Transportation Alternatives is an awesome group of folks always worthy of a mention. They are one of the big reasons we have many of the bike and pedestrian improvements in NYC and the boroughs.

I love the separated lanes, they make riding a bit easier or you have more confidence in them at least.

The next big hurdle will be to repave an area in people's minds for cyclist awareness. Unless you build elevated bike lanes like little highways all over, there will always be car-bike interaction.

As a cyclist, biker, and car driver I am more aware of what I need to look for, but there will be some "awareness gaps" in what drivers need to do. Making a right turn to get out of heavy traffic on to a side street comes to mind. Rare use of turn signals and people scarcely checking their right mirrors or turning their heads around to look has bad consequences. Of course people who are jerks on purpose is a whole other story.

Good Luck,

vsk

with 200 new miles of bike lanes, all they have to do is get taxi's and delivery trucks to stop parking in those lanes

What I want to know is now with the lanes will cyclists stop using the sidewalks, run red lights and go against traffic? While I agree the solutions that NYC are doing help, but until cyclists start riding safer, these solutions will not help much.

Alvin-
It works several ways... safer cyclists are also those I guess who are able to dodge the mindless pedestrians that don't even look when they cross a street against a red light ... and then get mad at you for having the right of way and trying to warn them at least to look first. Or dodge the drivers who open their doors without looking. Or many of the cabbies who should just not be allowed to drive in the first place.
There are plenty of bad bicycle guys though who make it tough for the rest of us as well.

Anything that separates the bicyclists from the pedestrians and cars helps... everyone.

vsk

Alvin, I wholeheartedly agree with you. Any flagrant abuse (no matter how minor) of traffic safety laws should not be tolerated. As a diehard inline skater, my safety depends upon this.

While you are indeed correct, we should also take into consideration jaywalkers, self-absorbed idiots preoccupied with their PDAs, iPods, etc, as well as drivers using handheld cell phones.

I have little if any sympathy for these kinds of people who flaunt their disregard for traffic safety if and when they suffer injury.

I am scared to death to ride a bike, but would consider overcoming this fear for the sake of the enviroment, if there were bike lanes and laws in north carolina. We have to encourage people to find alternative modes of transportation.

Sadly, these separated lanes have been shown over and over again to dramatically increase car/bike collisions. That's why they are not considered part of the bicycle infrastructure standards.

Copehagen recently published a before and after study of streets where these went in and found, to no ones surprise, that they significantly increased collisions.

Car/bike collisions almost all happen at intersections. These make the bikes less visible at the intersections and in non-standard positions, greatly increasing the collision accidents.

I'm very much in favor of NYC supporting bicycling, but putting in dangerous facilities that bicyclists think will make them safer is not the way to go.

Instead, designs are needed that make the intersections safer.

Bicycle Lanes are nice, but cargo lanes would be better. A lane where people are rolling carts, dollies, etc...

Check this folding cart out. This would be an example.

http://www(dot)versacart(dot)us