“Honestly, it was seeing that bike lane every day that made me want to try cycling.”
 🙂

You know what I frown upon? Snobs who think less of someone who puts useful accessories on his/her bike.

@08ed2cf3a15dc4f2fd194a1311ee0fed:disqus His convenient lifestyle isn’t as out of reach as you might think. Do you think you’ll be living in the same place commuting to the same job for the rest of your life? We all know we can’t pick up and start a brand new life on a moment’s notice, but if you plan for it, the next time you have an opportunity to change where you work or where you live, keep Peter’s story in mind.

And even though most people don’t live this close to their jobs, they do tend to live this close to their regular super market or dry cleaners.  Start small, go big!

The protected part of the First Ave bike lane is great and I wish it would extend all the way north.  But being protected doesn’t mean there are not vehicle bike interactions and crashes.  I was riding in the lane, where it’s protected, and at a corner a cab squeezed over to stop to let out a passenger.  The cab shifted abruptly from the car lane to occupy half of the bike line area where it is not protected near the intersection and just for good measure, the passenger flung open the door right into me even before the cab came to a complete stop.  I had anticipated the cab’s move and had already moved as close to the curb as possible and begun to slow, but the door still sent me down.  The passenger jumped out and yelled at me that I shouldn’t be riding a bike in the City.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but I probably got a non-displaced fracture in one of the bones of my right hand.  I rode away at the time, but since I have limited my riding.  I am finding that the more bike infra-structure that is placed, the less I ride because drivers have become even more aggressive (perhaps jealous) when they us moving forward and they are stuck in traffic.

Grade separation would never happen. What can be done is work on existing lanes. Lanes ending with no warning (and turning into deadly sharrows) is a major fear factor for cyclists. That, and NO CROSSTOWN LANES. I’ve been working in Midtown the past few months and getting uptown is easy via East River (to 37th St), but getting from the East Side is treacherous. Dodging parked cars (both ones that drivers have left on the side of the street and the ones that are running and have drivers in them, but are not moving because of congestion) is seriously risky.

Dropping one side of parking every five or ten blocks through the core of the city’s business district (and using jersey barriers to prevent “clever” homicidal motorists) would be advantageous to the city, rather than the current effort to paint worse-than-nothing sharrows on a few random blocks (and having lanes on others, but marking it as a “bike route”) and calling it a day.

Joe, I wish you would make your rally cry something else besides the separated lanes idea.  People complain about the cost of paint on the street, raising cyclists up? at every intersection? 
The intersection and protected lane issue could certainly be helped with enforcement (yeah right, not going to happen).  But also with removing the mixing zones.  Have cars make a 90 degree turn, it slows them down, faces them towards the pedestrians who are crossing the street. 
The mixing zones, I feel, take away most benefits of protected lanes, but they can easily be fixed.

I said separated but meant “grade” separated. 
I often agree with what JoeR has to say, I just was wishing that laser focus could be used on something cheaper, or in my opinion, useful.

@twowheel:disqus The multiple problems facing transportation these days (all modes, not just bicycles) are exactly because of society’s refusal to spend what really needs to be spent. In fact, the same can be said of all types of infrastructure, not just transportation infrastructure. Sure, I’m fully aware that grade separated lanes would cost many multiples of what on-street lanes do. Still, in the context of total transportation spending, we’re not talking much money. I’m estimating NYC might need roughly 400 miles of grade separated lanes if you want most places in the city to be within a mile of such a lane. That’s a 2 mile by 2 mile grid pattern, more or less. If we estimate $1 million per mile, then we’re looking at $400 million. Heck, let’s even call it $1 billion for the sake of argument. Now it’s pretty obvious we’re not building out 400 miles of lanes in a year, even if there was full support for such a project. Most likely, the lanes would be built out over a ten year period, so now were looking at $100 million a year for ten years. To put this in perspective, we’re talking ~0.1% of the city’s budget. If the feds kick in 80%, as they did for much of the other cycling infrastructure, the expenditure is a rounding error.

I continually espouse grade separation because nothing else reliably works to prevent conflicts, collisions, deaths, and injuries. Also, NYC is very congested. Without grade separation, at best you can engineer a compromise where some or all of the modes operate highly suboptimally. To me bike travel isn’t terribly useful if a cyclist is faced with a choice of blowing red lights (when they can), or stopping and averaging 5 or 6 mph, not much over a fast walk. That’s not even getting into the real hazards cyclists face which can’t really be solved without getting motor vehicles out of the picture. So the real question is what does the $1 billion buy you? For one, it buys you average speeds rivaling the subway (if you’re a fast cyclist), or perhaps 10 to 12 mph if you’re not. That time savings in aggregate has considerable value. Next it buys you safety as well as a perception of safety. That in turn will certainly encourage more people to ride. And it will also save lots of money in terms of lost productivity of injured/dead cyclists, costs of hospitals/emergency vehicles, and more people who save the health care system money by becoming fitter. In short, I wouldn’t be surprised if in the long run the lanes paid for themselves many times over.

The kind of short-sighted thinking exhibited by today’s leaders is why things have gotten so bad. Nobody is interested in anything if the results won’t be seen until after the next election. Had that type of thinking prevailed 100 years ago, the subways never would have been built, nor would many other infrastructure projects would paid for themselves many times over. We need to stop thinking small and cheap. In the long run it costs us more money. Every bike lane certainly doesn’t need to be grade-separated. Quiet streets need no bike lanes at all. We should however have every place within a mile or so of a grade-separated lane so cyclists can do most of their trips in perfect safety, and at a high percentage of their cruising speed. Cars have had expressways for decades. Why shouldn’t bikes have something similar?

Peter, don’t be embarrassed to get a kickstand for your commuter bike. It’s a must for any bike used for everyday transportation. I did exactly what you did, added fenders, a rack and a kickstand to convert an old mountain bike into a city bike. Now it actually useful, not just fun. http://ladyfleur.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/gear-talk-kickstand-reviews/