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Comment by slr555 | Hacker News Reader

Commenting on cycling is always fraught but here are a couple of observations. The population of NYC is 10x that of the city of Copenhagen. The population density of Manhattan is approximately 6x that of Copenhagen (corrected from earlier mistake). Solutions that work in small European cities do not necessarily scale in a manner that would be useful in other international metropolitan cities. Cycling advocates often point to successes in Northern European cities that represent entire different transportation landscapes from other larger cities around the world.

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If anything, a higher-density city should be more amenable to bicycles. Standard passenger cars are tremendously wasteful of physical space. You can fit half a dozen bikes in the road space that a car in the city requires (meaning, including following distance). Then there's the amount of space they take up when they're idle, and the extra space for them to maneuver past each other safely.

The mass of automobile usage has completely warped our civic spacetime in this country. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with cars per se -- they have important uses -- but they certainly don't help with density of all things.

Amenable means open and responsive to suggestion; easily persuaded or controlled. NYC is none of those things. Yes cars take physical space but I think you underestimate the diverse needs and populations that drive the use of cars vs. bikes. Commuters from Westchester county are not going to ride bikes. Frail elderly people and de-conditioned office dwellers are not going to ride bikes.

Comparisons with Northern European cities simply do not make sense however much people would like to force fit them

Public transit should be an important part of designing transit with bicycles too.

Not sure why the overall population matters here. Bicycle trips typically do not cover large distances in cities, that's what public transport is for. And when it comes to density, Paris has twice the density of NYC and still has cycling infrastructure that is in a whole different league than that of NYC. NYC could in fact do much much better.

Population size matters as does density because there are more people that need to fit in a smaller footprint. The original post states that other cities should employ Copenhagen like solutions but the room simply does not exist in NYC no matter how much we would wish it so.

But the population of Manhattan is within a stone's throw of Paris overall and the density is significantly greater in Manhattan. Overall population and density matter as the equate to more diverse needs in the population and more users in any transit space.

According to a quick web search, the population density of NYC is about 2.5x that of Copenhagen.

Apologies, Wikipedia list km2 first for one and mi2 for the other. I still land in the middle though with Manhattan being 6 and change more dense than Copenhagen. I apologize for my haste and error.

It’s true that Manhattan is considerably denser than Copenhagen. Manhattan probably needs more/different transportation infrastructure than Copenhagen does to cope effectively with the density: more public transit, less automobiles.

The population density of Copenhagen is comparable to the density of Queens.

There is also a significant cultural difference. In the US, the biggest bike commuters are high school and college students. In some countries, bicycles are used by a broad swath of the public.

You are just not making any sense. There is a whole lot of car infrastructure and cars in NYC but little to no bike infrastructure despite the population density.

Then look at Paris? It's not as good as Copenhagen, but way better than anything in the US. It's a little bit less dense than Manhattan by population, but by removing cars, and with the wider space in between the buildings you can have a more successful bike town.

Europe's historically much higher petrol prices have created a long standing culture of smaller cars as well as smaller trucks competing for the same space. Massive Suburban's are among the most common car service vehicles in Manhattan.

I think even London has better cycling infrastructure than New York... Let's not say it can't be done.

Good thing NYC has more money with which to invest in more than one bicycle bridge.

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