The Steady Rise of Bike Ridership in New York

Agree 100% with that sentiment, but I think the problem is actually lower in the political food chain. The Department of Transportation is very pro-active about adding bike lanes (in contrast to previous generations at the DOT), but they are often blocked by old stodgy community boards in the city. The minority of people that own cars are heavily involved in that level of government, and bikers/pedestrians are not coming out and supporting bike lanes. If people focus on those meetings, the DOT will get more done.

Protected bike lanes would help; unprotected ones just turn into parking spots for UPS, Fedex, police cars and other random vehicles.

How does your commute look like, if you don't mind asking?

I commute north-south, alongside S1 train. I noticed it recently got a lot harder though. It seems like there's construction work everywhere (even on the riverbanks and channels). I need to to add extra kilometres just to cut through Mitte.

Also my route is very "hilly", both ways (northern Mitte to Schöneberg). I guess going east-west may be a lot easier.

I have to agree though, cycling is usually faster than U-Bahns and buses. Trams are not even worth discussing. I still found S-Bahns to be the fastest.

Around here, about 80 % of cases where helmet helps are incidents not involving a motor vehicle. I.e. bicyclist collides with another cyclist, a pedestrian, or a stationary object (Earth counts as stationary object here).

Using helmet would be very wise also in Berlin (and many do use it, if you look around).

> No one uses bike helmets in Berlin, because Berlin is safe for bicycles

That's not why people don't wear helmets there, and that's not a reason to not wear one.

I would have been in a world of hurt if I didn't have a helmet on when I fell. No cars, people, or other moving object were anywhere near me. My tire hit a slippery patch as I was turning, and I went over sideways. I broke my shoulder and my hand, and my head hit the ground so hard that my glasses flattened out on the pavement. I considered myself lucky that I didn't have a head injury, aside from my bell being rung - hard.

Wear a helmet. They not only save you from dangerous environmental situations, but they save you from yourself.

I've also lived in both New York and Berlin. I completely agree that the US has a more powerful "car culture," but the cities are very different -- New York is incredibly dense while Berlin is pretty spread out. Wikipedia says New York has 10,756 people per km2 while Berlin has 4,000 [0]. They face different issues in developing transit infrastructure.

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin

> Also, in New York, the roads are often chaotic. In Berlin, I only saw chaos around construction sites, otherwise the roads were safe and orderly.

One only needs to bike a couple minutes in New York to start encountering hazards, even in lanes specifically designated for bike use. I ride in NYC daily and usually encounter at least one of the following in bike lanes on every other block: car or delivery truck double-parked, construction, police activity, someone walking or running in bike lane, car doors opening. There's often no other option for some of these things (I particularly empathize with delivery drivers), but it all creates a very hazardous atmosphere, especially for those not accustomed to riding in the city.

I wouldn't say 12-15€/day is a cheap rental. And these are the prices you find everywhere.

A lot of tourists are buying their bikes on flea markets instead and just leave them unlocked on the street before leaving. The bikes are probably then "recycled".

In most other countries, driving is not a right, it's a privilege, and your dad doesn't qualify as a driving instructor. Everyone learns the same rules of the road, whereas in the U.S. it's totally haphazard.

When I visited Copenhagen, cars, bicycles, pedestrians seemed significantly more on the same page than in any U.S. city (NYC and Denver are examples I have direct experience with). While serious altercations are rare, most people still don't understand that bikes are considered vehicles with the same operator rights and responsibilities as with cars.

Hardly a week goes by, biking in Denver, without a car honking for no reason other than to say "get out of my way" and anytime I have a conversation with the driver they assert with absolute confidence bikes should be on sidewalks, that it's illegal for bikes to be in the street. Ignorance of the law is much more common in the U.S. So that's a huge barrier to "catching up" with any European city.

> No one uses bike helmets in Berlin, because Berlin is safe for bicycles, and that is partly due to the respect that cars and trucks show to bikers.

Bicycle helmets are not even rated for traffic accidents. It says so in their accompanying literature! They are for falls.

A couple of years ago, I went into a skid while making a turn on wet pavement and fell. I developed a huge black bruise on my right hip, and for the next six months had a pain in the right side of my rib cage. It was quite a fall. Now here is the thing: the back of head also hit the pavement quite hard, but I was wearing a helmet, so my head was okay.

There is no way I could have prevented my head from coming down. It happened so fast, that there was no time for "oh shit, I'm falling and I don't have a helmet, so I have to adjust my falling style to protect my head."

(Yes, I replaced the helmet. Not only are you supposed to after impact, but the date on it was March 1995.)

You may be able to get away without a helmet in a "safe" town, if you only ride in good weather, in broad daylight, on flat roads, go slowly, and avoid all obstacles, so that the chances of falling are vanishingly small.

WRT Brooklyn, I noticed that in the summer the area around 7th ave / Flatbush often has all its rather numerous bike parking spots overfilled. Not a frequent view in other places yet. (And I hope it will not be, because they'll just build more bike parking spots.)

It also helps that it's awful to use a train to commute to Dumbo unless you live along the F or A.

I passed a car v. cyclist crash this morning on way to work. Cyclist had evidently been riding in the pedistrian crosswalk, against the flow of traffic. Couldn't tell if he had hit a car turning across the walkway, or the car had hit him. Looked like no injuries, though the bicycle was pretty mangled.

I visited Houston for my mom's medical problems, and it shocked me how bike unfriendly the city was....

... it was 80 degrees in February.

... I live in Minneapolis and this flaggergasted me. It's a year-round bike city completely wasting that opportunity.

I have cycled extensively in Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. I have had the worst experiences in Toronto.

Yesterday, I attached a camera to my bicycle and had 0 incidents where I felt a driver was putting my life at risk.

The camera is very visible.

I've found commuting along the Danforth corridor to be surprisingly orderly in the evening.

Coming off the bloor/danforth bridge at about 5:15, clusters of cyclists often take over one of the two east bound lanes, and it makes for a wonderful ride. I wish there were some way to synchronize my ride west in the morning with the critical number of cyclists to achieve the same result.

I drive along the same route some days, and these clusters don't appear to have any negative impact on car flow. Stopped cars ignoring the no stopping signs on the other hand cause a great deal of congestion.

You can get a very good bike for less than the cost of yearly car insurance. Even very-discounted-for-years-of-good-driving car insurance.

In NYC, bike ridership is probably increasing at the expense of subway and bus ridership rather than car commutes (which almost nobody who lives within biking distance of their job does around here unless their job requires an automobile).

You get to feel good about reducing your co2 footprint too. Top of the list for many people.

(This goes even if you switch from public transit)

At the very least, they'd have to quadruple both the bike lane mileage and the Citibike coverage.

Transit and cycling are quite complementary.

Transit and auto traffic are more at odds.

You need a Brompton folding bicycle.

This is one of the things that makes a city bike-friendly, making it easy to start riding.

San Francisco: My company has a bike parking room on our floor, and some train stations have five-cent-an-hour bike lockers. (All stations have bike racks, but that's gambling with your bike.)

You can buy locking skewers and other "locking" bike hardware that will prevent people from stealing parts. Combined with a high end U lock and a cable through the wheels it's unlikely anyone would steal it during the day in a populated area.

>a huge city designed for automobiles. Many people live 10, 20 miles away from their jobs

I think a majority of workers in New York commute using public transit. It might be a minority of people living 10 or 20 miles out, but if so, it's still pretty close.