Last Thursday I ventured up to New York City for an afternoon of cycling the streets south of Central Park and to attend an event at the Brompton store to promote the new book by Brompton CEO Will Butler-Adams. In the sections of Manhattan I traversed, there were bike lanes on many of the main avenues and cross streets. Because most of the streets were one-way, the bike lanes typically existed on one side of the street and flowed in the direction of auto traffic.
I rode from Penn Station at 38th Street up 8th Avenue to Cental Park, then took 2nd Avenue all the way down to Chinatown, which generally did not have bike lanes on its neighborhood streets
There was a certain amount of semi-organized chaos in the bike lanes, where I was often a pedaling minority in contrast to ebike delivery riders – who were not even trying to pretend to pedal, motorized scooters, skateboarders, walkers who (I guess) found the sidewalks too crowded, and runners exercising. Thank god – no rollerbladers.
As I was often the slowest person in the lane I tried to stay to the right, but when ebike delivery riders were coming at me head-on, which happened more than once on, what should have been, one-way lanes, other ebikers would zip around me on my right. Oh – and I was also in the minority as a person wearing a helmet – but don’t get me started…
Pedestrians and bike lane dwellers got along reasonably well. Though New Yorkers are still competitive jaywalkers, they paused for on-coming ebike delivery riders who made it clear they were NOT going to stop. Conversely everyone had to watch out for locals crossing the street with their eyes lost in their phones.
One ebike rider came at me, going the wrong way, riding side saddle with one hand on his bars and the other holding his phone up to his face. Sign that dude up for Cirque du Soleil. On cross streets, where restaurants still had covid-era outdoor seating enclosures positioned in parking spaces, the bike lanes ran narrowly between the sidewalk and these structures – with signs, almost always ignored, encouraging those in the bike lanes to slow down.
Through the afternoon and evening, I saw no traffic enforcement against elicit activities going on in the bike lanes. It was a total atonomous zone; almost like cops said, “this is what you wanted – good luck with it…” But for the most part, everyone in the lanes kind of worked it all out while in motion. I witnessed no accidents, no “lane rage” – really not even any close calls. Interestingly the car and truck drivers seem to honor the dedicated bike lane lights and lane street patterns more than than those in the lanes.
Later in the evening, when auto traffic was jammed up in SoHo and cars blocked intersection boxes and bike lanes, those of us on bikes became like minnows zipping between bloated SUVs and sedans, laughing and whooping at our mobility as drivers expressed their frustrations with horns and hollering. I have to admit most of my day of riding in NYC was a thrill.
What I experienced Manhattan may be a preview of the future for every city and town considering the addition of bike lanes to the mixture of traffic design. Without some expectations of rules, and police oversight, no doubt some amount of mayhem will emerge. But how to frame expectations in the lanes without clamping down too hard?
In the Brompton discussion that night with Will Butler-Adams, he noted that London was ahead of New York with bike infrastructure, but could tell that now it was installed in this big American city, no one was going to let them take it away.
