Build Better for Bicyclists

It was the fractured helmet that forced me to accept the gravity of what had happened. Had it not been for that goofy helmet I rarely wore, the jagged crack would have run deep into my skull. My left sleeve was torn from shoulder to elbow through both my jacket and the sweater that had protected my skin, but not my sore bicep beneath. My left knee was less lucky, the blood dotting through my gray jeans. My thigh throbbed. I noticed none of this as I rode my remarkably undamaged Citi Bike home. I had no choice, or so my fuzzy brain told me, but to finish the ride back to the transit desert in the East 30s that I can, as an architect, afford to call home.

I was returning from visiting my wonderful wheelchair-bound friend on the Upper West Side. I traversed Central Park, and from its southeast corner had tried to reach the relatively safe bike lane on Second Avenue, but biking through crosstown traffic clamoring towards the Queensboro Bridge is perilous. There are few protected bike lanes running east-west in Manhattan, and those demarcated with a few white stripes are ignored more than yellow lights. Delivery trucks, police cars and Ubers park in these lanes with abandon, forcing bikes into traffic as drivers curse them for doing so.

When my friend and famed former New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan advocated for a widespread commuter bike network in New York City, I thought this person, whom I loved so dearly and cheered as she successfully pedestrianized Times Square, among countless other public spaces, had totally lost her mind. I grew up biking in the suburbs, including racing 10-speeds. During high school, I came down a hill too fast and found myself sprawled on the trunk of a sedan, where kids stared at me through the rear windshield, mouths agape. It seemed to me that riding a bike in Gotham, especially Midtown, was a death wish.

But that was decades ago. Janette and others convinced me and many others through their advocacy, through the worldwide examples they cited, that we New Yorkers could do this too, that it was not she who had lost her mind, but we who were being mindless by believing the city could not change. Under her leadership, just over a decade ago, Citi Bike launched. According to municipal records, there are now over 600,000 cycling trips a day across the city. Janette went on to perfectly name her book “Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution,” because a fight it was and a fight it remains.

During a recent visit to our nation’s capital, I heard a new Republican congressman — one of the five who helped to flip the House of Representatives in 2022 — attack congestion pricing, the soon-to-be-enacted initiative to charge vehicles for entering our central business district during rush hour. “If you want to eliminate congestion in New York City,” he intoned, “get rid of the damn bike lanes.” He of course represents suburban commuters who, along with some in the outer boroughs, demand the right to drive into Manhattan daily at minimal cost. These are the same suburbanites who shamefully got their commuter tax repealed in 1999. For some of these folks, it would seem our city is nothing more than a means to an end, a place to make money, pollute our air, give asthma to our kids and illegally honk at pedestrians in crosswalks as their SUVs jam bridge and tunnel entrances, only to return home to sprawling couches where they watch Fox News paint a fact-free picture of our great city as a hell hole. 

Perhaps if they visited Paris they could see a city transformed by a ballet of bikes. Perhaps they could learn how congestion pricing has, from Singapore to Stockholm, helped to reduce traffic, clear air, curtail pedestrian deaths and increase quality of life when implemented well. Congestion pricing, while not a silver bullet, is the best first step to reclaiming our streets for the people who continue to live, work and pay taxes here in the city rather than zoom in from the hinterland.

But, dear government, there is a quid pro quo. We must do more than simply charge drivers to fill the MTA’s budget coffers — we have to fill the potholes too. We must be vigilant that the money raised from congestion pricing not only significantly improves mass transit, but improves the streets themselves. Once traffic is reduced, we need to immediately reclaim asphalt for dedicated bus and bike lanes, which must be fully protected by islands that separate bikers from traffic. Bikers in turn need to obey the law. New York’s finest need to enforce the rules fairly for all, including themselves, with a mayor, a City Council and a state Legislature that have their backs when they do.

Finally, let’s return to the potholes, including the one that almost killed me that fateful evening. Unable to ride east, I opted instead to travel south down Lexington Avenue’s relatively clear double bus lane. It was going smoothly until suddenly I was hemmed in by scooters on either side of me, which is why, when I saw the pothole ahead I couldn’t swerve or brake in time. My front tire sunk and stopped — the bike and I did not. I was lying on the pavement, buses rushing just a few feet past my head. Tourists from the “heartland” stood and gawked from the sidewalk. Two deliverymen of African descent helped me up and stayed with me until my brain recalibrated.

I love the serenity of biking, the breeze, the freedom, but I no longer bike in the city. My spouse has forbidden it, and despite the fact that I have fully recovered, I’m not anxious to get back on that saddle. Bike deaths in New York City are at a 24-year high. But that doesn’t dissuade me from believing that this could be a much friendlier, faster and safer city for buses and bikes. The first step is getting daily commuters out of their cars and into reliable and safe mass transit. This should, in turn, trigger curb management for rideshares, bicycle freight delivery and containerized trash removal, as well as clean, well-maintained streets for separated bike and bus lanes — lanes that transport people quickly, safely and ecologically.

Those who fear economic upheaval from what’s been dubbed the urban doom loop should take heed, because doom can come in far deadlier forms than some empty office buildings. Focus on those of us who invest our lives in this city, show us you give a damn about we the people, because there are, as Jay-Z croons, “eight million stories out there in the naked.”