🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Jym.21Mar2013.514bf66f@scorcher.org>,
Jym Dyer  <jym@econet.org> wrote:
>=v= Somehow New York City has had no trouble with all-hours
>bike carriage without pointless rules and restrictions (they
>trust people to work things out):
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/nyregion/answers-to-questions-about-new-york.html
>
>So why has it taken 40 years for BART to contemplate doing the
>same thing, only with less ridership?

NYC subway cars have much more open space than BART cars, and New
Yorkers are used to deal with all kinds of odd things on the subway.
A bike takes up less space than a baby stroller, and is much easier
to deal with than the escaped mental patients that wander the trains.

John
-- 
John Clear - jac@panix.com  			http://www.clear-prop.org/

On 3/22/2013 12:12 AM, John Clear wrote:
> In article <Jym.21Mar2013.514bf66f@scorcher.org>,
> Jym Dyer  <jym@econet.org> wrote:
>> =v= Somehow New York City has had no trouble with all-hours
>> bike carriage without pointless rules and restrictions (they
>> trust people to work things out):
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/nyregion/answers-to-questions-about-new-york.html
>>
>> So why has it taken 40 years for BART to contemplate doing the
>> same thing, only with less ridership?
>
> NYC subway cars have much more open space than BART cars, and New
> Yorkers are used to deal with all kinds of odd things on the subway.
> A bike takes up less space than a baby stroller, and is much easier
> to deal with than the escaped mental patients that wander the trains.

NYC does discourage bicycles during peak commute times. NYC trains come 
at very close intervals so the system capacity is much greater, and 
since the system is so much larger there is much less of a need for a 
bicycle to complete a commute. There's also a lack of safe bicycle 
parking which discourages train/bike commutes, as well as a lack of 
elevators or escalators in most stations.

Plus until pretty recently there were very few bicyclists in NYC.  I wonder if they'll start talking about adding rules there, now that lots more New Yorkers are cycling.

> Plus until pretty recently there were very few bicyclists in NYC.

=v= Not really.  There has certainly been an upsurge since about
2005, but even before then the numbers were high.  A good number
of NYC's bicyclists are unheralded working-class folks.
    <_Jym_>

On 2013-03-25, Jym Dyer <jym@econet.org> wrote:
>
>=v= Not really.  There has certainly been an upsurge since about
> 2005, but even before then the numbers were high.  A good number
> of NYC's bicyclists are unheralded working-class folks.

Do you have any actual evidence to support these claims?

--keith

-- 
kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt
see X- headers for PGP signature information

>> There has certainly been an upsurge since about 2005, but
>> even before then the numbers were high.  A good number of
>> NYC's bicyclists are unheralded working-class folks.
> Do you have any actual evidence to support these claims?

=v= No, I don't.  But the NYC Department of Transportation
does, as does its Department of Health:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Anyc.gov+bicycle+statistics

Here's a good summary of some data:

http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/04/27/digging-into-the-new-report-on-new-york-city-cycling/

As the DoT points out, Census data underrepresents actual
ridership, but that's where we do get breakdown by income.
    <_Jym_>

On 2013-04-08, Jym Dyer <jym@econet.org> wrote:
>>> There has certainly been an upsurge since about 2005, but
>>> even before then the numbers were high.  A good number of
>>> NYC's bicyclists are unheralded working-class folks.
>> Do you have any actual evidence to support these claims?
>
>=v= No, I don't.  But the NYC Department of Transportation
> does, as does its Department of Health:
>
> http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Anyc.gov+bicycle+statistics

Wow, that's freaking obnoxious.  You can't just point to the actual page
with the statistics?

We'll have to take you on your reputation (what little of it is left)
that NYC cycling has been increasing since 2005.  The charts I saw only
date back to 2008.

> Here's a good summary of some data:
>
> http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/04/27/digging-into-the-new-report-on-new-york-city-cycling/

Was that so hard?

At any rate, this is the only comment in that article that addresses
income:

"Among the poorest New Yorkers, 9.4 percent bike frequently. Among the
highest earners, 9.8 percent."

That doesn't really give us percentage of active cyclists who are
low-income.

So, the executive summary is that the evidence you cite for your most
reasonable claims is somewhat dubious support for your claims, and that
you completely ignored the fact that your more important claims about
bicycles on escalators on US transit systems were proven incorrect.
We can only hope SFBC is more competent in its lobbying.

--keith


-- 
kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt
see X- headers for PGP signature information