By the way, a brief look at Bike Kill HERE. More in-depth blog about it to come after I have finally processed it all.

An interesting thing happened to me at NY Critical Mass last night. The police started enforcing the law. I’ve run reds in front of police a few times already, and I’ve watched hundreds of other anonymous cyclists do it. But as soon as it was a coordinated, and likely safer, group activity, the police put a stop to it.

I got a ticket! NYC stripes baby.

The traffic there does clear up a bit by nighttime, riding through the streets of Manhattan at night is a beautiful thing. I would gladly pay a toll to get on the Williamsburg bridge every time…

Riding in NYC over the summer made me appreciate the nice straight bike lanes in LA. It’s pretty obvious that one of the biggest challenges is ensuring cyclists’ safety near turns or intersections. I haven’t been to Western Europe yet, and I have to see a North American city with bike boxes. I hope all this fancy LUCE planning in Santa Monica gets it right.

TREX was defeated, I’ll admit. But pwned? A defeat of epic proportions? Hardly. TREX lives to fight another day!

@Timur

Kind of an aside – I sat down with Noah Budnick from Transportation Alternatives yesterday and one thing he related was that New Yorkers have the longest commute times in the country. So even though they have excellent public transit, the way they’re using it, or perhaps the fact that they’re right at it’s capacity, means they still spend a lot of time commuting. Noah said that a famous transit advocate, when this commute time fact is mentioned, habitually replies that “New Yorkers read a lot.”

It’s actually very reasonable. Traffic laws are conventions we agree upon so that we can travel about safely and not smush each other. Los Angelinos often seem to think that if they follow the law, it doesn’t matter if they are unsafe road users. New Yorkers flip it, not really caring what you do, as long as you behave intelligently and safely. I think this more practical attitude is the reason that NYC can function, and remain a safe place to live.

With your earlier comment about vehicle speeds, I think you’re getting at something really interesting (and ultimately, kind of frustrating) about Los Angeles. So much of our infrastructure is built around this myth of speed: That everywhere, traffic permitting, can be 20 minutes away. The way our roads are built is with an eye towards uninterrupted flow of traffic. Efficiency. And we really tend to take it all for granted. What you found in New York, I think, is a city in which people know that traffic will not be fast. It can’t be. It’d be great to do some sort of comparison mapping to figure out the relative densities of New York and Los Angeles traffic, the number of people – using all sorts of transportation – per block…

All a bit far afield, but nice work.

Man, I got super sick and my NYC exploits now consist of laying in bed for 15 hours at a time. Microbes – damn you.

It was great to follow your exploits, I look forward to the full Director’s Cut version of “Midnight Ridazz – In for the BikeKill!”

THANKS!!

@Martin Cassini

Well put. I think it’s reasonable to have rules of the road so that when someone acts unsafely, there is a specific recourse. But, when we rely on them as immutable guides to acceptable conduct then we = FAIL.

It’s short format, high turnover, so these it’s its’ mistakes happen. I put that “But, . . .” ^^^ in just for you!

nyc magic.
(shiver)