I rode down a non-motorized park avenue today. Some thoughts:
- While as popular as last year, I felt that this year people were better behaved. There was still plenty of aggressive biking, but most people seemed to be more relaxed than in the past.
- There need to be more repair stations and more people showing bike basics, such as “how to wear your helmet”, “inflate your tires”, “adjust your seat height”, and, my favorite, “oil your chain”. I saw so many people with underinflated tires (and I told them so), but at least as many with horrible fit who just didn’t seem comfortable, and probably had a lot of knee pain as a result.
- The pool looked both fun and moderately used. I would go in it if I had a buddy. Also, there were a lot of pretty ladies.
- Why does it end at 1 pm? More importantly, why does it begin at 7am? If Germany can close an entire freeway for 30 miles for pedestrians for a day, New York can close an unnecessary avenue for more than 6 hours.
Some other thoughts that came to me.
- New York is kicking butt with its new infrastructure. Downtown, a lot of the route had bike lanes. I rode over to Brooklyn and discovered all the work that has gone into the Brooklyn Bridge park, which extends for miles along the waterfront. You can ride on paths from the Brooklyn Bridge almost unbroken to Red Hook; there are many more on-street lanes (unintimidating ones) that go in other directions.
- The Brooklyn Bridge crams too many people into too little space. While cars fly by in six lanes, thousands of people are stuck bursting out of the path. I say, close a lane on the bridge, make it a bike lane, and dedicate the entire path to pedestrians. (If you want to bike up to the observation points, you’ll have to walk, sorry.)
- Boston has nothing on New York for bike infrastructure. And there’s no reason but politics.
