March 28, 2007
NYC GETTING BIKE FRIENDLY?
This may be a case of putting the municipal cart before the horse, but some NYC neighborhoods may be getting bike stands, where residents can pick up and drop off short-term loaner bikes. The program will be modeled after similar installations in European cities such as Amsterdam (pictured). The pilot program will start with bike stands in the East Village, Long Island City, and Governor's Island. Even some bike transportation advocates, however, concede that such a scheme could face difficulties.
New York City has long operated with different rules than some of the cities where free-bicycle programs have been successful; one might wonder if the bicycles would leave their racks and never return. Advocates indicate that the scheme would work in New York only in a modified form.
"If we had a program where you could pick up a free bike and use it, those bikes would end up at the bottom of the East River," the deputy director for advocacy at Transportation Alternatives, Noah Budnick, said. "It works to a certain extent in Amsterdam, but eventually even those bikes all end up in the canals."
While I feel that the city could make some other steps first to encourage bike transportation––restricting the use of dedicated bike lanes to bicycles as opposed to speeding cars, or at a bare minimum, making the killing of cyclists by drivers against the law––it's encouraging to see the city make any bike-friendly move.
(Photo from Flickr)
Posted by Lexiphane at March 28, 2007 1:15 PM
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