by Mayelly Moreno
This year marked the tenth anniversary of New York City’s Summer Street program, where approximately seven miles of primary streets are closed off to cars for three consecutive Saturday mornings in August, so people are able to cycle, run, skate, walk or otherwise enjoy the city with car-free streets. This urban experiment was modeled from other similar events from around the world, but in particular La Ciclovía in Bogotá, Colombia. It was an effort engineered by then New York City Commissioner of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Khan, as a way to provide a safe space and healthy recreation option, but also as a way to encourage New Yorkers to use more sustainable forms of transportation.
This successful decade-old experiment, the introduction of the Citi Bike sharing program, and the significant investment by the Department of Transportation in bike infrastructure have ultimately paid off. More than ever, New Yorkers are choosing to bike in order to get to their intended destinations. So much so that during these past few months a number of interesting biking records made news. The most salient one came from Citi Bike, which broke a daily record in late July for most rides in a single day with more than 70,000 of them; a feat not seen in North America till this summer.
In addition, New Yorkers are averaging about 450,000 bike rides a day and officials approximate that about one in five bike trips is made by a commuter. These figures and the dramatic growth of Citi Bike’s ridership and expansion of its stations have made NYC home to more bike commuters than any other city in the country. While impressive, these trends are not just isolated to New York City. According to the League of American Bicyclists there has been a prominent increase in bike commuting rates in bike-friendly communities and the U.S. Census Bureau cites that over 60 percent of the largest cities the country have experienced an increase in more people biking to work, which they roughly translate to about a million people. These growing numbers were so eye-catching that The New York Times brought forth the term “bike hegemony” to encapsulate the changes that we are witnessing in New York City’s car-oriented culture.
Despite its growing popularity with biking and the 1,133 miles of bike infrastructure in place (compared to 513 miles little over a decade ago), this mode of transportation has its many opponents. The main grievances revolve around the loss of parking spaces and traffic. It is an interesting dilemma, especially when taking into account that more than half (54.5 percent) of New York City households are car-free. In Manhattan alone the number goes up 76.6 percent. However, New York City’s Mayor Bill De Blasio’s administration key policy of Vision Zero, created in 2014 with the goal of reducing the number of the city’s traffic-related fatalities in half by 2025, has become one of the principal reasons for a push to build more biking infrastructure with the goal of building about 50 miles of them per year, so as to combat traffic fatalities of both cyclists and pedestrians. This has changed the landscape of some of the major streets and thoroughfares.
One interesting example of this is Queens Boulevard. Queens Boulevard is a wide, multi-lane thoroughfare that services a number of neighborhoods in its namesake borough, and it also had a perilous and unsafe reputation for pedestrians. In fact, it was known also as the Boulevard of Death. The de Blasio Administration and safe street advocates, like Transportation Alternatives, pushed for street redesign that not only protected pedestrians, but also cyclists by including a bike lane in its plans. Despite opposition from the local Community Board, the plans for these changes moved forward. The efforts have been seen as successful, since no fatalities have occurred in the past two years.
Ultimately this may be the main reason for the growing trend in bike mobility, the efforts by the City, advocacy groups, and DOT to give cyclists a safe space to get to their destinations. The “bike hegemony” could not come at better time for some, with gridlock traffic in and out New York City, the looming L-train shutdown coming in spring 2018, and the state of emergency that the Governor has issued on the MTA, many are beginning to take a very serious look at biking as a “real” transportation option and one that will influence urban transportation ideas and city planning for years to come.