"NYC launches bike-sharing program" Associated Press, May 28, 2013
NEW YORK — The nation’s biggest bicycle-sharing program got rolling Monday, as thousands of New Yorkers got their first chance to ride a network billed as a new form of public transit in a city known for it.
Is it just me, or does anyone see a contradiction in the fact that bike-riding societies like China and Cuba are moving towards cars while agenda-pushing AmeriKan papers are promoting bikes?
Suraf Asgedom pedaled along a Lower Manhattan street on one of the royal-blue, quick-rental bikes, headed for a gourmet supermarket that is usually a 25-minute walk from his apartment. The executive does not own a bicycle because it is a hassle to haul one downstairs, find a place to lock it up on the street, and worry about it, he said.
Wait until you see one.
‘‘This just makes it much more convenient,’’ said Asgedom, 39, who plans to use the bike system to get to work at a downtown hospital.
If you survive the ride.
The privately financed program — called Citi Bike, after lead sponsor Citigroup Inc. — kicked off with 6,000 bikes at more than 300 stations. Plans call for expanding it to 10,000 bikes docked at 600 places in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.
Oh, now I $ee why the agenda-pu$hing mouthpiece is behind this! This program benefits a bank!
Riders can unlock the three-gear, cruising-style bikes from any station, take them for 45-minute rides, and return them to any rack.
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Did you see the bike? I wouldn't want to be seen riding one of those ugly billboards.
So how was the ride?
"Shared bikes, headaches in New York, Boston; Some in NYC look to Boston as Hubway peer off to a bumpy start" by Martine Powers | Globe Staff, June 09, 2013
NEW YORK — Jeanne Epstein was having a rough morning with the fledgling New York City bike-share program.
Her first Citi Bike did not properly lock when she reached her destination, requiring a call to customer service. Her second bike had a flat tire. And now, in Greenwich Village, she attempted to remove another of the royal blue bikes from a kiosk, but it would not budge.
Yanking at the handlebars, she looked up and groaned.
“Is this,” she asked pointedly, “what it’s like in Boston?”
Nearly two years after Boston debuted the New Balance Hubway bike-share program, the advent of New York City’s long-awaited counterpart has brought new intensity to the New York-Boston rivalry.
But on the streets of the Big Apple, as commuters attempted to use the bikes for the first time and encountered technical glitches and malfunctioning kiosks, they looked to Boston not with scoffing condescension but instead with pleading desperation.
But their ATM machines never lose a cent.
They wanted to know: Does it ever get better?
“It seemed like things were so great last week, and I just bought a year-long membership,” said Joe LaPorta, a 56-year-old accountant in a suit and tie. “But now I’m seeing all these people with all these problems with the bikes, and I’m having second thoughts.”
Citi Bike premiered two weeks ago to riders who had signed up for annual memberships. Last week, the bikes became available to those seeking 24-hour or seven-day passes.
A slew of technical difficulties had commuters around Brooklyn and Manhattan, even those eager to embrace the service, gritting their teeth. On Tuesday, several of the stations, even those with spots for 60 bikes, were full, preventing incoming riders from depositing their bikes. In a scene that played out again and again in different parts of the city, riders responded with confusion, frustration, or panic when they realized that seeking out another station would cause them to be late.
Try explaining that to the boss.
Others found themselves unable to rent a bike, or tried to dock the bikes into racks that failed to lock.
And while passersby could not help themselves from snapping photos of the bike racks or ogling them from car windows — a practice long-since passé in Boston — that shiny-new-toy feeling was wearing off.
In SoHo, Tanja Diklic, 39, tapped angrily on the buttons of a Citi Bike kiosk, swiping her credit card again and again.
Is that a real name?
Related: Dikshit
Maybe you wanna think about changing it.
“I don’t think it’s working,” she said. “This is the third station I’ve been to.”
“I would love it to work,” said John Hanson, of the East Village, sitting astride one of the bright blue bikes. “But right now, it’s got problems.”
Understandable, he thought. It is challenging to introduce a city-wide transportation system overnight without a few hiccups.
Oh, LOOK at the APOLOGISTS!
He remained hopeful that the program would work more reliably in coming days and weeks. After all, he said, it has worked in other cities.
“Everything takes time to work properly,” Hanson said. “But by the Fourth of July, it better be rolling like it’s been here for five years.”
If the rows of shiny new bikes look familiar to Bostonians, it is because they are designed and managed by the same company that runs Hubway: Alta Bicycle Share. Other than the color, the bikes are practically identical — fat tires, wide seats, heavy frame, high handlebars that keep passengers sitting upright.
With Citi Bike logos stuck in places that make you a peddling billboard.
The New York City bikes, however, have one important addition, a decal with the rules of the road stuck on the panel between the handlebars. Yield to pedestrians, stay off the sidewalk, obey traffic lights, ride with traffic, the bikes advise.
Citi Bike also uses a similar fare structure as Hubway: The option of a yearlong, weeklong, or daylong membership, and additional charges if the bikes are kept for longer than 30 to 45 minutes.
You can see the BANK BUSINESS MODEL behind it! And they are doing absolutely no work other than having computers monitor things.
And what if there is nowhere to dock it?
Darwin Torres, 29, leaned his arm on a Brooklyn Citi Bike kiosk and investigated the deal. In a manner befitting his brethren in Boston, he did not mince words.
“I think it’s kind of stupid,” Torres said. “New York is a big city. How are you supposed to complete a ride in 30 minutes?”
And you thought the pain in the a$$ was from riding the bike.
Joe Downes and Shawn Hennessey, construction workers laboring nearby, approached the kiosk and grinned.
Were they planning on becoming Citi Bike members?
“No way,” said Hennessey, of Queens. “We were just looking to take a laugh . . . We wanted to see if anyone is actually using this thing.”
Harsh review.
And he couldn’t understand why the extra-long collection bicycle rack was stationed in the street, taking up precious space on the roads.
“Why don’t they put it up on the sidewalk?” Hennessey said.
Because it was bad planning by out of touch designers.
Even some avid cyclists, like 32-year-old Brooklynite Kym Chamber, treated the new bikes with skepticism. She worried about the safety of inexperienced cyclists unaccustomed to New York’s eat-or-be-eaten roads. And she wondered whether the influx of newbies would clog up the bike lanes, already too few and too narrow.
Really didn't plan it very well. The whole idea was making money first.
“I just don’t see this becoming the new Amsterdam,” Chambers said.
Perhaps no one was more enthusiastic about the bikes than Pamela Potischman, 44, of Brooklyn. Her husband had paid a visit to Cambridge, encountered Hubway firsthand, and came home raving.
“It just seemed like this was so normal there,” Potischman said.
She acknowledged that there were quite a few themes of complaint swirling around New York City, but maintained confidence that concerns would be put to rest soon.
She took comfort in the similarities between Boston and New York.
“A lot of people are outraged,” Potischman said, “and I don’t know if it’s like that in Boston, but here in New York, you’ve got a lot of very loud people on both sides.”
But, she continued, “things always get worked out in the end.”
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I think I'll skip the spin.
Related Sunday Globe Special: Diversity of cyclists growing in Boston
Also see: With crash data, Boston tries to make bicycling safer
"Bike advocates react to city’s crash study" by Martine Powers | Globe Staff, May 16, 2013
Bicycle advocates were excited Wednesday about the release of an expansive report on bike crashes in the city, but many said they were less enthused about the initiatives the city may undertake as a result of the study’s findings.
In an effort to make the city safer for cyclists, police will begin to hand out $20 citations to cyclists who run red lights; and the mayor’s office may push for a law requiring helmet use by bike riders of all ages.
“We’re still blaming the victim,” said Dahianna Lopez, a Harvard doctoral student who worked as a consultant compiling crash data for the Boston Police Department. “Helmets are not what we need to focus on right now. What the report should be highlighting is, ‘Hey, what can we do to prevent these crashes?’”
**********************
The report also suggested that the most frequent factor cited in police collision reports could be attributed to cyclists: The report stated that 28 percent of the time, a crash occurred after a cyclist ran a red light or rode through a stop sign.
But after acknowledging a math error Wednesday, city officials updated their figures: Of the 891 crashes in which causes were listed, cyclists ran a red light or rode through a stop sign before colliding with a car just 12 percent of the time.
Twenty-two percent of collisions between cars and cyclists occurred when a vehicle door opened unexpectedly on a cyclist. Eighteen percent occurred when a motorist did not see a cyclist, and 12 percent occurred when a cyclist rode into oncoming traffic.
Pete Stidman, director of the Boston Cyclists Union and a consultant on the report, said the updated numbers are important in an atmosphere where blaming cyclists for crashes is prevalent.
The error “is really damaging to the reputation of cyclists everywhere,” Stidman said....
Still, Stidman said, the report will prove useful....
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"Cyclists say their rights are going unrecognized" by Martine Powers | Globe Staff, February 15, 2013
It’s a common refrain among local cyclists: Want to kill someone and get away with it? Run them over while they’re on a bicycle.
Within Boston’s growing cycling community, a perceived lack of criminal prosecution of motorists involved in fatal bike crashes has been a regular source of outrage in recent years. That ire came to a fever pitch last week, when a grand jury investigation of a Wellesley bike crash with seemingly copious evidence — video footage, witnesses defending the deceased bicyclist, a truck driver who had fled the scene and had an extensive history of driving infractions — came back with no charges.
The grand jury’s decision, bicyclists contend, is evidence of a wider problem: Most people do not respect the rights of bike riders.
“The message that we got from this particular case,” said David Watson, executive director of the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition, “is that, clearly, members of the general public still don’t care enough about bicyclists’ safety.”
Historically, prosecutors have been seen as reluctant to seek charges in crashes between bikes and cars. Civil cases have long been the realm of justice for families. But cyclists say they want better, and they had hoped to get it in the case against truck driver Dana E.A. McCoomb, accused of striking and killing cyclist Alexander Motsenigos, 41, on Weston Road in Wellesley.
Police and prosecutors were seeking to charge McCoomb with vehicular homicide, as well as unsafe overtaking of a bicyclist.
The accident was particularly grisly. Video footage, captured by a traffic camera, showed McCoomb’s truck attempting to overtake Motsenigos, striking him from the side, and driving off without stopping. A woman who was one of several witnesses, defended the cyclist at the scene, shouting: “It wasn’t his fault! He didn’t do anything wrong! He was just coming down the hill, and the truck hit him! The truck was going way too fast!”
An accident reconstruction confirmed police officers’ belief that charges against the driver were in order.
McCoomb’s lawyer, Scott Tucker, could not be reached Thursday. After no charges were returned against his client, he declined to comment on the grand jury’s decision, stating only that he was happy that McCoomb was not indicted on criminal charges.
Hearing that the driver would not be charged criminally shocked and angered members of the cycling community, many of whom were still reeling with sadness and anger at other recent bicycle fatalities, including the death of 23-year-old Boston University student Christopher Weigl, killed in December on Commonwealth Avenue in Allston. Suffolk prosecutors are awaiting a final report from the Boston police collision reconstruction team before they decide if charges will be filed in that case.
Josh Zisson, a lawyer specializing in bicycle-related cases, said, “It’s definitely the sort of thing where people who ride bikes want to see jail time or to see some sort of criminal charges that stick. When people don’t see that, a lot of people get the sense that the government doesn’t really care.”
************************
The problem, bike advocates say, is that most people, and most jurors, just don’t like bikes.
Jurors are much more likely to empathize with motorists than with bicyclists, said Andrew Fischer, a Boston-based bicycle attorney, especially as the percentage of Massachusetts residents who regularly ride bikes still flutters in the single digits.
“This [Wellesley case] just reveals the prejudice there is in the general population against bicyclists,” Fischer said. “I’ve seen it in jury pools. It’s very difficult for a bicyclist who’s been in an accident with a motorist to get a fair jury.”
According to Chief Terrence Cunningham of the Wellesley Police Department, Fischer is probably right....
Cunningham said he often sees negative attitudes toward bicyclists among jurors, as well as in the general public — and every time a cyclist runs a red light, fails to signal in front of traffic, or rides four- or five-abreast, preventing a car from passing, the act confirms motorists’ belief that bicyclists should not be in the road, he said....
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Related:
Clues sought in hit-and-run that killed Wellesley bicyclist
That's when the chain fell off.
"Visibility at issue in fatal crash with cyclist" by Maria Cramer | Globe Staff, May 20, 2013
The driver of a large truck that fatally struck an MIT scientist probably did not even see the 36-year-old when the vehicle collided with her bike near Kenmore Square Sunday afternoon, even though his truck dragged the bike for 75 feet, law enforcement officials said.
The driver, who has not been charged and whose name has not been released, kept driving after he hit Kanako Miura Sunday at Charlesgate West and Beacon Street, a confusing, busy intersection that funnels fast-moving traffic to Fenway and Storrow Drive and has been described by police as one of the most dangerous parts of the city for cyclists.
The collision remains under investigation, but the case underscored the tension between motorists, who are often loath to share the traffic-clogged streets, and cyclists, who say they are too often blamed for crashes.
“For a motorist to say, ‘I didn’t see them,’ that’s basically license to kill,” said David Watson, executive director of the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition, a statewide bike advocacy organization. “Everybody at this point should know we need to share the roads. Everybody bears responsibility for the safety of the people around them.”
Miura’s death, the first among cyclists in the city this year, also comes as the city is attempting to encourage bicycling among residents and searching for ways to make it safer. Sunday marked the last day of Bay State Bike Week, an annual celebration that encourages cycling events....
How tragically ironic.
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Related:
As more cyclists hit road, number of accidents rises
As the bicycling community reels after the death of two Boston bicyclists within the past week, government officials and bike advocates are hoping to thwart a rise in collisions as bike ridership in the region surges. The increasing popularity of bicycling as a mode of transportation, partly fueled by the expanding Hubway bike-share system, has outpaced motorists’ awareness and understanding of how to share the road with the growing throngs of bikes, specialists said.
Except I was told it was the fault of bikers.
Except I was told it was the fault of bikers.
As crashes mount, city must get serious about bike safety
"He now pedals 12 miles most days, taking the T occasionally, driving rarely. More commuters are churning in and out of Kendall each day, many more than ever are going by T, bike, car pool, or foot."
"He now pedals 12 miles most days, taking the T occasionally, driving rarely. More commuters are churning in and out of Kendall each day, many more than ever are going by T, bike, car pool, or foot."
Officials are envisioning a future with Hubway running year-round and fanning out across all Boston neighborhoods and many surrounding communities. Hubway has encouraged new cyclists, contributing to a growing bike culture. That trend has come with some growing pains — flare-ups and collisions between drivers and non-Hubway bicyclists — but has been promoted by officials, who cite environmental, fitness, quality-of-life, and equity reasons for making room for bicycles as well as cars on roads paid for by all taxpayers."
Who wants to be biking through snow and sleet, and how safe is that? Streets are even narrow with plowed snowbanks!
Who wants to be biking through snow and sleet, and how safe is that? Streets are even narrow with plowed snowbanks!
"The problem with bicycling in Boston
Boston launches public health campaign promoting use of bike helmets
Boston launches public health campaign promoting use of bike helmets
A bright life, a needless end
No laughing matter there.
Mayor Angel Taveras rolls to the office on Bike to Work Day
The naked appeal of bikes
That's the last thing I want to see on a bike.
No laughing matter there.
Mayor Angel Taveras rolls to the office on Bike to Work Day
The naked appeal of bikes
That's the last thing I want to see on a bike.
