I fully support it. Look, we have a whole transportation infastructure built up around the idea of moving people in cars, as fast as possible, in as large of numbers as possible. And if people riding bike break those rules, so be it. Streetsblog got it right when they said that cyclists need more safety protections – protections at the core of transportation infastructure, not just in helmet laws. Helmets are important (I wear one), but they only protect you against minor, single person crashes, and not the catastrophic collisions that occur between cyclists and cars.
Considering the state of the world environmentally, every single policy decision – be it in infastructure, or law enforcement – needs to be directed at the cause of averting total climate crisis. Cars, and the organization of transprotation in the city, crate a much more fundamental threat to wellbeing than rule-breaking cyclists ever could.
I love Austin Texas. In ways I can’t quite say. Perhaps my favorite part of Austin is the Shoal Creek bike path, which runs North-South through Central Austin from the river to 38th street or so, meandering along the creekbed through parks and nature areas.
Every time I go home, I find another change: last year condos began rising next to the creek as the waters rose during a wet summer; in the winter I returned to taller but still visibly incomplete buildings, and a creekbed filled with trash and dams blocking the browning water to allow access to construction vehicles. When I went back this time, the trash was gone, but the condos stood complete, lording over the downtown skyline they now dominated.
Unlike New York, Austin has never had serious residential density in downtown. Austin has always been a low-rise city, with the exception of State Government buildings and the occasional glossy business tower. In the last 3-5 years, luxury condos filled into downtown and nearby neighborhoods: driving from the airport, I counted at least 6 new high rise condo developments – a big number considering the total lack of residential infrastructure downtown (schools, laundromats, parking, etc. etc.), and groundbreaking nature of the developments, pioneering an previously totally commercial area.
Generally, I’d like to applaud badly needed high-density development in a sprawling city (Austin and San Antonio – 100+ miles away – increasingly look like a single city), but everything about these developments make me uncomfortable. For one, they sell the urban fabric of Austin as a nightlife city of artists and musicians, but sell-out the people that make that fabric possible. Artists moved to Austin because cheap rents allowed a critical mass of people to agglomerate and make a self-sufficient ‘industry’ out of themselves. Austin could have continued to support that industry, while remaining a center for government (ATX THE CAPITAL CITYYYY) and a home to the University of Texas, and done just fine for itself – there’s a solid tax base for social services, a sense of community, all is well.
Instead, the music and alt-hip-bohemia became a selling point to non-creative industries, primarily high-tech and chip manufacturing. City government got fancy new digs and started heavily promoting the moniker “Live Music Capital of the World,” even to the point of theming the city’s new airport on the slogan.
The problem is that these new industries have been gradually leaching out the people and places that made Austin feel like home. Downtown, the center for bars and shows, feels increasingly like the West Village – bohemia under glass, reliving its glory days in cruel simulacra of an authentic creative environment. The city has flooded with high-tech yuppies that raise the cost of living, and eventually rents, for everyone else.
Equally pressing, chip manufacturing is particularly dangerous in a place like Austin. The city sits on the recharge zone for the immense Edwards Aquifer, which provides excellent drinking water for about half of Texas. Silicon chip manufacture requires immense amounts of water and creates ungodly amounts of acidic waste. AMD, Samsung and Motorola have sucked water from the aquifer at the cost of lower-flowing springs (including Barton Springs, perhaps the best place in the world – see picture above), and ever-drier creeks that used to be all-access swimming pools in the hot summer months.
With every urban overhaul, someone benefits. Without a doubt, real estate interests have cashed in to huge payoffs, as the city dons its new, glossier finish. The point I’d like to make is that the changes occurring in Austin closely follow those in New York, and elsewhere: economic elites are filling out city centers, at the cost of lower class folks that make the city run in the first place. (A service-economy driven urban core in Austin would be particularly unsustainable for the folks working in it, considering the city’s shiiity public transit and rising gas costs)
Found in Austin. A sign of the times.
These changes are happening everywhere. They also feed off each other – the advertising-entertainment of shows like Sex in the City in New York become the model for urban living elsewhere. The surest sign that my old home has become an over-priced yuppie urban oasis? Realtors have started naming themselves after the swankiest of the swanky neighborhoods in New York, with the hope of that New York glitter rubbing off on their new downtown developments:
I liked the first Summer Streets – lots of conspicuously first time riders, which I think was the point, and I always support car free space. I thought the 7 am to 1pm hours were a bit absurd – I think New York has enough of a night life to expect that folks will spend most of Saturday mornings asleep – moving back the time might bump participation, and make a bigger statement against car-driving. Overall, an excellent idea, I hope this becomes a jumping off point for car-free streets designed for, you know, transportation rather than recreation. I believe I was misled, however on one major point: my ride did not once feature Lance Armstrong, David Byrne or Jay-Z, and for that I blame Mayor Bloomberg and his fleet of lies.
Summer Streets was a veritable zoo, representing almost every variety of New York’s diverse cycling biosphere.
The Commuter on their steel beater – An important species, usually the most curmudgeonly of cyclists, because they’ve spent years doing this and god damn it this world just needs less cars and more cyclists that follow the rules. Ride conservatively, but like cycling and make up the vanguard of folks making cycling easier in New York City:
The Folding Bike Commuter – Typically seen toddling through city streets trying to make bikes with 10 inch wheels do things they probably shouldn’t. Note basket and earnest desire for people to take them seriously, despite their clownish bikes. Typically Manhattan based.
The Middle Age Recumbent – another commuter variety, likely to express similar grumpiness, but while reclined. Like the commuter in most ways, except with higher disposable income to spend on a bike that puts the rider’s face at about bumper-level. I don’t understand it, but more power to them, I guess.
The Twinkie – I’m not sure on the origins of the name, but I’m more than familiar with this particular species. Note the matching bike-spandex-helmet combo and shaved legs. Potentially rides competitively, but in the mean time spends time most of their time riding circles around Central Park looking focused.
The Fixie – Among the most polarizing of cyclists, the fixie rider eschews brakes and traffic laws with equal zeal. Some descriptions call them ‘reckless’ ‘absurd’ ‘dangerous’, etc. etc. I once agreed, but now, alas I am a ‘fixie’ myself. Typical identifying marks include tattoos, u-locks, attitude, and a penchant for trendiness.
The Fashionista Cruiser – tending to be feminine, but with increasing numbers of masculine riders spotted. An outgrowth of the ‘bikes as fashion’ trend, identifying marks include sunglasses, a slow but assertive riding style, and summer dresses.
Other fauna spotted at Summer Streets incldued:
The ever-present ‘Person going the wrong way‘:
‘Person with bike very poorly suited for its use‘ (see center – hard to make out, but this is a full suspension mountain bike):
and the parasitic “NYPD Motorbike” which was unable to leave its host even when the streets are closed. It seems the NYPD was worried that TimesUp! might turn its Clown Parade into a spontaneous Critical Mass, and so posted one of the iconic scooterbikes next to the TimesUp! tent:
Missing from this safari expedition are the working class of cycling: messengers and delivery people. Their conspicuous absence from the event shows the basic flaw of Summer Streets – it was designed for people who bike in their free time, not for people who ride daily as employment. I’d like to see more large-scale pro-bike events designed for people who may not have free time on Saturday, and don’t live in Manhattan.
The greatest discovery of Summer Streets was an event unheard of on Manhattan streets. No, not just 7 miles of car-free space, but this:
Cyclists actually stopping for red lights at intersections
In the spirit of Curbed’s Bowery Bike Brouhaha – a pleasant interaction I witnessed between a bi-cyclist and one of NYC’s motor-cyclist at 3rd and 12th earlier this week.
The note:
"Attention careless asshole - You locked my bike to your stupid motorcycle. I had to cut your rear brakelight to get it out. Please be more careful next time.
and the reply, left on the bike rack when I walked by the next day:
Dear cock sucker - if I ever find you I will cut your Dick off for cutting my breaklights (sic)
Pretty much everyone I know has seen this, but I’m posting it again anyways.
Riding a bike everyday makes you a little defensive. A friend of mine once marveled at the sense of comraderie cyclists feel with each other – I think it comes from the collective defensiveness, the sense of vulnerability of being out on the road surrounded by really big pieces of machinery designed to move excessively fast, often piloted by careless, idiotic or malicious drivers. At this point I get edgy about car doors opened within 20 feet of me.
All in all, New York City is a fairly bike friendly place, and I would never discourage anyone from riding. The rewards vastly outweigh the risks, and you have a lot of fun. Normally I tell uncertain potential cyclists that New York offers three advantages over almost any other biking environment: traffic rarely moves above 30 mph on city streets, we have lots of bike lanes (with more every day), and drivers, for the most part, are used to seeing people on bikes at this point.
Which is not to say everything is smooth sailing. Many bike lanes lack serious enforcement, some roads scare me still, and every now and then you meet someone in a car that just hates your guts. Other times, pedestrians present their own problems – I swear, some people in this city have a bike-focused death wish and at least act like they very much want to get hit.
Raising the question of what to do. Cars parked in bike lanes, or making particular effort to be in the damn way such that they make cyclists’ lives more difficult (or short) are fairly easy: hock some spit on the window (aim for driver side if you can get it), give them a nice love tap, and just keep riding. People in cars like three things: 1. going irrationally fast 2. the outside of their cars, and 3. the illusion of security provided by total isolation from the outside world. A little spit and a fender tap gets at at least 2 of the 3 important car-functions, which I think is a pretty good ‘heads-up, don’t do this again’ type message. Sometimes you can give them the finger too. This response can be adjusted for different circumstances, but I think it provides a good start.
Now, pedestrians present a bigger problem. I don’t mind a little property damage here and there, but I really wouldn’t feel comfortable spitting on someone who walks in front of me. My strategy with pedestrians involves making them realize they’re about to do something stupid – walking in front of a moving vehicle – by making them very aware of the presence of bikes. Typically, this means a yell (try your best punk rock Oi!), and actively claiming the bike-space they were about to inadvertently enter. So, roleplay: You’re riding up Lafayette and reach 8th Street/Astor place, where peds often step into the bike lane to idle or jaywalk. You near the intersection and someone just moseys out in front of you – you yell (Oi!), and then ride right where they are about to step.
Now, the third case is the driver the pursues you in their car, trying to hit or harass you, or that confronts you in some way verbally. I’ve had two experiences with this recently: once at Centre and Canal, after getting nearly hit by someone suddenly pulling across the left lane to park (in front of a fire hydrant), I yelled something like
“What the fuck are you doing?!” and pulled around them.
At which point the driver – behind the wheel of one of those really really big Cadillac SUVs – sped up to pull right in front of me again, rolled down his window and glared:
“What am I doing? Do you really want to see what I can do?”
I paused. He was clearly driving a much scarier vehicle than I, with a level of malice I can’t match. At this point I hadn’t acquired the u-lock of justice (more on this below), and wouldn’t be able to muster any serious self defense (or offense against his too shiny car) with the speed necessary. So, I took the high road/sidewalk and kept riding.
The other incident was today. I was riding home down Lafayette when someone in the back seat of a Jeep swings open a door perilously close to where I was riding. I had a few close calls earlier in the day, so I gave them a wide berth, but I felt they had been reckless, so I gave a casual “Hey, watch out” as I passed by. Coming to the light, I heard the passenger yelling at me – “you watch out, motherfucker… pussy riding a bike, what the fuck?” or some such. I paused at the light. My mind went to what I call ‘The U Lock of Justice,” the standard Kryptonite mini-U lock I carry around in my back pocket – my first line of defense against bike theft, and assholes that threaten me. here’s a pic:
Justice is fluorescent.
I like U-Locks. They’re simple, effective, and Kryptonite makes them with an exposed metal end that turns them into excellent weapons if the need arises. I thought maybe it had. I stopped at the light and decided to turn around. I rode up next to the guy on the sidewalk, and as I pulled along side him, he made the standard hyper-masculine come on: “what, do you want to go?”
With a good look at him, I knew I wasn’t up for it. He looked like something between Yuppie scum and douchebag fratboy, and with nice folks enjoying their dinners on the sidewalk cafe next to us, I figured he wasn’t worth my time -or ruining someone else’s dinner. Sometimes just calming folks down shows the absurdity of their actions, and makes them thankful for a second chance. I tried to keep it simple – “You almost hit me – you opened the door right in front of me. I just asked you to be more careful,” then rode off. He mumbled a few other deep-throated manly-isms as I peddled off. In this case, diffusing a petty argument made more sense than escalating – if the door hit me and I got the same attitude, I might have had a different response.
So my question is this: when should cyclists enforce their own rules of the road, and how. The video above I think demonstrates that the police don’t have sense enough to figure out sensible bike traffic rules for themselves (and I’ve dealt directly with the cops about bikes enough to know they generally have no clue when it comes to non-car transportation). That means in many cases, cyclists need to create their own code of conduct – claiming street space and respect in a way that makes themselves more visible and safe.
That’s right I did the Tri – and not one jellyfish (except in Chinatown, where it appears you can buy anything, including by-the-pound invertebrates). I am now a champion of the big city transit triathalon, biking, walking and subway-ing in the past 24 hours, in all different parts of the city. Each form of transportation has its special charms, revealing and concealing different parts of the urban environment, for better or worse.
I won’t write about cars or buses. I don’t ride the bus. Perhaps I should. I find them tedious for some reason. As for cars: I hate them. I believe anything that makes driving a car more difficult, expensive or frustrating is inherently good.
Bike:
Bike. Clowns. New York. from Mandibergs Flickr photostream.
In many ways, still the bottom of the transit totem-pole. Plagued by street-space, parking and respect problems all around, I find that in my bike-heavy phases (summer, spring), I tend to see the city as a collected grouping of interesting places buttressed by asphalt war zones.
For example: today, riding across the Brooklyn Bridge, I was yelled at by a pedestrian (who was standing in the bike lane) after I almost hit him. After telling him to move, he screamed “YOU’RE IN THE BIKE LANE!” Well, no shit. This I feel epitomizes my experience riding: stupid people endanger me, then pretend its my fault and express their idiotic conclusions by yelling (or honking) at me.
Anyways, as I was saying. Peddling through the mild chaos, I generally keep focused on where I’m going (because lord knows what will end up in front of me if I don’t), and don’t take time to experience the world passing me by. Thus, I come to see the city as comprised of destinations and departures divided by roadway, rather than as the 3-dimensional congested plot of humanity it more likely is, filled with the quirks and dangers that implies. Lines and dots, lines and dots.
Subway:
I call bullshit. from Arimoore's flickr photostream.
Always a difficult subject for me. It doesn’t help that the MTA regularly acts like they hate their customers, raising fares while lying about infrastructure improvements those fares should pay for (though, admittedly, MTA has been put in this position by a total failure by both federal and state authorities).
(BTW, does the J train always sound like death? I could have sworn I heard the sounds of parts just falling off that motherfucker, and it kinda scared me. Dig the Williamsburg fly-over coming into Brooklyn though.)
Subways drastically reshape the city. The MTA subway map epitomizes the experience of riding the subway – an over-emphasis on Manhattan, the relegation of other boroughs to the spokes of a wheel, and the creation of giant no-man lands, unserviced by the iron horse. The subway/train system sometimes seems like an example of a technology that cripples, attaching people to a transit system that ultimately attaches itself to so little of the city
And its disorienting. You step out of the subway and have no idea where you are often – the spaces between have been eliminated. The only interaction in passing occurs between other people, who won’t recognize you and in many cases try to avoid your glances. The subway creates a city of destinations as well, but more-so framed by dead space, rather than the war zone.
Walking:
Walking encouraged. from Joelogans flickr photostream
Walking is perhaps the quintessential New York experience. Today I took a stroll off the Marcy J stop around 11.30 at night – perhaps making me a candidate for some random street violence, the latest quintessential Williamsburg experience.
I’ve been walking through the city more than usual for the last few days because a good friend is visiting me from out of town. I miss walking – I do most of it in the winter, when the ice scares me off my bike (still a warm-winter southerner at heart), and the weather doesn’t afford me a chance to wander as much as I should. In fact, wandering, along with awe, defines New York, and big cities in general. Whether as the classic urban flaneur, or through Situationist psychogeographic meanderings, walking reveals the city in its purest form – as a dense, human environment careening off itself into the height and darkness of vertical building. As you walk, you get a sense of the order in the off-hand randomness, and really understand them as 3-D spaces, with the to-and-fro becoming just as important as the destination
I like cities, because you can never see all of them at once. The time it takes to understand them by traveling through them, and in that time they change you.
Living in New York affords me the luxury of never needing to drive a car, but even when I lived in the South, I pretty much rode my bike everywhere. There are two main impediments to riding in the South: shitty bike infrastructure (generally, this is the land of the suburban boom-town and the epicenter of sprawl, but Austin def. provides in some cases), and a love of air conditioning inculcated from birth.
Seriously: AC in cars, AC in businesses, AC in homes, all the time. My dad told me stories about the introduction of AC in Dallas, when AC made or broke businesses – those that had it attracted crowds, those that didn’t fell behind. No doubt the same is true today – anyone without the air commits social suicide. Aside from the energy-electricity impacts of AC-ing the world, the social function of cool air effects the environment as well.
I’m talking about sweat. And the stigma against it. Sweat comes from human-propelled transportation, an kind of energy that American infrastructure was designed to eliminate. Now that global warming forces us to reconsider how we get around, we need to reconsider how we smell. Because of AC, the option to climate control our entire lives, the stigma against sweat worsened, encouraging the use of energy or transport that minimized human exertion. Even in New York during the summer, I know folks who live their lives with the unreasonable expectation (considering they don’t have or need cars) that they will remain unsweaty throughout the day.
The point is this: the environmental crisis has taught us that many of our modern conveniences present losing propositions in the long run. AC is one example – the heat it eliminates indoors only gets pumped outdoors (creating urban heat islands, which suck – last May in Athens, GA, it rained every afternoon for 15 minutes due to the Atlanta heat island, which has become its own meteorological force); the energy we use to power AC units creates its own heating problems, tooextensive to go over here. We need to learn to accept sweat now, so we don’t overheat in the long run.
edit: jesus, I didn’t realize just how naked the people in that picture were… changed to a new pic.
The NY Post made a fuss today about the non-story that pedicab law remains non-enforced. I’ve been a pedicab driver and talked to lots more, and believe me, that job is plenty hard without without the overbearing eye of the law bearing down on you. The whole story reeks of bias and bullshit – everything I know about pedicabs and NY police makes me skeptical of new regulations, and it turns out the problems identified in the article really aren’t problems in the first place.
Recently, I witnessed Park Police enforcing their own personal version of pedicab law on riders in Central Park, and if that incident reflects the enforcement priorities of the NYPD at large, I don’t think safety problems lie with the pedicab drivers – the onus is on the police to create a safe environment for pedicab drivers and their passengers. Look: the city still can’t keep cars from killing bike riders, which doesn’t inspire confidence in the notion that they could protect pedicab drivers, or their passengers.
The Post article identifies two problems with pedicab regulation: safety and prices. The safety issue is a non-starter for me. Even without a pedicab law that arbitrarily limits the number of cabs in the city, you can’t hit pedestrians with a bike, you can’t ride the wrong way, and you can’t recklessly endanger your passengers. Seatbelts don’t even make sense for pedicabs – there’s no windshield to fly through and no rollcage to protect passengers if the cab flips (highly unlikely, btw – most pedicabs are ultra-stable trikes that don’t flip), so being trapped inside is the last thing you want in a crash.
As for prices, there’s already a simple answer – ask how much the ride costs before you get in, and don’t take the ride if it costs too much. And drastically reducing the number of pedicabs in the city certainly won’t decrease prices.
The City Council wrote the current pedicab laws at the behest of the taxi industry. Trying to keep pedicabs off the road only encourages the petroleum-centric, dead end transportation system that creates safety problems in the first place.
Riding through Central Park last Thursday, I happened across a case of overzealous policing that has come to define New York. I witnessed 5 pedicabbers, part of an industry already stressed by city regulation, receive some undue police attention from the NYC parks department. I was riding the big loop through the park near Strawberry Fields when a parks SUV pulled in the wrong direction on to the loop, taking up the center lane.
An officer stepped out into the road, and began yelling.
First, she yelled at a rider who was stopped behind someone dropping off passengers on the right side of the road. She told him to identify himself, and he pulled out both his regular ID and pedicab license. She handed off the rider to her partner in the driver’s seat, who began writing a ticket.
At this point, I was a few feet behind the car, and figured something was up, so I pulled up onto the sidewalk next to the rider. The first thing I heard was the officer in the SUV asking for the rider’s address.
“DON’T LIE!” the first officer yelled. The rider, who I later found out was named Stas, spoke with a heavy Russian accent, trying to defend himself. “I’m not lying, I just moved here!” he replied. The ticket writing went on. At this point, I pulled out my camera phone, as the first officer stepped back into the road to yell down other riders.
