Big Apple goes big on pedal power
New York sees fastest bike boom in city known for bottleneck traffic
NEW YORK: Expanding bike lanes, handing out free helmets and making lessons free: New York is making great strides in encouraging pedal power at the expense of exhaust fumes, even if some cyclists are still nervous about navigating bottleneck traffic.
For years, the city of 8.5 million – which has the most extensive public transport network in the United States – stood and watched the bike boom take off in European capitals.
In 2013, then billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg launched the Citi Bike sharing scheme and since then, New York has seen the fastest growth rate in cycle use of any big US city.
“The city has come a long way in terms of having a much stronger commitment to promoting bicycling,” says Rich Conroy, education director for Bike New York, a nonprofit organisation that encourages safe cycling.
“People realise we can’t grow as a city by building more streets and adding more cars,” explained Conroy.
The city’s department of transportation says 778,000 New Yorkers – 12% of the adult population – have biked regularly in 2017, more than triple the 250,000 of five years ago.
In the last five years, the city’s department of transportation has expanded and enhanced the on-street bike network by 480km.
Around 86,000 New Yorkers – 2.5% of the population – now use a bike to get to work or school.
Yet however enthusiastic riders may be and however much an increasingly dilapidated and unreliable subway encourages people to pedal, cyclists worry about safety.
Cycling in parts of Manhattan is not for the faint-hearted. Eighteen cyclists were killed and nearly 5,000 injured in 2016.
Bridges, tunnels and avenues are packed with buses, trucks, SUVs – and potholes.
The city has put the brakes on legalising electric bikes, says Morgan Lommele from the association “People For Bikes,” who is also an e-bikes campaigns manager.
Fining e-riders is also a lucrative source of income for the police department – a US$500 (RM2,073) fine or confiscation of the bike are risks disproportionately borne by delivery men, often recent immigrants on poor salaries.
With controversy growing, Lommele hopes Mayor Bill de Blasio will make good on his commitment to the bike and eventually change his mind.
“Fining all e-bike riders will not make e-bikes go away, especially in an industry where e-bike sales are growing by more than 80% year on year,” she says. — AFP