Hey New Jersey, Prioritize Bike and Pedestrian Street Access

This week, I'm taking part in a virtual course led by Al Gore for the Climate Reality Project to become a more effective climate activist. One of the tasks in the course was to do some research on climate impacts and solutions, and write about it. I took a look at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection web page, and I had some thoughts.

Governor Phil Murphy is committed to addressing climate change, and the state’s Department of Environmental Protection has a page called Take Action with sections addressed to business owners, households, local governments, and schools, plus a summary of “New Jersey’s Key Initiatives.”

The homeowner section includes a carbon footprint calculator that allows people to see how much carbon they are using, and where. This is a great resource to start your own journey with awareness of your own impact.

To help the environment, the page recommends several actions, including using energy efficient light bulbs, appliances, and heating and cooling systems; driving “green”; installing home solar panels; saving water; recycling; and planting trees. 

According to the page, “the majority (42%) of New Jersey’s Greenhouse Gas emissions come from transportation.”  To mitigate this, the state is encouraging residents to buy plug-in electrical cars while also planning to buy electric vehicles for use by state offices and as part of the public transit fleet. New Jersey is committed to transitioning from fossil fuels to clean energy sources, so the electricity powering all those electric cars would ideally come from wind and water, not from coal and gas.

The NJDEP site also contains the 148-page 2019 New Jersey Energy Master Plan: Pathway to 2050, and this more comprehensive document includes several references to improving public transit and rethinking streets to make pedestrian and bicycle access more widespread and safer. But the “Take Action” page does not make any reference to these goals. 

A third of all car trips in the United States are less than two miles long.  If there are safe options for walking and bicycling, many of those trips can be made without using a car at all, which is good for emissions, and also good for people’s health.

It is unfortunate, therefore, that the state’s public-facing recommendations don’t do more to encourage people to take short trips on foot or on a bicycle, and provide information and resources to make it easier for individuals to do so. 

The state could create an ad campaign on radio, television, and the web about how drivers can behave to make bicycling safer, as well as reminding cyclists to ride with traffic, be visible, and signal intentions. Municipalities could give out helmets and demonstrate the use of baskets and panniers to carry groceries or schoolbooks. Increasing the number of bicyclists on the roads also makes them safer for pedestrians.  

Instead of just encouraging drivers to buy electric cars, the state of New Jersey should build infrastructure, disseminate safety information, and give away gear to bike riders, in order to make the streets safer for everyone, reduce emissions, and improve the health of the population.

Biking in New York

After a bad crash almost three years ago, I've been biking in New York again. Some things have changed, some things have not.

Unchanged: pedestrians. They step into the street without paying attention, they walk in the bike lane, they text and walk, they behave with complete unpredictability. I appreciate the anarchy on a philosophical level, but on a practical level I’d like them to acquire some level of self-preservation.

Changed: a flashy new protected two-way bike lane on 20th Street, between 1st Avenue and the East River. That used to be the scariest part of my ride, with unprotected bike lanes going both directions on a two-way street, constantly blocked by parked and stopped cars, an access road on the other side of a sidewalk, and parked cars that made it really hard to know where the next 2000-pound barrel of death might come from.

Changed: protected on-way lanes on some of the cross streets, with plastic bollards to keep the cars out AND no line of parked cars, so you can actually see the traffic.

Unchanged: construction projects that block the bike lane, forcing cyclists out into the stream of motorized traffic streaming down the avenues.

Unchanged: drivers that use the bike lane as a stopping zone, loading zone, unloading zone, delivery zone, temporary parking. Whatever. Sometimes, every block has an obstruction in the bike lane.

Unchanged: the “protected” bike lanes on the avenues with a line of parked cars that make it so you can’t see the traffic, you don’t know if a driver is going to open a door into your path, and if a pedestrian steps in front of you, your options are to slam on the brakes or hit a parked car. Sometiems both.

Changed: the sheer numbers of cyclists. There are more of them than ever. This provides a certain amount of protection by sheer numbers, because drivers know to look for us. But New Yorkers being New Yorkers, it also means a net increase in chaos, with more people riding against traffic in one-way bike lanes.

Unchanged: the city still doesn't have an infrastructure or a culture that prioritizes anything other than motor vehicles. Vision Zero is still a dream.

There are No Bike Lanes in New York City

New York City's Department of Transportation publishes a map of bike lanes, and according to the cycle advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, half a million people ride a bike on a regular basis.  There are 10,000 Citibikes and an estimated 450,000 trips by bike every day on more than 1000 miles of green-painted lanes marked with bike icons all over the city. Mayor de Blasio's administration has been promoting Vision Zero, an attempt to keep drivers from mowing down pedestrians and cyclists. (Nevertheless, in 2017 almost 5,000 injuries were reported, and 130 people on foot or on bikes were killed in crashes with motor vehicles.)

Without enforcement, the bike lanes don't work as bike lanes. 

They function as pedestrian overflow: people jogging, walking with dogs and shopping carts and strollers and fishing poles and kids on scooters and coffee trucks and hand trucks and all the other things New Yorkers carry around.

They function as temporary stopping and parking lanes for tour buses, delivery trucks, police cars, school buses, and taxi cabs, on top of all the private vehicles whose owners are loading or unloading groceries, kids, or their latest Ikea purchases.

Alarmingly, they also get used as passing lanes by drivers in a hurry.

New York City hasn't created infrastructure for short-term parking, so the demarcation of all of the "bike lanes" fills a real need -- and forces cyclists to weave in and out of the line of traffic block after block, making cycling even more dangerous.

But what really convinced me that New York City does not have bike lanes is the dumpster on Suffolk Street.

The last time I was on that block, there were several other vehicles parked or stopped around it. If the city were remotely serious about allowing bike lanes to be used by bikes, that dumpster would have gotten towed immediately, and someone slapped with a hefty fine. It's been there for a week already.

Oddly, the streets that feel safest are the ones marked with "sharrows" -- arrows indicating that motor vehicles are supposed to share the road with cyclists. There's no weaving in and out of traffic, and there's not enough room for them to get blocked indefinitely by Fed Ex trucks and cab drivers.

But sharrow lanes are right next to parked cars, and drivers and passengers don't look before they open their doors. I've only been doored once, thrown into (fortunately stopped) traffic, but I've completely lost track of the number of near misses.

Free street parking massively subsidizes car ownership, and it has to go, to be replaced by metered parking expensive enough to keep the spots clear for short term parking and official vehicles. Obstruction of bike lanes by police cars and other official vehicles needs to stop, as this sets the example that the bike lanes are a free-for-all. Cyclists are 150-pound assemblages of flesh and bone atop 25-pound machines, but the culture of New York City treats us as equivalent to ten-ton trucks.

The city needs to fix this. Bike lanes need to be bike lanes.