Turf War: Bringing bikes into road system laid out in stone two centuries ago
Review & Comment: Growing Use Makes Bikes Compete With Pedestrians, Trucks and Cabs
Over the last decade, our civic leaders have been attempting to change the way we move. By offering alternate methods of transportation, they hope to build a stronger, more diverse region that is less reliant on one method of conveyance. One way in which they have endeavored to do this is to vastly expand New York City’s network of bike lanes, taking them from an amenity restricted to parklands to what they see as a truly comprehensive network tying together the metropolis. However, the implementation of this virtuous vision has been slipshod at best. Instead of carefully planning a network of integrated and hierarchized bike routes, they have pieced together a seemingly incidental lattice that both endangers street users and hinders their own efforts to diversify our transportation. We must do better.
The basic problem facing bike lane advocates is the intermodal war for street space. Our city’s road network was set in stone two centuries ago, and save for the addition of expressways during the mid-1900s, has not changed since. What that means is through these 200 years of rapid growth, the capacity of our street network has remained virtually the same. This basic inflexibility has engendered such innovations as the streetcar and the subway, but even with such efficiencies and diversions, our roadways remain too crowded. If we are not intelligent in our planning efforts, the addition of any traffic to these assets will come at the expense of those already using the infrastructure, leading to mayhem for all. Therein lies the problem cyclists face. If their mode of transport is to be a civic benefit, they must find the paths of least interference and greatest efficacy around the city.