Life in the Bike Lane
New York et les cyclistes (bike lane, voie réservée aux cyclistes, jeu de mots avec life in the fast lane, une vie à 100 à l'heure )
L’invasion des vélos à New York.
En 2013, la ville de New York a lancé un service de vélos en libre service. Depuis, les deux-roues sont pris d’assaut. Qu’il neige ou qu’il vente, pour le loisir ou pour se rendre sur son lieu de travail, ça roule vite à Manhattan ! Le nombre de cyclistes est en constante augmentation et ce n’est pas pour plaire à tout le monde…
NEW YORK — On one of Brooklyn’s busier commuter streets, bicycles now outnumber cars. The two-wheelers glide down a bike lane on Hoyt Street, which links Downtown Brooklyn with thriving brownstonelined neighborhoods. There are so many bikes during the evening rush that they pack together at red lights and spill out in front of cars.
2.It is the kind of bike hegemony that was once hard to imagine in New York City, where cars and taxis long claimed the streets and only hardened cyclists braved the chaotic traffic. “New York has really become a biking world,” said Jace Rivera, 42, a former construction worker who so enjoyed riding his bike to work that he changed careers last year to become a bike messenger. “The city has gotten a lot more crowded, and the trains have gotten a lot more expensive. By biking, you spare yourself the crowds, you save a lot of money, and you can go to work on time.”
RIDE ON
3. Biking has become part of New York’s commuting infrastructure as bike routes have been expanded and a fleet of 10,000 Citi Bikes has been deployed to more than 600 locations. Today there are more than 450,000 daily bike trips in the city, up from 170,000 in 2005, an increase that has outpaced population and employment growth, according to city officials. About 1 in 5 bike trips is by a commuter.
4.Tim Weng, 30, a nurse, traded the subway for a bike after train delays kept making him late for work. It takes just 25 minutes to bike to his job, compared with an hour and two on trains. He bought a second bike as a spare. “Now that I have a bike, I go places more often because it’s more convenient,” he said.
5.Citi Bike alone accounted for a record 70,286 trips on a single day in August, which the pro-
gram called “the highest single-day ridership of any system in the Western world outside of Paris.” The bike-sharing system in New York has signed up 130,000 riders for annual memberships, up from nearly 100,000 last year.
DRIVE RESPONSIBLY
6. Still, the surging bike culture has intensified a “bikelash” among some community leaders and residents, who say boorish cyclists speed and run red lights, text while riding, cross onto sidewalks and go the wrong way on streets. Bike lanes and Citi Bike docking stations, critics say, take away space for parking and deliveries and hinder traffic on clogged streets.
7.In the past two years, proposals to add bike lanes in Manhattan and Queens have drawn opposition from residents. In an email to the community board on the upper East Side of Manhattan, Woody Allen, who lives in the neighborhood, said that while he was in favor of encouraging bicycling, “unfortunately the situation has gotten off to an unregulated start and is out of control.” The bike lane was built on his street anyway.
8.Daniel Kayton, a real estate broker, walked alongside a bike lane on First Avenue all the way from the East Village to Harlem last year to conduct an informal survey of whether it had harmed businesses and endangered pedestrians. The answer was a resounding yes, he said. “You’re turning Manhattan upside down and inside out to accommodate a handful of bicyclists and activists,” he said. “Ride your bikes, enjoy your life, but leave the rest of us alone.”
9.Polly Trottenberg, the city’s transportation commissioner, said that while her agency was sensitive to such concerns and had tried to minimize disruptions, expanding the biking infrastructure was vital to keeping pace with the soaring population. “We can’t continue to accommodate a lot of the growth with cars,” she said. “We need to turn to the most efficient modes, that is, transit, cycling and walking. Our street capacity is fixed.”
DANGERS AHEAD
10. As biking has boomed, the city’s bike routes have grown to 1,133 miles from 513 miles in 2006, including 425 miles of protected bike lanes. The city has focused on bike safety as part of its Vision Zero campaign to eliminate traffic fatalities, committing to build an additional 50 miles of bike lanes every year, including 10 miles of protected bike lanes — a goal that it exceeded last year.
11.Despite efforts to protect cyclists, biking remains perilous. In June, a 36-year-old investment banker riding a Citi Bike to work in Manhattan was killed in a collision with a charter bus, the first fatality involving the bike-share program. Nevertheless, a new city report shows that biking has become safer overall. The average rate of cyclists killed or severely injured in crashes with motor vehicles has significantly declined as bike ridership has surged. In 2016, there were 18 cyclist fatalities.
12.The report identified 10 areas in Brooklyn and Queens with relatively little bike infrastructure and high numbers of fatalities and severe injuries as “priority bicycle districts.” City transportation officials said they would build, or improve, 75 miles of bike lanes in those areas in the next five years.