can someone link me a primer on why there is so much apparent resistance in albany to nyc traffic enforcement measures like speed cameras and red light cameras? why don’t we have thousands of each? i might guess that they more than pay for themselves. surely upstate legislators can’t care. so, is it just the queens and SI assembly?

I think “cash grab” is the excuse, rather than the real reason: drivers just don’t want to drive at slower, safer speeds. And the auto industry doesn’t want people to drive at slower, safer speeds, because doing so is less fun and makes the odds of a person wanting to buy a car become less likely.

All for it, but could we please include the walkable towns in NY state too?

I’m all for cutting off another part of the anatomy, especially in cases where the speeding causes serious injury or death.

Or, more seriously, we could assign community service.

Joe,

some number crunching for you:

Question: What would medium term goal be for number of Cycling Commuters internal to Manhattan ( live & work in Manhattan ) plus external ( live outside of Manhattan and work in M)

Some numbers:

Live & Work Manhattan – 850k
Live Bronx work M – 150
Live Queens work M – 260
Live Brook work M – 265
Live elsewhere work M – 625

What do you think would be rrasonable goals in numbers ?

Parents coming to pick up or drop off their children around primary schools is a serious problem. There needs to be an educational campaign AND the implementation of significant traffic calming AND loading zones surrounding schools.

I’m going to assume you’re asking for reasonable goals if/when NYC has a citiwide comprehensive bike network made up of a course grid of non-stop trunk routes and a finer grid of protected lanes, regular lanes, and sharrows for the “last mile”.

I’ll assume such a network can offer an overall average riding speed of maybe 12-13 mph for a typical cyclist in average condition. I’ll further use the 30 minute window where if the trip takes 30 minutes or less, you get large numbers of potential cyclists. If it takes much longer, the numbers fall off rapidly. At the average speeds I mentioned, 30 minutes implies a commute of about 6 miles each way or less.

Let’s start with live and work in Manhattan. Without knowing the exact distribution of where people work and live, we do know the longest dimension of Manhattan is a bit over 12 miles. We also know the jobs are overwhelmingly concentration in midtown. If we use “Manhattan distance”, then a 6 mile commute might be 1 mile crosstown, 5 miles up or downtown. With that metric virtually everyone south of midtown is a potential bike commuter, assuming most jobs are in midtown. Everyone south of roughly maybe 150th Street is also. Let’s say that covers 2/3rds of workers who live and work in Manhattan. With a really great bike network I think a 25% bike mode share of that segment is a realistic goal. So you have 25% of 2/3rds of 850K, or about 142K. You still have everyone north of 150th Street. However, just about everyone will have a commute longer than 30 minutes unless they ride faster than average. Still, given the size of Manhattan, the average commute from north of 150th Street isn’t going to be horribly worse than 30 minutes. It’ll probably be under 40 minutes for just about everyone. Some who live north of 150th Street might not work in midtown, so their commute will fall in the 30 minute window. You won’t get 25% mode share here, but 15% might be realistic. So you have 15% of 1/3 of 850K, or about 42K. Added to the 142K for workes south of 150th Street, that brings your Manhattan total to around 184K.

The other groups aren’t so rosy. Unless you work in upper Manhattan, any commute from the Bronx will be much longer than 6 miles. That basically makes the Bronx bike commuters pretty much all outliers who either ride faster than average, or don’t mind a much longer than 30 minute bike commute. Also, given the size of the Bronx, some commutes from the northern parts will be too far to consider biking for nearly everyone. I’ll guess then 5% mode share, or 7.5K. Let’s round down to 7K to keep whole numbers.

Queens and Brooklyn also present a less than ideal picture. Figure once you go over the bridges you might still have a mile or two of riding, and the bridges are over a mile long. That puts the best commuting zones within 3 miles of the bridges. In favor of this is the fact these zones are denser than parts east. Still, the numbers probably aren’t high. Without knowing the exact population distribution, I’d say you’ll be lucky is 25% of the workers are in these ideal zones. Of that, maybe 20% will opt to commute (less than the 25% in the ideal Manhattan zones because of the climbs on the bridges). So you have 20% of 25% of 525K(combined Brooklyn/Queens to Manhattan commuters), or 26K. It’s really hard to hazard a guess for the percentages east of the ideal zones. I’ll go with 5%. I tend to think Queens/Brooklyn riders are used to riding longer distances, so a 45 minute bike commute might not phase as many as in Manhattan. You have 5% of 75% of 525K, or about 20K. Note that we can more or less cut the total Queens/Brooklyn numbers in half to get the individual totals for Brooklyn and Queens since the numbers of commuters are nearly the same.

Live elsewhere work in Manhattan will probably be a very small percentage. Most of that cohort has very long commutes, way too long to bike. You might have small numbers from right across the river in NJ but I doubt the numbers would exceed 10K.

So overall then my estimates would be:

Live & Work Manhattan – 184K
Live Bronx work Manhattan – 7K
Live Queens work Manhattan – 23K
Live Brook work Manhattan – 23K
Live elsewhere work Manhattan – 10K

Not surprising the majority of potential cycle commuters liver and work in Manhattan. However, and I can’t even hazard an educated guess at the numbers, I think there is a huge potential for intra-borough bike commuting in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. A majority live and work in their own borough. A lot of those drive to work, often less than 5 miles. That’s a perfect demographic for bike commuting.

Just wondering if my estimates seem reasonable to you? For various reasons, NYC will never have a Copenhagen or Amsterdam type bike mode share, but we can do way, way better than the paltry few percent we have right now.

I reckon about 100k NYrs cycle commute, the vast majority in/to Manhattan.

Why do you think the 2014 ACS counted ~43k bike commuters living in NYC?

Various reasons, namely because people keep saying “NYC will never have a Copenhagen or Amsterdam type bike mode share” and then using that unsupported statement to enact policies which prevent it from occurring. Its a self fulfilling prophecy, nothing more. The people who live in NYC are the same species with the same motivations as Amsterdam or Copenhagen. Both Amsterdam and Copenhagen were overrun with cars, as NYC is now. They both made policy decisions to change that, and both achieved change. The only reason NYC doesn’t is because they choose not to.

True Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn are prime areas for cycling: typical distances of 2-4miles, wide streets, genetally level terrain, and plenty of PARKING !!!!!

There’s no proof that cameras save lives or are effective. They ARE nothing but a money grab, pure and simple. And why should they be allowed to operate 24 hours a day? Children are not out walking to school at 3:00 am? Are they?
Cameras weren’t in use 10,20,30 years ago, and I certainly don’t think it was carnage on the streets back then. This will likely never pass, so Amy ought to stop wasting time on this and get herself to beauty salon. Good god.

As if we needed more reason to resent the constituency opposed to automated enforcement of traffic laws that most drivers think they shouldn’t have to follow, you’ve helped to associate that perspective with a vile, casual sexism. Good job.

Who cares if they’re a money grab? If they reduce speeds and reckless driving, then they’re serving a beneficial purpose. Drivers need to slow down, and they need to slow down everywhere. Period. Start with the schools, and let’s move on from there.

In 1990 there were approximately 700 traffic fatalities in NYC.

Commenting on someone’s appearance – a mother who lost her son no less – means you’re probably not interested in facts.

A money grab from people who endanger the lives of children? Where do I sign up to support this money grab!!

It’s proof that they are not accurate and don’t allow for due process. The motivation is 100% financial, as a trial for Chicagos red light camera program recently revealed. Do you think someone who is being paid a commission per camera placed really cares about safety? Wouldn’t it be better if police officers were actually pulling over dangerous drivers and assigning points to their license, which affects insurance, etc.?

Oh, here’s a camera in Maryland that tickets a stopped bus. Wow, these are real accurate, huh? I doubt you’ll see any expansion of these programs, and thankfully many states are introducing legislation to ban them all together. I can just imagine the carnage.
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/48/4844.asp

Have stats been compiled on the reduction of injuries and deaths at the schools vs. ones without? The speeding reduction is a likely sign of reduced carnage, but if much of that reduction happens out of school hours, there’s less effect on safety.

20 years ago the traffic deaths were 3 times as many as today, now that we have red light cameras. The number of injuries 20 years ago is unknown because they didn’t even keep records of that until a few years ago. (Too many to count, I guess).

But by all means, let’s go back to those days and raise our children in that climate…

just block the street off during school days in front of every school in the city

Thanks! Second link is very useful. However, first link says 404 Not Found.

Thanks! Got it.

I ride at 3AM.

Well, lets talk about Manhattan then. And these places, Copenhagen, cities in the Netherlands also have less dense suburbs, people get on trains, into the city. Bicycles are a last mile solution, they make trains and other transit better. There should be little or no reason to bring a car into Manhattan or at the very least certain parts of it.

Well I think we generally agree. And I’m not saying they should be limited to last mile, but they provide an enormous opportunity for last mile, especially in the suburban situation we’ve built ourselves into. NYC is the obvious exception. But there are plenty of people who would bike 10-20 km to work every day, its great exercise, but that is always going to be an order of magnitude less than those who would bike 1-2 km to/from a transit stop.