By Ronda Kaysen
Bike commuting over the Brooklyn Bridge is up 25 percent this year according to Transportation Alternatives.
It isn’t easy biking to Manhattan at rush hour. Cab doors swing open haphazardly, pedestrians wander into traffic willy-nilly, the space between the parked cars and the moving cars is unnerving and the weather is a far cry from accommodating. But that hasn’t deterred a record number of New Yorkers from hopping on their bicycle seats and peddling off to work this spring.
“It is very different than driving, for sure, it’s very different even from roller blading,” said Jason Labes, a 29-year-old I.T. manager who has been commuting to Union Square from Brooklyn for nearly a year. “It definitely is interesting.”
With a new, tree lined bike path weaving along the Hudson River luring cyclists to a car free ride, biking has become something of a trend in the city—even Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff bikes to work twice a week.
Morning bike riding is up across the four East River bridges 35 percent since last year and 100 percent since 2002, a report by the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives found. The Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges saw a 25 percent spike in cycling overall, with a 62 percent jump during the morning rush on the Brooklyn Bridge.
“The attention that cycling has been getting in the last year, both through our efforts and through the city’s keystone projects, has motivated and encouraged people to give cycling a try,” said Noah Budnick, deputy director of advocacy for Transportation Alternatives and a longtime bike commuter.
The bicycle commuters that Downtown Express spoke to for this story had all noticed an increase in riders in recent years. “There’s a big trend of younger folks following the messenger look—that whole crowd has added a lot more traffic to the street,” said Peter Baiamonte, a 33-year-old photographer who has been commuting to Manhattan from Windsor Terrace in Brooklyn for more than a decade.
At the tail end of the morning rush on the first day of summer, a trickle of cyclists peddled off the Brooklyn Bridge and into Lower Manhattan. Dressed in casual office garb — khakis and rumpled oxford shirts — the cyclists flew over the bridge adorned with messenger bags and helmets. There may be far more cyclists than in years past, but the pedestrians trekking across the wooden walk far outnumbered the bikers on the warm June morning.
There is something to be said for safety in numbers. As more cyclists hit the road each year — about 120,000 New Yorkers ride bikes for everything from commuting to exercise to grocery shopping — the rate of fatalities has dropped by a third, says Budnick of Transportation Alternatives. There are about 20 bicycle fatalaties a year and 3,000 injuries, he said.
“New York drivers are aware of their surroundings, maybe better than other drivers,” said Andrew Vesselinovitch, bicycle program director for the city’s Dept. of Transportation. “I do believe that people drive with greater awareness when they’re in an area where there’s a lot going on.”
Scott Demel, a 36-year-old architect, rides his bike to Tribeca from Bay Ridge nearly every day. Despite the seeming chaos of New York’s crowded streets, Demel insists New York is a far easier place to be on a bicycle than other American cities he has ridden in, like Austin, Dallas and San Diego. “New York drivers understand that there are other things on the road — they’re a little bit more aware here than in other cities where you don’t have to watch out for pedestrians.”
But accidents do happen. This week a bus hit a cyclist, crushing his leg, when he spun out into traffic to avoid hitting a taxi door. He was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, the New York Post reported. And nearly every cyclist Downtown Express spoke with had their own tales of near misses and crashes that left them scraped — or in some cases hospitalized.
A taxi hit Ross Guberman while he was riding to work in a bike lane. He ended up with 10 stitches above his eye, but he still bikes to work from Red Hook, Brooklyn most days. “Cars are often parked in bike lanes, taxis will swerve in there, often people are standing in there,” he said. Guberman, 27, rarely sees police ticketing offenders and instead often sees cop cars parked in bike lanes, too. “It’s a pretty clear sign that the city doesn’t care about the biking.”
Other bikers also complained of a dispassionate city when it comes to cyclists, several citing the city’s recent flap with the cyclists who bike in the monthly ride, Critical Mass, which gathers at Union Square each month to advocate alternative transportation.
“City Hall should take the success of the West Side bike path and make it citywide,” said Budnick of Transportation Alternatives. “They have the ability to redesign the streets for safe biking and safe walking.” He would like to see separated bike lanes ringing the city as exist in many European cities, and safe bike parking at transit hubs throughout the city. A shortage of safe parking in the city, he said, is the biggest inhibitor to biking.
The city insists it does plenty to encourage New Yorkers to ride bikes — it produces a city bike map and has been working to improve and increase bike lanes citywide. The city distributes 200,000 of the maps each year. “They’re very handsome maps,” said Vesselinovitch, who also happens to be an avid biker.
Cyclists rattled off reasons why they get on a bike every morning: regular exercise, faster than the train, cost effective. But they also spoke of discovering New York all over again — from a perspective other New Yorkers never see.
One early Valentine’s Day morning, long before dawn, Guberman found himself biking home from work. “There was absolutely nothing out on the streets,” he recalled. “But every five or six blocks you’d go past a florist prepping for the Valentine’s Day delivery. This was 2 in the morning! You wouldn’t experience that any other way. If you were on the subway, you’d never know it happened.”
Ronda@DowntownExpress.com
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