Alto yesterday and a cyclist insisted on using the car lane instead of a perfectly good bike lane.

Been biking in both Los Angeles & New York as my commute. In LA driving took 1-2h while biking took 1h. In my experience it's been faster for my commute, however there's still many days where there are no bikes where I live (UWS).

I can highly recommend trying out the Citi bike if you live in New York, it's so cheap and many of the companies pays for it.

As a NYer it's pretty clear that going cross town on a bike or skate board will be faster than a car, especially during rush hour. Moving through tight areas like Soho and Greenwich village, I would say that a skateboard is probably the fastest. I still can't tell if a skate board is safer than a bike. Absolutely more fun though

It might work in NY, worked well for me in central London, but I'd like to see how the people will prefer that in cities that are built on the hills, like San Francisco or Seattle.

what citi bikes need is a reward system to get riders to transfer bikes from plenty to empty areas.

[edit] i meant to use Citi bike as a generic term.

They do have this. It's called "bike angels", and it lets you earn points based on how empty or full a station is. They also have bonuses on special holidays or rainy days.

Sounded interesting, so I looked it up - https://bikeangels.citibikenyc.com/ - seems like a well designed incentive system.

In London they have teams of people unloading truckloads of bikes to places where all the lots are empty. I don't know how cost effective it is but it seems to be working pretty well

same here, but it's nice to know you're needed.

Citi Bikes already does this.

impressed. sorry i don't live in NYC, we just have a similar system here.

What they didn't take into account is that riding a bike in a crowded city is a task for suicidal people only!

I live in the East Village and am convinced that cyclists in New York City have no regard for human life. The NYPD seems to be cracking down on their lawless behavior, but I think a push away from cycling and towards ride-sharing (a la Via) is the solution for our transit issue.

With our broken subway system and high volume of cabs, ubers, etc; it is clear that New York is a driving city - but not a parking city.

Most NYC residents don't own cars. I'm not sure I'm buying your "New York is a driving city" assessment.

New York is a dense city. Bicycles: 1. Don't pollute the air the that 8 million people breathe. 2. Take up a fraction of the space of a car. 3. Are faster than cars for most trips people make.

Don't toss out the entire idea of a bicycle because a few cyclist ride like idiots. Drivers sometimes behave this way, too. And when they do, lives often end.

You're totally right, from the Rockaways to Riverdale cars are difficult to obtain for the majority of NYC's residents. I meant that New York is a 'driving city' in the sense that for-hire drivers such as cabs, Vias, etc are ubiquitous and necessary.

Cycling has several benefits, but I believe the current situation makes it a hard sell. I don't believe cars will organically leave the road as more people turn to bicycles, and I don't believe cyclists can coexist with the current volume of vehicles. Proposed initiatives to limit this number, such as Bloomberg toll for driving through Manhattan, seem totalitarian.

Cars are dangerous, but when I cross the street I am pretty certain the driver will be following basic laws: such as driving the correct way on a one-way street or stopping at a red light. The same can not be said for cyclists, in fact I witness them and their motorized bicycle cohorts breaking these laws every single day.

NYC don't even have a train from the airport to the city. Of course it is a driving city.

Two of the three major airports in the metropolitan area (EWR and JFK) have trains to the city. And LGA has buses.

The NYC subway system is far from the nicest in the world and it has a lot of infrastructure problems--in part because of its age. But a system that moves about 6 million people on the average weekday can't be all that broken.

You're right, my use of the term 'broken' was a bit harsh but this summer was particularly bad in terms of track fires, delays, station shutdowns, and persistent subway signal system problems, so much so that 'fixing the subway' has become a major talking point of the mayoral race.

I don't think you're being too harsh, but the point is that a lot of the worst problems are relatively recent: This past year has apparently been horrendous, but I lived in NYC from 2000-2016 and the subway was consistently way more reliable than cab for getting anyplace, especially during the workday in midtown.

Every time I took a cab to an important meeting in manhattan, I regretted the decision. Whereas I've taken the subway to hundreds of meetings/appointments and really only gotten delayed impactfully a handful of times.

No doubt that things have declined significantly in the past year, but I do think that saying NYC is a "driving city" is overstating.

No reason to appologize for being "too harsh" at all. There is no reason to tollerate the state of this system. The nyc subway is hanging on by threads. By modern standards it deffinitely is broken and there are a whole lot of bugs to fix. The whole thing is running on ancient infrastructure. Saying otherwise will allow it to coninue as it is.

1 pedestrian death by a cyclist in about 8 years.

I’d say that’s pretty good regard for human life.

OTOH, cars kill a pedestrian almost daily in the city. Funny you don’t complain about them.

Also this is despite bike lanes being adjacent to the sidewalk and actually protecting pedestrians from the actually dangerous cars by providing a buffer (pedestrian deaths on avenues which installed bike lanes, such as 2nd and 8th dropped after installation, and in comparison to avenues that did not.)

LOL @ lawless behavior. This is a ridiculous comment. Drivers speed, run red lights, double park, block the box, pollute the air, honk their horns all fucking hours of the day, and kill a ton of people every year.

EVERY major metropolitan area is experiencing fixed street capacity and a growing population. You cannot add more roads, more cars, more trains (at least in the short term) to move all these people: cycling and walking are the best ways to move in a dense area and we should be doing everything we can to promote the infrastructure and lifestyles for both of these activities.

Getting rid of this toxic ideology would be a pretty good start.

honk their horns all fucking hours of the day

This is one of those NYC stereotypes that turns out to be entirely true and it's an awful aspect of living here. This is mainly a problem in Midtown, but it's bad enough there as to be one of the worst things about the city.

> cyclists in New York City have no regard for human life.

I'll meet your anecdata with the data that cyclists aren't the ones killing people. The folks doing the killing are frequently your beloved cab drivers (and charter buses).

I ride a bike in NYC. If you accept being sweaty in the summer and risk getting hit in certain areas, then you'll have a blast riding. Otherwise it's a burden. In my opinion, biking is one of the fastest forms of transportation when traveling <40 blocks. Also, Citi Bikes are lunky. I hate riding them.

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