Why Don't They Include Bicycles?

One of the more interesting (to me, anyway) ironies of my life is that I often ride in or through Flushing Meadow-Corona Park, the site of the 1964-65 World's Fair. 

My now-vague memories of having attended with my parents and younger siblings (whose memories are probably even vaguer than mine, if they have any at all!) include visions of flying cars and sidewalks that weren't because, well, people didn't walk:  They were conveyed on belts to their destinations.

It was a time when progress was depicted as inevitable, limitless and always aided and abetted by technologies that made our daily lives less arduous--and took ever-greater quantities of resources.  Nuclear energy would be the power source of the future because advances in its technology would render it "too cheap to meter." In those days, "sustainable" was not part of planners' vocabularies.

Sometimes I wonder just how much we've moved on from such thinking.  In his article for Next City, Nicolas Collignon points out that even as cities like New York  Paris Milan and Bogota invest in bike lanes and other incentives to trade four wheels and one pedal for two wheels and two pedals, too much of today's planning is based on such innovations as self-driving cars and flying delivery drones. At the same time, according to Collignon, too many planners neglect the role bicycles can play in making cities more livable, sustainable and affordable.

So why do planners have such a blind spot for our favorite means of transportation and, well, just having fun?  Well, since you, dear readers, are smart people, you probably have the answer:  money.  Specifically, where the money comes from:  automotive and high-tech companies, which have much deeper pockets than any in the bicycle industry.  

Photo by Francois Mori

Of course, those auto and tech companies--even the ones that tout themselves as "green"--have ties to the fossil fuel and military (given our recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I cannot call it "defense") industries.  That may be a reason why those planners have similar blind spots to the effects clean-looking technologies and "cleaner" automobiles actually have--or why they bought Uber and Lyft's sales pitch that their services would reduce traffic.  If you live in almost any major city, you can see how much that prophecy has come to pass. 

I also can't help but to think that those companies--and, sometimes, the urban planners themselves--are, openly or covertly, stoking drivers' resentments toward cyclists.

A Cyclist In Kay-Cee

I have spent about three hours in Kansas City.  That was a long time ago, in a layover on a flight from New York to San  Francisco.  Outside the airport’s windows, prairie and sky stretched in every direction. (“They built an airport and forgot to build the city,” I thought.) So  I may not have been in the city proper, for all I know and am thus unqualified to say anything about it, including the cycling.

That is why I found Ryan Mott’s Twitter account interesting.  He started cycling three years ago, gave up his car a year after that and started bringing his daughters to school in the cargo hold of his e-bike last Fall.

His feeds include footage from his helmet camera and recounts some of the perils and joys of being an everyday city cyclist—including being cut off by drivers who turn without warning and passing those same motorists en route to his daughters’ school. It could thus be a valuable resource to present to urban planners and administrators in our efforts to persuade them that bicycles and cyclists are integral in transportation and sustainability planning.

Urban Planning, In Brief

As an urban cyclist, I agree:

Can Silicon Valley Become Amsterdam--In India?

Efforts to get people out of cars and onto bicycles are most commonly associated with European (and, to a lesser extent, North American) cities with relatively young and affluent populations.  Most of them are places that have long been established as regional, national or worldwide centers of commerce, culture and technological innovation.  

Those cities, with a few exceptions like Portland, are relatively compact:  San Francisco, Montreal and New York are hemmed in by water, while European capitals are ringed by long-established, if smaller, municipalities.  In other words, they can't expand, so if people move in, their population densities increase--and housing becomes scarcer and therefore more expensive.  That, as much as anything, puts a damper on the growth in such cities' populations.


Most people don't immediately associate car-to-bike campaigns with rapidly-growing cities in developing, low- to middle-income countries.  If anything, people want to parlay their newfound prosperity, or even flaunt it, with their new automobiles.  That their shiny new machines may spend more time idling in traffic than moving to any particular destination seems not to deter them from getting behind the wheel rather than astride two wheels.

So it is in Bangaluru, known in the English-speaking world as Bangalore.  It's often called "The Silicon Valley of India" for its concentration of high-tech firms, which have drawn migrants from the rest of India. As a result, it's been one of the world's fastest-growing cities and metropolitan areas in the world: The 2011 Census counted 8.4 million residents (about the same number as my hometown of New York) but current estimates say that there are between 10.5 and 12.3 million people living in the city where fewer than 3 million lived in 1981 and only 400,000 took up residence in 1941.

But Bangaluru, like other rapidly-growing cities in developing countries, has even more knotted and chaotic traffic than what one encounters in First World cities.  As I've mentioned before, millions newly middle-class Bangalureans have taken to driving.  The real problem, though, seems to be that the city's roads simply can't handle so much traffic.  They are narrow, and many people won't cycle because they don't want to compete with motorized vehicles for space.  Worse, they are jostling with cars and trucks on the roadway while dodging huge potholes:  Before the boom, there wasn't money for maintenance, but now it's difficult, if not impossible, to keep up with needed repairs.  

The possible model for Bengaluru

So, the city and its regional administration are working on a several-pronged plan that both takes its cues, and learns from the mistakes of, other schemes in the area's cities.  In those places, bike lanes were built but people didn't use them because they weren't useful for getting to wherever they had to go or were simply seen as not much safer than riding on the streets.  Also, Bangaluru planners have learned that city-owned bike share programs have had a number of problems and, as one report put it, while municipalities are good for providing the needed infrastructure, private companies are better at providing share bikes.  A problem with those services, though, has surfaced in cities all over the world, especially in China:  the bikes are left anywhere and everywhere when people are finished with them.  So, a possible solution is to have a company like Yulu or Ofo provide the service, and for the city to build dedicated parking facilities--like lots for cars, only smaller--where people can leave, or pick up, bikes.

Could India's Silicon Valley also become its next Amsterdam?

What Fits In The Box?

Why should we encourage people to give up their steering wheels for handlebars?  Here is one possible answer:

You have a box, and it holds only so much, and once it gets beyond that--then you start to have problems.

The "box" to which economic development specialist Einar Tangen was referring is a city--in this case, Beijing.  But he could have been describing just about any old European or Asian capital--or a few US cities like New York, Boston and San Francisco.

Tangen was describing a reality of the Chinese capital:  It simply wasn't designed for 22 million people--or, even more to the point (for the purposes of this blog, anyway), 5 million cars.  To put that in perspective, Beijing has almost two and a half times as many people, and cars, as New York City.  

From what I've read, I don't think anyone even began to realize Beijing's limits until, maybe, two decades ago.  That is when industrialization--and, with it, migrations from the countryside to the cities--accelerated.  

Beijing traffic jam,  1975

In 1995, Beijing and New York had roughly the same population--around 8 million.  Commuters and visitors to New York--especially the central areas of Manhattan--complained about traffic jams.  Driving from the Hudson to the East River along 14th Street--a distance of about 4 kilometers, or 2.5 miles--could, and can, take as much as 45 minutes, while a bus ride along the same route might cost an hour.  Meanwhile, even if a Beijing cyclist encountered a traffic jam, it would mean that the road was clogged with other bikes, not cars.  That cyclist could pedal the same distance in half as much time as it took transverse Manhattan.

Today, both cities contend with traffic jams.  Starting in the early 2000s, the ones in the Big Apple started to ease up a bit, at least for a decade or so.  But since 2015 or thereabouts, motor traffic is on the rise once again, in spite of Uber's boast that its services would take a million cars off this city's streets.  Uber and similar services, unbound from many of the regulations that govern New York's taxis and limousines, put thousands of new for-hire drivers on the city's streets.  Also, Amazon and other online shopping services began to offer free shipping for very small orders (Previously, most had a minimum number of items or dollar amount for no-charge shipping), which meant more deliveries, nearly all of which come in trucks.

Beijing's traffic jams, on the other hand, now have the same composition of the ones in most other major cities:  cars and trucks--but especially cars, in Beijing's case. 

Beijing traffic jam, 2015

New York, Beijing and other cities are facing or denying this reality:  They simply can't shoehorn any more motor vehicles onto their streets.  If anything, those places, and others, should encourge bicycling--but make it truly safe and convenient for people going to and from work, not merely a way for the affluent to stretch when they get bored with the gym.

As Einar Tangen said, each of these cities is a box that's already holding more than it was designed to hold.  To keep that box from bursting, planners need to start thinking out of the (auto-centric) box.

It's An Improvement, But...

I've come across an interesting The Atlantic blog article about bike lanes.

Its author, Steven Higashide, reports that when he first started working in New York City, in 2007, "bicycling seemed like an activity best left to the pros" like one of the city's "stock characters", a bike messenger with "a heavy chain lock around the waist" could be seen "whipping through traffic with supreme confidence."

Now, he says, he regularly uses Citi Bike for "short trips to and from the subway, after-work rides to friends' apartments and fun rides on sunny days."  He attributes his willingness to pedal to the 98 miles of protected bike lanes the city has constructed during the past decade.

He briefly describes the developments that made bike lane construction happen in New York, and other US cities.  Chief among them is something the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), a forum started in 1996 for big-city transportation planners to swap ideas, did around the time Mr. Higashide started cycling in the Big Apple.  Its members researched the standards set out in design guides traffic engineers and urban planners were consulting.  Not surprisingly, there was little mention of how to integrate bicycles into urban traffic and transportation systems, and what little was mentioned had mainly to do with painted on-street bike lanes and pleasant, if impractical, off-street paths along waterfronts and in parks. 

A "protected" bike lane in Washington, DC.

Then NACTO researched the protected bike lanes that had already been part of Northern European cities for three decades. NACTO adopted their designs--well, somewhat.  NACTO's recommendations fall into the "something is better than nothing" category:  The standards in the Netherlands, and other countries, were still more bike-friendly:  their lanes are wider (on narrower streets) and the Dutch lanes offer even more protection from traffic, especially at intersections, where for Americans it is still minimal to non-existent.  

But perhaps the worst aspects of NACTO's guidelines is that they still incorporate most of the principles (or mistakes, as I've come to think of them) espoused by American traffic engineers and planners over the past century:  the speed and flow of automobile traffic are valued over walkability (On roads with medians, traffic signals are timed so that pedestrians have only enough seconds to get to the median rather than to cross the entire road.), cyclability or livability.

And, worst of all, too many of those lanes--as I've pointed out in other posts--are poorly-designed, -constructed or -maintained.  Or they are simply impractical:  They start and end abruptly.  Even for a recreational cyclist, this is a disincentive to use them:  For transportation cyclists, it makes them simply useless.  Moreover, even the protected lanes are too often blocked by pedestrians, food vendors--and, at times, even the motor vehicles that supposedly aren't allowed on them.

What NACTO's guidelines do, mainly, is to provide legal and political cover.  When then-Mayor Ed Koch had bike lanes built along 5th, 6th and 7th Avenues, and Broadway in mid-town Manhattan, he was guided only by his memory of "a million cyclists in Beijing", not any guidelines or principles of transportation planning.  That is why taxi and trucking interests, among others, didn't need to do very much to pressure the Mayor to remove those lanes only a few months later.  A quarter-century later, when New York and other cities started to build bike lanes, they could at least say that they were following guidelines set forth by professionals in the field, however misguided they may be. NACTO guidelines were further legitimized in 2013, when the Federal Highway Administration endorsed them in a memo.  

To be fair, NACTO's guidelines were an improvement on previous standards for bicycle infrastructure in American cities, such as they existed.   And NACTO is furthering its research and issuing new, and in many cases improved, guidelines.  But the way planners see cyclists, pedestrians and vehicular traffic--and motorists' awareness of cyclists and pedestrians--still needs to evolve.  Otherwise, the construction of more bike lanes, however pretty or "protected", will not result in safer cycling or entice more people to get out of their cars and into the saddle.

When Using "Bicycle Infrastructure", Be Sure To Take "Proper Precautions"!

Sometimes the bicycle infrastructure we get is worse than no bicycle infrastructure.  Three lawsuits that have been filed, and another that was recently settled, in San Diego bear this out.

Eight months ago, Clifford Brown won a $4.85 million for injuries he sustained in a crash on a tree-damaged sidewalk.  City officials had been notified about the damage five months before the September 2014 crash, which left Brown with several lost teeth, torn spinal cord ligaments and brain damage that has rendered him incapable of functioning independently.  

In San Diego, as in other cities, cyclists sometimes use sidewalks because they feel safer on them then on streets that are designed for vehicular traffic and thus have no shoulders, or even passing or parking lanes.  Cyclists might also feel safer on sidewalks than on some bike lanes, especially one like the Balboa Avenue path where a man who has filed one of the pending lawsuits crashed head-on into another cyclist.  

That man, Douglas Eggers, suffered injuries similar to Brown's.  His suit alleges that the accident resulted because the lane, which runs along the north side of Balboa, is built only for eastbound traffic.  According to the suit, the city should have built that lane wider, with a divider in the middle, to accommodate bicycle traffic going both ways, or a separate westbound bike lane on the south side of Balboa, one of the city's busiest thoroughfares.  

Michael Cizaukas, who filed one of the other lawsuits, was launched into a move most BMXers would admire when he was thrust into the air from a section of a bike lane buckled by a tree.  Not being a BMXer, though, he was thrown from his bike and, as a result, suffered fractured bones, a separated shoulder, muscle tears, hearing loss and a concussion in the May 2016 incident.

Warning: Shock Hazard!

Unfortunately, I've heard of crashes like the ones Brown, Eggers and Cizaukas endured.  But the third lawsuit filed I'm going to mention involves something I never before would have envisioned:  injuries sustained at a bicycle parking rack.  Oh, but it gets even better: Jasper Polintan says he's suffered damage to his upper extremities and other injuries that have reduced his earning capacity when--get this--he was electrocuted while locking his bike to a city rack.

His suit alleges that the city didn't properly install, maintain or provide adequate safeguards for that rack. In preliminary responses to Polintan's, Cizaukas' and Eggers' cases, however, attorneys for the city say that officials were unaware of the problems and the injured cyclists didn't take "proper precautions."

Sometimes, it seems, "proper precautions" involve simply avoiding bike lanes and much else of what's offered up as "bicycle infrastructure" in too many places.

Cycling In Montreal

Different cities have different "feels" or "vibes".  A musician--Charles Mingus, I believe--once remarked that he could tell, blindfolded, and with his ears plugged, whether he was in San Francisco or New York or Paris or wherever.  

He, or whoever that musician was, also said it was possible to sense the "energy" of a place you're visiting for the first time the moment you step off the plane or train or whatever took you there.  I believe there's something to that:  I recall feeling almost as if I'd developed another sense as I walked through the airport in Istanbul.  Every place I went, whether in the city itself or along the coast or into the Cappadocia countryside, just seemed to pulse with vitality, whether I was marveling at the Blue Mosque, sauntering among the ancient ruins or looking at the almost-otherworldly landsapes--or seeing the mansions along the Bosphrous or the shacks of once-mighty cities whose harbors had silted up.

Likewise, cycling feels different in different cities.  In Boston, it can seem like mano-a-mano combat with drivers; all through Florida (all right, it's not a city, but bear with me), it feels as if you're holding out (I was going to stay "standing your ground", but that seems pretty touchy!) and holding onto pieces of real estate that are miles long and inches wide.  In Prague, you're always climbing or descending a hill, just as I remember San Francisco.  The difference between cycling in Paris and cycling in New York is like the difference between caffeine and Red Bull laced with cocaine:  The former energizes cyclists but doesn't seem to impair their social skills; the latter turns everything into a race--to what, no one seems to know.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, Parisian drivers are courteous and respectful because, I believe, many are--or have recently been--cyclists.  I'm not sure that the bike lanes or Velib made it a more "bike friendly" city, as some have said, although I did see more cyclists on my most recent trip there than I saw on previous trips.  More time elapsed between the Montreal trip I just took and the one before it, but I think it's fair to see that there are more real changes in the city's cycling atmosphere than I've witnessed in any other city.

I certainly saw more cyclists--and, perhaps most important, a wider variety of people cycling--than I did on previous visits.  I rode some routes I'd ridden before and explored areas I'd never before seen.  I was able to do most of my riding on bike paths, although that was not one of my objectives.  I wouldn't say that the paths, which were all but non-existent the last time I was in Montreal, necessarily make cycling safer or even more pleasant than it had been before.  But I have to say that, for the most part, they seem well-planned:  I didn't find myself on "paths to nowhere" or ones that abruptly let cyclists out into dangerous intersections.  

However, I found myself questioning the wisdom of this:

I understand what planners were trying to do:  Provide paths that allow cyclists to ride in an orderly fashion.  And, for whatever reasons, they wanted or had to keep the paths on one side of the street or the other.  The issue wasn't the width of the paths.  One lane in each direction is more or less like one lane in each direction on a road for motorized vehicles:  You follow similar kinds of procedures and etiquette for riding with, behind or in front, of--or passing--other drivers.  It certainly seemed to work well:  I didn't sense conflicts between cyclists over rights-of-way.

On the other hand, there was a problem I found with them:  When you're riding in the right lane, in the opposite direction from the motorized traffic, and you come to an intersection, you have to take extra care, especially if the cross-street is one-way, with the traffic coming from your left.  This is even more true when drivers traveling in the opposite direction on the street your path parallels make right turns.

To be fair, the local cyclists and drivers didn't seem to have any problem.  Perhaps they've grown accustomed to the arrangement.  Were I living in Montreal--or simply cycling there more often--I probably would, too.  

I didn't see any of the confrontations, or any other expressions of hostility, one witnesses--or, perhaps, gets involved in--here in New York.  There seems to be more respect--or, at least, some sort of detente--between motorists and cyclists.  The latter--even the fastest and most competitive ones--come to a full stop at red lights, as do pedestrians. So do the drivers:  They don't try to "gun it" as the light is changing, and there is actually a pause between the light turning green and cars proceeding through it.  In the Big Apple, it seems, drivers have learned how to put their foot on the gas pedal a second or two before the signal changes so their vehicles are in motion even before the light is green.

In brief, the calm atmosphere I experienced while riding in Montreal seems to be a result of people's sense of security about themselves, as motorists and cyclists as well as human beings.  In New York, I am realizing, no matter how well you do, you've only survived the day and, perhaps, survived for another day.  As James Baldwin has noted, when everyone is striving for status, nobody really has any.  Or, as a student of mine remarked last night, "You have to be a shark to survive in this city!"  If that is the case, and Montreal's streets are waterways, one can navigate them as a dolphin.

Plus, you've got to love a place where you can see a sign like this:

I think something was lost in translation.

or a street with a name like this:

Admit it:  You would love to say you live on "Rue Rufus Rockhead"!

just blocks away from this:

In Vieux Montreal, or Old Montreal

or this:

"Farine Five Roses":  I'm not sre of whether it's stranger in French or English!

or where a bridge like the Jacques Cartier would have an underpass like this between the east and west walkways:

 You can't hear the traffic above you, and look at how clean it is!  It was open, even tough the west walkway is closed.

Such a thing never would be built in New York.  (A fair number of bridges, such as the Verrazano Narrows, don't even have bike paths or walkways.)  And if it were, it would always be "closed for repairs", but homeless people or the young and intoxicated would break into it.

All right.  I'll stop whining about what does and doesn't happen in New York and say that Montreal is indeed a fine cycling city. 

Taking It All With You

Writing my post on Monday got me to thinking about the ways bikes can be made into utility vehicles.  I'm not talking only about riding from place to place.  I mean using bikes as real, viable forms of transport.

That, of course, means carrying things while riding.  There are many ways.  I've tried just about all of them.  I still use just about all of them at one time or another.   My method depends on what I'm carrying, how far (or how long) I have to carry it and which bike I ride when carrying it.

Laura Lukitsch's video shows a few of those methods.  Best of all, she shows urban riders who are not racers, hipsters or messengers using their bikes as the versatile urban transport vehicles they are, and can be:

An Inverted Ghost Bike

If you live in New York, or another city with a lot of cyclists, you've probably seen a Ghostbike:  a bicycle, painted white and locked to a signpost or other structure, to memorialize a cyclist (usually named on a plaque next to the bike) who was killed or severely injured.

They are stark and somber reminders of the fact that safe travel is still not seen as a right we, as cyclists, have in the same measure as motorists.  I also see it as a way to honor the memory of someone who, as likely as not, died needlessly.  On the other hand, such shrines probably convince others that cycling in urban areas--or cycling generally--is "too dangerous". 

Of course, succumbing to such a fear is not the way to make conditions safer, not only for cyclists, but also for pedestrians (who are probably killed as often as cyclists are), particularly those who are young children, elderly or disabled.

Likewise, one doesn't prevent war or any other kind of violence by acquiescing to one's fears about it.  As Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of the Civil Rights movement showed us, the way to end or prevent war is to work for peace, and the way to combat injustice is to work for justice.

All right, I'll get off my soapbox now.  I got on it when I saw this:

I think of it as a kind of inverse--a photograph negative, if you will--to the Ghostbike.  The flower-festooned bike, parked at the corner of Hudson and Barrow Streets in Greenwich Village, is publicizing the "Peace Ride" led by Time's Up.  It leaves from the Ghandhi statue in Union Square Park at 2pm on the third Sunday of every month, and takes cyclists on a tour of the city's "peace sites".

Windy Bike Rides In The City

The wind grew stronger throughout the day.  Late this afternoon, the stretch of Crescent Street that leads to the Queensborough (59th Street) Bridge had become a veritable wind tunnel.  So had some of the surrounding streets.  But in others, the air was as calm as it is in an airliner's cabin.

That is one of the interesting quirks of urban cycling.  On the open road, when the wind is blowing, it's either in your face, at your sides or at your back.  And the wind at your side can, if it's strong enough, impede your progress as much as a headwind if you're riding "Deep V" rims.  When you're cycling in the woods, the trees and sometimes the hills or rock outcroppings block at least some of the wind.  At least, in the time I spent riding in the woods, I never found the wind to be as much of an issue as it can be on the road.

But I think that the effect of the wind is at its least predictable when riding asphalt rivers through concrete canyons.  I wonder why that is.

Now, my commute today wasn't more difficult than usual.  At least, it couldn't have been as difficult as what these guys faced:

Czeching Out My Options

Some of the more interesting experiences I've had were results of plans that changed unexpectedly.  Something like that seems to be happening again.


I had expected to teach a short course for July and part of August.  However, that course has been cancelled.  C'est la vie.  Also, the plans of a friend I was going to visit in Paris changed.  I could have gone there anyway and spent my time walking or cycling the streets and lingering in the museums (especially the Rodin, Picasso and d'Orsay) and galleries.  But, as I've lived in the City of Light and returned several times, I would have preferred to have done those things with my friend.


So, deciding I wanted some adventure in the time I had off this summer, I booked a trip to Prague. 


Now I am trying to make a decision.  You might have already guessed what it is.  Should I:

• bring one of my bikes with me,
• rent a bike 
• buy a bike there (I even thought about buying a cheap one and selling it or giving it away when I leave), or
• buy a cheap bike, bring it with me and leave it there?

I returned from my last European bike tour--in the Alps--a few weeks before 9/11.  That was also the last time I brought a bike on a flight.  Things were relatively simple then, at least on international flights.  Passengers were allowed two checked pieces of luggage, with a maximum weight of 44 kilograms (70 pounds.)  A bicycle in a box or carrier was counted as one of those pieces of luggage.  Air France and KLM, in particular, were accommodating to cyclists (Are you surprised?) but I never had trouble on other carriers I used, including Air India, Tower Air (remember them?) or Laker Skytrain (R.I.P.)


Lately, though, I've heard some horror stories from people who brought their bikes on flights.  They don't include what airlines charge for doing so.  It seems that policies regarding such things are made in situ by whoever happens to be on duty.


As I'm spending ten days in Prague, and don't plan to spend all day every day on a bike loaded with panniers and such, I'm not quite as fussy about what I'll ride.  I want it to more or less fit, of course, and to be at least reasonably satisfying (to me, anyway) to ride. 


This is one time having a Brompton might have been handy.  I thought about buying one a while back.  But Hal, who set up my Mercians said that while he is satisfied with the quality of the bikes (Bicycle Habitat, in which he works, sells them.), he doesn't like the fact that they have proprietary parts that are necessitated by some of the nonstandard dimensions of the bike.   Also, while some Brompton riders have told me they like their rides, what they and others have told me indicates that the bikes still have some of the qualities I disliked (some of which have to do with the ride) in folding bikes I've owned  and ridden.


I guess I could stretch (and hopefully not blow) my budget and buy a Brompton. Or I could buy some less expensive folding bike.  Or I could do one of the things I listed earlier in this post.  Or I could stop beginning sentences with "or."  Seriously, if you have any suggestions, please let me know.


P.S. I had intended to post this last night.  But I had trouble with my Internet connection.  I guess that's the price one pays for being cheap:  My Internet connection is free.