Expand CitiBike to Greenpoint & LIC, and expand/subsidize ferry service – all good moves that hopefully will someday be a regular part of our transit system.
Quinn, Levin & Van Bramer: Give Commuters Other Options During G Train Repairs
In Memoriam – 108 Cyclists and Pedestrians Killed in 2012
In 2012, victims whose lives were ended by reckless drivers ranged in age from 2 to 92. Two small boys were fatally struck as their horrified and helpless parents looked on. A high school football player with college prospects was run over by two drivers while riding his bike. A veteran UPS man on his regular rounds was crushed to death on a sidewalk. A grandmother of 22 who survived Auschwitz was killed by a driver in pursuit of a parking spot.
With murders at a historical low, the odds of a New Yorker being killed by a stranger with a car are probably greater than the odds of being “murdered” by a stranger.
Why You Hate Cyclists
I’m an asshole cyclist. I’m that jerk weaving in and out of traffic, going the wrong way down a one-way street, and making a left on red. I’m truly a menace on the road.
But it’s not because I’m on a bike—I’m an asshole on the road no matter what. I’m also a stereotypical Jersey driver, someone who treats speed limits as speed minimums and curses those who disagree. And I’m just as bad as a pedestrian, another jaywalking smartphone zombie oblivious to the world beyond my glowing screen. If I’m moving, I’m an accident waiting to happen.
Inductive fallacies, affect heuristics and assholes from Philly. Good stuff.
Where Cyclists Once Rode, Ghost Bikes Stand Vigil
On a muggy summer afternoon in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a dozen people are hard at work on the patio behind a local church. They’re stripping old bicycles of their brakes, cables and chains, and sanding and spray-painting them white.
Yet another amazing thing that takes place regularly at Greenpoint Reformed Church.
Bike Share Map
The City has released its draft map for the first phase of the bike share program. Phase I includes about 60 or so sharing stations in Williamsburg and Greenpoint (including some east of McGuinness Boulevard in Greenpoint).
City Cuts Out East W’burg, G’point From Bike Share
The Brooklyn Paper reports that the city’s proposed bike share program omits “bike kiosks east of Bushwick Avenue and McGuinness Boulevard, where an estimated 30,000 of transit-starved residents live”. Despite the typically breathless Brooklyn Paper headline, this is not news. In fact, the plan all along (as shown in the map at right) has been to limit the pilot program to lower Manhattan, downtown Brooklyn and parts of North Brooklyn.
October 2011 map of bike-sharing phase in
Source: The Atlantic Cities
So yes, transit-starved residents of East Williamsburg and the eastern reaches of Greenpoint will not have access to bike sharing on their block until phase 2 of the program. Nor will residents of the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, Harlem, Washington Heights, Inwood, the Bronx, Queens, Red Hook, Sunset Park, Crown Heights, Flatbush, the South Slope, Bushwick, East New York and one or two other neighborhoods.
It’s not clear if the phasing is driven by the vendor (Alta) or the city, but it does seem to be a factor of the initial number of bikes in the program – 10,000 bikes – and a 2009 City Planning study that determined the optimal number of bike slots per station – 24. With 10,000 bikes, there is only capacity for 600 stations.