Seattlest: New York Beats Us to the Punch (Again)

Charles

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 09:21:00 -0800

To the unnamed guest commenter, you are 100% right. I'm a bike rider too and am often disgusted at the holier than thou attitude I encounter on the part of other bike riders. And the post you refer to made me angry too. The trail is not just for bike riders or walkers. It's for us all and should be used as such. We, as bike riders, need to act as responsible users of the road and share it with all other users of the road. Before I get shouted down (as I was here) I also think that drivers in this country should be a lot more considerate of bike riders than they are. The basic premise of the post that I just linked to is that this culture is focused on getting from point A to point B as fast as possible and that has made cars more important than any other form of transport and that's just wrong. I agree with that. Matt and Troy, I also point you to Sightline's series on "car head" thinking (linked above) and the affects on biking in Cascadia. I agree with you Matt. This city should be leaps and bounds beyond New York City already because this is the Pacific Northwest, bastion of environmentalism and liberal thought. There should already have been the political will to make things like this happen. But when it comes down to it, Seattle is still America and people here are too comfortable driving to make any changes.

mattgrundy

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:11:43 -0800

Statistics like those are calculated usually as a percentage, which would render the fact that NYC is bigger pointless. And how does NYC's tax base or population make bike ridership higher? I think Seattle is a slouch on this subject - I just moved here a few months ago from NYC and am astonished at how few bike lanes there are, how inconsiderate drivers are, etc. I thought it would be easier to bike here but it's not.

guest

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 15:24:47 -0800

Perhaps city government (and residents) would be more hospitable to better bicycle traffic solutions if more bicyclists obeyed existing laws. I'm a bicyclist myself, and just biked to work this morning- stopping at red lights, using hand signals, turning on my flashers to help visibility in the drizzle. Yet driving around Capitol Hill the other night, I nearly took out a couple of hipsters because they were too damn cool to follow any of these simple rules- or even bother putting lights or reflectors on their fixies while busy giving the finger to cars that can't spot their black-clad asses zipping through red lights. Couple that with the supercilious activists, or the spandex club running down pedestrians on the Burke (http://seattlest.com/2007/09/25/the_burkegilman.php), and it's small wonder that people aren't more supportive of bicycles. A few bad apples can spoil the barrel.

TroyJMorris

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 14:10:25 -0800

I don't think that this is an all-too fair comparasion. NYC's tax base is much higher, as is it's population, and therefor bike-ridership. Yes, we love bikes. Yes, we should do more. But to redo so much surface level streets would be a HUGE project and cost millions of dollars. We should take it one step at a time and not think we're a bigger city than we are. The bikes would only help those, really, in the city (or diehards). Let's make trains, then move on.