On Wednesday, June 20, 2012 9:09:13 PM UTC-4, Frank Krygowski wrote:
Here's an excellent talk on the problems that bike lanes impose, and a
solution to those problems. I think it's well worth half an hour of
watching & listening, and worth sharing.
http://vimeo.com/43603867
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- Frank Krygowski
First I would like to say thanks to the person who posted the video on Netherlands and the way they changed their roads to incorporate bicycle paths. As someone who lives in NYC, I can say I wish we had what the Netherlands has in terms of bike paths. Over here in NYC we have bike lanes where people live their cars in the bike lane double parking to a park car. You don't know how many times I have had to go into the car lane to get around an illegally parked car in the bike lane because people in NYC especially Brooklyn don't care about others on bicycles. I think this is due to the mentality of people in NYC in general. Due to the hustle and bustle of NYC most people tend to only think of themselves and not others and thats one of the main reason why NYC won't have anything similar to what the Dutch have. For example I sat on a community board meeting in the area of I live in Brooklyn and the topic came up for additional bike lanes that connect to other bike lanes in different parts of Brooklyn and the heads of the community board were outraged. They all said "we don't need more bike lanes (as if we had that many in the community)" they couldn't rationalize that if their is more bike lanes and the community promotes riding bicycles that they can reduce the number of cars on the road and the accidents that results from high number of cars on the road with people always in a rush, clean up the pollution from the cars in the area and promote healthy living.
In order for us to get such bike paths like they have in Netherlands we are going to need for gas to go to 10 dollars a gallon and then have to re-educate people that before their was cars people biked and walked to get where they had to go. You would think as it was in Holland video "where it says their was a economic collapse and a oil collapse" that people here especially in NYC would realize in this economy to cut back more and save money by driving less. Especially in a city that has public transportation 24 hours a day.