Even Strivers Have To Walk

About two weeks ago, I bemoaned (OK, complained about) a sign ordering cyclists to walk their wheels across a bridge.  After all, it's a long bridge and it leaves you off on Randall's Island, which is about as far as you can get from anything else (Well, OK, there's Staten Island) in the city.

But I guess I shouldn't complain. As cyclists, we aren't the only ones beset by irrational rules.  

Which is more difficult:  walking a horse or walking a bike?  Since I've never walked a horse, I don't know.  

At least this gate faces West 138th Street between Frederic Douglass and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevards in Harlem.  The block is part of a district known as Striver's Row, which boasts some of the most beautiful and distinctive residential architecture in this city, if not the whole country. I ride through it every chance I get.

I Couldn't Cross This Bridge When I Came To It

This morning I rode to an appointment in the Bronx.  Although it's friendly to neither cyclists nor pedestrians, I take the Triborough/Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. 

The bridge is actually a system of three spans, all of which meet on Randall's Island.  One spur connects the island to Queens, where I live, and the other two link it to the Bronx and Manhattan.

Actually, when I say the bridges are connected, that's true for motorized vehicles.  If you're a cyclist or pedestrian, you have to find your way through a maze of poorly-marked streets and paths in various stages of construction, destruction, reconstruction and deconstruction. 

My appointment was in the southwestern part of the Bronx, not far from Yankee Stadium.  It's actually easier to take the Manhattan spur from Randall's Island and take the Willis Avenue Bridge in the Bronx, which lets cyclists and pedestrians off near Gerard Avenue, a north-south street that--almost surprisingly--has a bike lane. I may have been the only one who used it today.

Manhattan Spur of Robert F Kennedy Memorial Bridge (a.k.a. the Harlem River Lift Bridge)

Anyway, when I got to the Manhattan spur, the pedetrian/bike lane was blocked off.  I saw bulldozers and cranes; I don't know whether the path or the bridge itself is going to be worked on.  But the lot around the entrance to the walkway was all torn up.

I found no mention of this closure on the sites of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (which administers the bridge) or the city's Department of Transportation.  I wanted to photograph the site, but the area was swarming with cops, and there are signs on the bridge itself that say photography is forbidden. 

Fortunately, I didn't have to go very far to get to the Bronx spur.  I rode about the same distance as I would have had I pedaled up the Manhattan span.  However, the ramp off the spur is a maze of 90 degree angles (Imagine a spiral staircase without the stairs or the curves, and with all matter of human refuse.) and it lets cyclists off in a spot where trucks enter and exit factories, a Department of Sanitation garage and the expressway.  And the nearest intersection, at St. Ann's Avenue and the Bruckner Expressway, is a nightmare because all manner of vehicles turn from and in all directions, including some you didn't even think were possible.

In spite of everything, I was still early for my appointment.  Still, I wish that there'd been an announcement of the closure and that it, and the way to the pedestrian/bike paths, were more clearly marked on Randall's Island.

Why Isn't Bike Share Booming In Beijing?

Someone I knew took a trip to China about twenty years ago.  Back then, it was still rare for an American to go there, except on business.  And, from her photos and descriptions, she experienced much of the "old" China, complete with streets as clotted with cyclists as the Long Island Expressway (a.k.a. The World's Longest Parking Lot) is clogged with cars during rush hour.



Back then, China was known as The Kingdom of Bicycles.  Even today, more bicycles are ridden in that country--by far--than in any other.  And 79 of the world's bicycle-share programs--including the world's two busiest, in Hangzhou and Wuhan--are found there.

So, one would expect that a bike-share program in Beijing would be as popular as some of the local delicacies.  However, the program in the Chinese capital is probably one of the biggest busts, so far, in the movement.

One explanation for the Beijing bike share bust is that more than in other Chinese cities, in Beijing automobiles became symbols of prosperity and bicycles as markers of poverty and downward mobility. That could also explain why a "bike culture" hasn't developed as it has in Hangzhou or in places like Copenhagen, Portland or New York. In other words, bicyling--even for recreation, let alone transportation--is not seen as "hip" in Beijing as it is in the other cities I've mentioned. In fact, from what I've read, there isn't even a subculture or "bike neighborhood" in the Chinese capital.

Of course, that doesn't mean that one couldn't develop. After all, about a generation ago, bicycling in Copenhagen experienced a devolution similar to (if, perhaps, not on the same scale) as the one Beijing is experiencing. Something similar happened in New York and other American cities a couple of generations before that. In New York, Copenhagen and other cities, people got tired of fighting traffic and realized that bicycling could get them to their destinations faster than driving and, in some cases, even mass transit. From what I've been reading, it seems that some people in Beijing aren't happy about the auto traffic congestion, let alone the poor air quality that's resulted from it..

Maybe Beijing is just one spike in petrol prices from a boom in its bike share program.