No Room on the Street

Public space for getting around New York City is doled out in this way: pedestrians get the sidewalks; parked motor vehicles get the curbside lanes of streets and avenues, and moving motor vehicles get the rest of the lanes. To many, this seems a perfectly logical — or at least unquestioned — arrangement of space.

To a cyclist, however, left almost entirely out of the equation, this method of doling out street space is irrational and often infuriating. One long-time cyclist has calculated that over a hundred lanes are available for motor vehicles on midtown Manhattan avenues, while the equivalent of several dozen lanes are allocated to pedestrians in the form of sidewalks. Yet cyclists, although engaging in a legal and viable form of locomotion — indeed, one that predates the automobile, poses virtually no threat to the populace's health or safety, makes no noise, takes up little room and rarely creates gridlock — are allocated one-half of a single lane in midtown — and a substandard one at that. [1]

For the most part, cyclists in New York City are consigned to finding a narrow niche in a danger zone between parked and moving cars (with the minor exception of occasional narrow, unprotected, poorly marked and poorly maintained painted bike lanes). Why is it, cyclists wonder, that motorists deserve this space while cyclists do not? Or why, on a six-lane-wide avenue, can't one lane be set aside for bikes; or two lanes; or, at least on selected avenues, all the lanes? (For discussion of bike lanes, see Chapter 4: Street Design.) Cyclists also wonder why it is that while cars have two full parking lanes, cyclists have no dedicated place to park, and must instead trust their luck to finding a sturdy, unobstructed signpost on the sidewalk.

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