The majority of the city’s designated bike lanes are unprotected: basically nothing more than around thee-feet wide stretches of asphalt marked by strips of paint and an occasional bike lane symbol. That has to change.
They don’t sit in traffic. They don’t depend solely on the MTA to get them to work or home. But the people who commute on two wheels have plenty of reason to back a policy of charging cars to use the streets that many drivers think they own.
A thoughtlessly opened car door knocked the author off her bike, for a year. Deeper than the asphalt wounds was a terror of cars and new insight into what a genuine commitment to Vision Zero will take, from all New Yorkers.
Unlike its counterparts in other cities, Citi Bike is privately financed. But amid a push for it to serve more neighborhoods, and with city law requiring the company to publicize its finances soon, some believe a move toward partial public funding is likely.
After spending some time in the cyclists’ paradise of Boulder, Colo., a New Yorker returns to the difficult and sometimes dangerous practice of biking in New York—and finds that bikers here ride closer to the heart of their city.