As you may have read on networks social, last October, Weelz.fr had gone for a walk in American lands, more precisely on the east coast, in New York City.
If the purpose of this trip was above all for a personal vacation with the family, the idea was also to see how the city had evolved from a cycling perspective.
Particularly since the departure of Janette Sadik-Khan, NYDOT transport commissioner (New York Department Of Transport) which has played an important role in the transformation of certain areas of Manhattan and in the development of the bicycle network.
Car culture
But don’t be fooled, the image you might have of this gigantic city and its ever-congested streets is unfortunately still very real. If on the bike side, you can easily make the entire tour of Manhattan Island along the Hudson and the East River, between greenways to the north and beautiful secure two-way cycle paths to the south, the internal urban cycling network. is still far too sparse.
Cyclists can of course ride any streets they want. But finding a bike path is much more complicated.
To travel through Lower Manhattan – the area south of Central Park where the bulk of New York activity is concentrated – the urban cyclist has the choice of taking only the 1st and 8th to the north, and the 2nd and the 9th to the south. Nothing in between, except Broadway, but the track is quite fragmented.
For east-west journeys, only a few streets were allowed to draw cycle lanes. One in the west direction, and one block above in the east direction. And they are separated by ten blocks each (29th and 30th, then 39th and 40th for example).
For those who are not fortunate enough to live or work near one of them, or who would not like to make a detour just to find a track or bike lane, well all they have to do is deal with the intense traffic of NYC, which is, as I said above, far from being a legend, especially in Midtown.
Follow the white rabbit
If the New Yorker is often in a hurry, the motorist is even more so.
And better not to hinder him on his journey. He handles the horn with a rather incredible frenzy, yelling at the taxi which stops without looking, cursing the delivery man who blocks the street. He even goes so far as to honk the pedestrian who would have had the bad idea of crossing red.
Take the image of an innocent and cute white rabbit, stuck in the heart of a horde of buffalo launched at full charge, and you’ll get a feel for what a cyclist can feel like on the streets of New York City.
And all this, without counting on anything that can obstruct the bike paths: taxi, delivery truck, garbage cans, pedestrians, tourists … even the famous NYPD, the New York police do not hesitate to come #GCUM on the bikelanes. (a Twitter account, @Copsinbikelanes, takes care of denouncing them).
Certain points of Manhattan are concentrating the tensions. I am thinking in particular of the famous Brooklyn Bridge, whose cycle path is shared with the pedestrian only by a simple marking on the ground (photo above). It’s hell for the New York city cyclist to go through, due to the hordes of tourists paying little attention to this one.
Positive point: the daily cyclists being more and more numerous on this bridge, a project is being discussed to secure this track and better separate it from pedestrian traffic.
New York’s bike sharing system, the CitiBike, has been a huge success since its launch in 2013 and is widely used.
Despite cold weather (but dry) during our visit, users, locals and tourists alike, did not hesitate to ride the blue steed (in the colors of an American bank) to get around Manhattan.
It must be said that the network of stations is quite substantial: nearly 500 stations for almost 10,000 bikes. However, the mesh remains very important in Lower Manhattan up to the southern tip and is still sparse above Central Park and in the other boroughs, except north of Brooklyn.
Read our article: New-York, the Citi bike is finally launched
You might as well be honest with you (I don’t see why I shouldn’t be elsewhere), I regretfully did not have the opportunity to drive around New York. Well yes, a little bit in reality, but like a good old tourist, that is to say a Sunday afternoon to visit Central Park with the family.
I had also scheduled interviews with two famous New York bike bloggers, BikeSnob and Brooklyn Spoke, unfortunately, hazards (family impediment for one and injury for the other) did not allow these meetings.
That being said; My eye, used to observing urban cycling life, has allowed me to provide you with a quick overview of how cycling is taken into account in the Big Apple.
And the least we can say is that, although things have changed, there is still a long way to go before we believe ourselves – let’s dare the pun – in New Amsterdam¹!
However, New York City has set itself ambitious goals to reduce its GHG emissions. Initiated by Michael Bloomberg in 2007, PlaNYC is a plan of collective efforts to prepare the city to welcome an additional million inhabitants by 2030.
This involves various measures, such as rehabilitating older buildings to lower their energy consumption, and, of course, reducing automobile congestion by promoting alternative modes of transport, in particular cycling.
We can bet that if New York is able to do so, other cities around the world will follow suit.
¹ Name of the Dutch establishment established in the 17th century on Manhattan Island by the West India Company.
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