#streetspac

I've been thinking a lot lately about how to improve bicycle access in New York City.  And not merely the addition of protected bike lanes on all of our streets, but a wholesale reimagining of the function of streets and how people would move around in a near future Gotham.

A handful of New York City streets already have true protected bike lanes: lanes separated from vehicle traffic by a second sidewalk. And I fully support the expansion of these lanes throughout the city.

But these lanes merely carve out a separate space for bicycles on streets that are still predominately designed for cars. I’d like to fast forward to the next evolution of streets: streets that are designed from the ground up to prioritize cyclists and pedestrians. 

For example, Second Avenue in Manhattan is currently divided into three or four downtown lanes for motor vehicles and one southbound bike lane, sometimes protected and sometimes not, starting at 55th Street. To be fair, that one bike lane is more than you will find on most city streets. But there’s an opportunity to think bigger.

Imagine a Second Avenue with four lanes just for bicycles, two each for uptown and downtown traffic, a lane for Bus Rapid Transit and a final lane for cars and commercial vehicles. The lights would be timed to give priority to the cyclists and Bus Rapid Transit busses, allowing cyclists to cruise from the Upper East Side to the Bowery during rush hour faster than any other currently available mode of transportation.

The infrastructure needed to support such a street could be implemented practically overnight and for a tiny fraction of the amount that has already gone towards the Second Avenue Subway, which, after a jaw-dropping eight decades of development and political tug-a-war is only just now flickering into reality.  

Bus Rapid Transit could fill in the gaps for those unable to cycle or on the days when weather would keep most cyclists off the streets.  

Now imagine these changes implemented not just on Second Avenue, but Fifth Avenue, Eighth Avenue, 14th Street, 34th Street, 42nd Street and a couple dozen other major roadways in the five boroughs.

And the benefits of turning our streets into real roadways for cyclists and pedestrians are practically endless.  We’d have healthier citizens who are less stressed by their commutes, cleaner air and fewer traffic deaths and injuries.  And frankly that’s understating the case.  A recent report showed that retail businesses saw a significant spike in revenue when bicycle lanes were added to their streets.

But while I’ve been having contemplating this bicycle metropolis, and groups like Transportation Alternatives and StreetsPac have been fighting for just such a future, there’s another force at work pushing us in the exact opposite direction.  

As I watched Jeff Bezos unveil Amazon Prime Air, drones capable of delivering small packages to our doorsteps direct from the warehouse in under thirty minutes, I realized that there’s a counter effort underway that posits life would be better if we just sat back and let the world materialize around us without lifting a finger.  As the NYTimes analyzed of Bezos’ announcement, “He sketched a vision where no one would ever have to get off a hammock for a resupply of Pringles or Milk Duds.”

To me that’s a terrifying future.  And even though Amazon drones weren’t even concepts back in 2008, it’s a future that Pixar warned against in Wall-E, their grand parable that year that imagined a word in which human beings are all morbidly obese, never exercise, are carted about on levitating La-Z-Boy style recliners and every meal and every drink is super sized.  

To be fair, I don’t think Amazon’s drones are inherently awful or will make human beings morbidly obese overnight, but they represent a larger choice that will have consequences as we decide how our cities will evolve.  Do we continue to build massively expensive and disruptive infrastructure to cart human beings and our things from point to point, or do we hit pause, rethink, and find ways to innovate that will improve and save people’s lives while spending less and relying less on fossil fuels and toxic chemicals?

That may sound like a rhetorical question but it’s not.  That’s the very real choice we’re all faced with now.  Which future do you want?

Multiple submissions from Joanna Oltman Smith.  The first one is at 2nd Ave and 16th in Manhattan.  The second is at 1st Ave and 44th.  The last two are at every cop's favorite bike lane: Hoyt and Schermerhorn.  Both of these cars are repeat offenders.  The bottom car, number 2242, is a multiple-time offender.  Seriously dude, this is NOT YOUR PERSONAL PARKING SPACE!

this is a must read for any:

subway or bus rider

citibike or bikeNYC rider