Cycling in New York from a Dutch perspective
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ต.ค. 2024
- [Ep. 1029] BicycleDutch went NYC! I cycled around New York with mr. Streetfilms, Clarence Eckerson and walked around Brooklyn with Doug Gordon co-host of the podcast "The War on Cars". New York certainly was an interesting experience! More information in the blog post: bicycledutch.w...
Nice to see a (somewhat) positive and optimistic view of New York's cycle infrastructure.
New York is slowly changing its cycling goals into a feasible practical one, so yeah, some positive view is in order despite it not being perfect.
When New York becomes a true cycling city it should be called New Amsterdam.
To be called new Amsterdam, you have to be beautiful, like Amsterdam, and not ugly, like this disgusting New York
@@conssido356 Old name of the New-York was "New Amsterdam" (Nieuw Amsterdam). For more info check your local wikipedia.
@@conssido356chill it was a joke
New York was New Amsterdam in the 17th century
people might like it better that way
Haha great point on the Prospect Park cycle tracks. I try to remember that the random protected lanes we pass through today were one contentious topics that people freaked out over and then got over it.
It’s almost like the bad arguments against bike infrastructure are not based on actual merit 😆
NYC chickened out of the congestion charge just now. Quite a shame.
We'll see how long that reversal lasts. It'll probably come back, or some sort of congestion relief system.
***NY*** NYC would benefit greatly from congestion pricing. But because this is a state issue, car dependent suburbanites from Upstate and LI reject CP. They make up Hochul’s voter base
Excellent work, Mark! This video was very well done in that the matter-of-fact evaluation spoke boldly of the many dangerous and inefficient shortcomings, while remaining respectful of the progress and effort put in thus far.
While so much design and space reallocation remains to be done there, I feel that NYC can and should become a beacon for active transportation infrastructure as an inspiration and example for all major US cities. However, that will take a more competent and aggressive leadership that truly recognizes that cities should be designed for people, not private cars.
There will come a time when there are so many cars on the Highway, that traffic will cease to move ; for HOURS. By watching the Dutch, i learned , and adapted a Minimalist approach to Transportation. Let go of the SUV, -Car and walk or cycle everywhere. Your Life will be more rewarding. Be carless for 12 years now...Great Channel ! You have the correct IDEA. One DAY, I'll make it over to the Netherlands.
A lot of people talk about cycling in the US these days, so it's always great to hear from the perspective of someone who is used to reliable bike infrastructure. We still have a long way to go, it's an uphill battle! Thank you for the video, I'd love to see more about north american cities
That’s my ancestral home, Mark! You were more than fair with this assessment.
As a new yorker, agree with almodt everything you said. The city has seen a dramatic improvement in the past 10 years. Really hope congestion pricing survives the all the legal challenges.
As a Dutchie who studied in Amsterdam in the 1980s I can witness that New York makes faster progress than that Dutch city.
' dramatic ' might be a bit exaggerated
Congestion pricing not smart it’s going to push congestion other places and is only going affect rich or business areas of queens not the regular neighborhoods people bike in
NYC’s crime is getting worse while the bike infrastructure got better.
I don’t know if it’s good overall, but nice to have better bicycle infrastructure at that point I guess.
@@KosmoKool no there has been a huge improvement there was always a big bike culture in New York, just not as safe but because of covid more people started riding bikes and a lot of people started doing delivery work on bikes so the city was kinda force to build more bike lanes
The primary issue that you're running into is the complete lack of a cycling master plan. Rather than adopting new standards and slowly implementing them as roads need resurfacing, NYCDOT chooses to do a "public opinion survey" on putting in a bike lane every time a major road gets resurfaced. Sometimes, the people who get surveyed are very pro-cycling, and we get a protected 2-way track. Sometimes they're very anti-cycling, and we get nothing. Having this pattern play out city wide is what causes the inconsistencies that you experienced.
US bike lanes: an exercise in re-inventing the wheel every time and doing it in a different, expensive, and ineffective way.
Our bike infrastructure is definitely not what it could be, but I’m glad you had a optimistic view about how they could be improved
Montreal has been so great on improving cycling and I'm so excited about what New York City has in reserve to improve his cycling network too!
The phrase 'damned with faint praise' comes to mind 🙂
"The introduction of the congestion relief zone toll, announced for June 2024". Oof
It will probably come back sooner or later. At least I hope...
@@unconventionalideas5683 Probably won't come back for as long as Kathy Hochul gets kickbacks from auto dealers
Similar issues are popping up in Melbourne, Australia. In particular, local traders resist any reduction in street car parking spaces
Of note, is Sydney Road. A plan was put forward many years ago to install accessible tram stops, protected bike lanes etc.. There is ample off street parking so there would be minimal impact to drivers. Unfortunately, local traders have totally resisted this proposal and have been supported by the state government. So nothing has happened
Sad to say that just yesterday the NYC governor just unilaterally cancelled the congestion fee
Great coverage Mark! This looks very similar to what cycling in Portland, Oregon was like for me. SO glad I'm now in the safe and well designed Netherlands :)
While the cycleway on Prospect Park West is good, unfortunately the NIMBY's were able to stop a similar cycleway on Prospect Park Southwest. It makes absolutely no sense when you look at how wide that street is today, 50 feet (15m) wide for 2 car lanes with giant parking lanes on either side and a wide painted median. It would be trivial to add a similar cycleway without removing any car capacity by simply making the lanes a reasonable size. And it is a big missing link, both as a safe alternative to going against the park cycle loop direction, and as an option for late at night when the park is closed, loop included.
At the moment local politics isn't favorable but there is a lot of potential in NYC. With the right leadership however NYC could easily have a "Paris" transformation moment
A very well though piece! As a cyclist in Queens I have some thoughts - the open streets are great, but not if you need to actually GET somewhere. They're full of people/dogs/children wandering in every direction without paying attention. Have never used my bell so much. Also, that 59th street bridge - someday, we'll get the outer roadway on the south side turned into bike lanes so that we can have more than a quarter of a lane to ride. I think my handlebars are wider than the bike lane right now. Also yeah, the congestion pricing bait and switch....
Unfortunately, we are now in a situation where congestion pricing is in jeopardy with the governor putting it on hold. Very disappointed.
And not only does that put congestion pricing in jeopardy for NYC, it also has a wave of impact across America. Cities across the US look to NYC as a testing ground for innovative policy-making. The last minute cancellation of this program basically destroys any hopes of implementing congestion pricing anywhere else. "Why would we want to implement congestion pricing? Did you see what happened in New York?!"
Hopefully, things will improve soon.🚲🚲🚲
Thanks for sharing!
Nice episode!
I was there in November. It's good that there is some good stuff happening. Still a long way to go.
New York is truly a place where the people made it a city where cycling is more normalized, not the government or outside influences. It should be a model for others to follow where infrastructure may be lacking, but the public pushes slow governments to improve.
So True nyc always had a bike culture but huge increase in bike lance came because so many people were cycling in city for fun and for work like DoorDash the city seem it as a business opportunity that’s why they started renting out bikes themself . But also people were getting hurt so city had fix the issue and create more efficient lanes , if more people cycled over USA it’ll force countries to accommodate the cyclists
Excellent and accurate tour of the diversity of cycling and cycling infrastructure in NYC. The bollard question at 0:52 continues to trouble us -- how can we have a wide comfortable cycling path with room for various speeds of cyclists and/or side by side riding, but also keep out motor vehicles ?
The bike lanes in NYC are dominated by delivery guys on motorcycles. Not good.
The blocking of bike lanes and double parking in general in NYC is worse than it was than before the pandemic.
Unfortunately, the Congestion Relief Zone Toll you mentioned has recently been killed by Governor Hochul. It will probably not happen after all.
Good to see your travels Mark
Another great video! While there is still much to do, it’s good to see cycling infrastructure in the US getting better.
Also, if you ever visit Luxembourg, please tell us what it’s like there as well.
PS: How come your Dutch accent is leans so much towards British pronunciations?
@Marcos-Silva Blame the high-school system and the transition brought about by the Mammut Law. There was a shortage of English teachers and the prudent thing they did: Give English teachers from the UK a warm welcome. That and the amount of British sitcom and detective series, which get subtitles (and yes that standard operating procedure in the Netherlands, for all languages). So yeah British accents are pretty common here.
We are only next door after all. Shame us Brits don't get taught Dutch in schools. 😄👍
The English all Dutch people get taught in school is mostly British English. But the accents of the current teens-and-up is a mixture of several flavours of English. Dubbing audio is generally only done for children's tv, everyone in NL learns to deal with subtitles during primary school. So we hear a lot of pronunciations in our media exposure which has definitely broadened with the internet and streaming :)
Very well explained
Sadly, Governor Hochul just vetoed congestion pricing in New York. This city and state are hopelessly corrupt and incapable of doing what's best for their citizens. Year after year, it falls short of the bike lane installation targets mandated by law, its public transit system hasn't recovered to pre-pandemic levels, and there's woefully inadequate traffic enforcement by the NYPD. Car culture is very strong here, and I don't think it will ever really change.
Congestion pricing was a bad idea because it was really only gonna benefit areas like rich areas and business areas , nyc probably won’t return to pre pandemic levels comes to public transportation , because pandemic forced a lot of people to start driving and once you start driving u just don’t quite , unless you have a way better alternative , the trains need to be clean up move ,find a way to deal with mentally unstable homeless people , and actually fix alot of these train stations that are in need of renovations but that being said 54% of households in New York City don’t own a car and 60% percent travel by public transportation
@@sniper77xo90 Thank you! The car commuter percentage is less than 40% but, the subways are slow, dirty, and crime-ridden (along with a DA that refuses to do anything about it, and has publically stated such). You can't consign several hundred thousand more commuters to such a decrepit system without some, rightful, pushback.
@@FuriousMaximum how exactly are subways “crime ridden?” What are you basing that statement on? I ride them fairly often, so does my wife and we’ve never had a problem. You’re far more likely to be killed in a car crash than be a victim of a crime on the subway. Stop watching Fox News.
@@sniper77xo90 I disagree. Lower income New Yorkers who rely on transit would have benefited a lot from it.
I just moved nearby Portland and I’m excited that there are more biking options. However, it’s scary to think about the extent of the car-centric system spanning the US
If they made a Hollywood bike path where you ride among movie stars, maybe the drivers would be tempted to ride a bike.
Hello. I'd recommend you visit Washington DC if you can. It's a city not just of monuments but of neighborhoods with a lot of bike trails (offroad entirely) and a good number of protected or painted bike lanes. From an analysis perspective, there have been a lot of successes in the last 5 years but also failures (the mayor repeated refuses bike lanes needed on Connecticut Avenue for example). Often, like in many US cities, bike lanes are being fought for by the middle class while rich NIMBYs and poorer residents both tend to vote against them. There is a local biking organization (WABA) which has been advocating for cyclists, lanes, and trails for decades, and they are in large part responsible for the tangible improvements we have seen in the last 5-10 years. There is a very cheap bikeshare system (CaBi) with a good density of docks and the fact that DC has a good bus and metrorail system means that bikes pair well to make non-car travel viable, perhaps in a way not seen in other US cities.
not exactly a terry barentsen hotline series but I still enjoyed it very much...especially from a critical eye who can tell which development stage nyc cycling infrastructure is in.
hey, u should check out montreal and let us know how is it. it is rated as north america's best city for cycling 😁
most traffic in cities don't live in the cities
Just to set a few glorious things straight: if in the Netherlands you choose to bike outside of cities, let's say between two close cities you will not make it very far. Let's say from Leiden to Gouda, or from Gouda to s'Hertogenbosch.
Sadly those bollards in the lanes, while annoying and inconvenient, are born from the fact that people in cars will drive wherever it is physically wide enough to fit, and will attempt to drive anywhere it appears they may fit.
very informative video
For an American city, NYC's bike lanes are not bad!
Visit Minneapolis. Our cycling infrastructure is 1000x better. There are trails all through town and to most (if not all) of the suburbs. You can bike all the way to Duluth if you want (150 miles away)
Did you get yelled at by that ZeroEnigma guy?
poor timing with the video they just annocunced a cancelation with the congestion fees
THE CITY-BIKES GOTTA GO!
In my (albeit middle-class) opinion, one cannot truly gauge a city's cycling accessibility unless one has biked in the poorest, most marginalized areas of the city.
America’s infrastructure is pathetic
@0:17 WOW! look how bad that road is!
0:18 - the fu... is with the surface of the street? I've heard that US are always at war but i've never heard they were bombed that badly.
From what I have seen transforming a car centric area's roads to work with cyclists takes time. It is not obvious where all the trails need to be.
Sadly the congestion charge is not going through.
Unfortunately this video aged like milk. The governor just announced that she's indefinitely shelving the congestion pricing program literally days before it was about to start despite the MTA having already signed a contract and billions of dollars having been earmarked for funding.
I can't understate how catastrophically bad this is for the future of not just New York but the rest of the country. This will have a chilling effect across the US for any city looking to implement similar programs. Other cities look to NY as a testing ground for innovative policies. Why would they take the risk if New York couldn't even get it done? The Governor has unilaterally undone decades of effort and may have permanently killed our strongest weapon against car dependency and climate change.
As others have pointed out, the governor has put a hold on congestion pricing. I'm not sure this will have a major impact on cycling infrastructure though it was a mistake. What this otherwise fair and balanced video misses however is the near takeover of Manhattan's cycling lanes by delivery workers who have no interest or accountability to the laws that govern their use. They ride recklessly and often on gasoline powered or fully electric bikes. Because many are undocumented immigrants, which in NYC grants them status as a protected class, the authorities turn away from sanctioning them. Blame for their behavior is placed instead on the businesses they work for, or the customers who order the goods they are delivering.
There are times I feel safer in the traffic lanes since at least automobile drivers are predictable.
New York has the best transit in North America
Rip congestion pricing
TH-cam traduz ae!....passou do tempo da tecnologia do youtube evoluir ter uma ferramenta de tradução incluído e traduzir esses videos para outros idiomas outras línguas, deixar de ser só pra Inglês ver!
What a shithole! So grim, gray, noisy an polluted! I thank god I live in Europe. There was one city I liked in the USA in the 90's. That was San Francisco, but it is changing for the worst.
Amsterdam❤🚲
It sucks that in the US, the entire concept of cycling seems to be packaged together with a whole set of political beliefs. You're lumped in with a bunch of super wacky people if you're simply a proponent of cycling as a means of personal transportation, which makes it difficult for the idea to fully come to fruition.
Free market capitalism did make car dependent places
You got it right. It's really hard in this country to state any view/ opinion without being lumped into some political group.
Cars in North America were seen as progress like lgtbq, smartphones, and the internet today, and electricity and dishwashers etc were not very long ago. All of this without today's political polarization.
Why does New York always look so depressing?
Well he admits at the end that there was rainy April weather. I've been in NL when it's raining as well and it doesn't look nearly as nice as when it's a sunny day.
@@c8j2h 🙏
Cycling in the US? Are you crazy?
I am an avid biker.
New York is not a bicycle city. Ride on dirt trails. Ride on traffic free, paved trails. Biking in the city is neither practical nor safe. Cyclists, not all but many, do not adhere to traffic laws. They run stop signs and red lights. They ride the wrong way on one way streets. Ridiculous.
New York?.....no thanks. 😮
Ik ben altijd blij met Nederlanders. 😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢Toen ik deze video van jou zag en elke keer verdrietig Omdat ik er niet tegen kan. Wat moet worden vergeleken? Verkeersomstandigheden op de wegen in de buurt van mijn huis