Does Europe Like Bikes More Than New York?

(Kate Hinds and Nancy Solomon, Transportation Nation) Since 2006, New York City has added 250 miles of bike lanes in an effort, Mayor Bloomberg says, to improve traffic, air quality, and ultimately, public health. But while polls show support for bike lanes, opposition has been loud -- and vehement -- around the city.  So WNYC's Transportation Nation team got to wondering: do Europeans just like biking more than New Yorkers?

Bicycle parking outside a Copenhagen train station (photo by Jim Colgan)

We spoke to Danes and New Yorkers to see if we could figure this out.

On a recent trip to Aarhus -- Denmark’s second largest city -- all of the guests at a dinner party have kids, cycle to work and do most errands by bike, even though each family owns a car. Lars Villemoes said he prefers to bike even when it's raining.

“It’s a really good feeling, I love it in the morning, I go faster every morning and I love it when I see the line of cars and I just go past them, that’s such a good feeling,” he said.

“The safety has to be considered because in order to take your children you have to be absolutely safe about this,” said his friend Lone Maribo. She added: “And I think taking your children is the first step to changing the culture, isn't it?"

The culture she is referring to is not just a small subculture. Eighteen percent of Danish commuters bike to work. Busy thoroughfares have bike lanes separated by a curb and traffic lights just for bikes. The lanes get a steady flow of cyclists -- young, old, women, white collar workers in suits -- and the story is the same in Holland and Germany.

So we got to wondering, is there something about Europeans that makes them predisposed to like biking?  John Pucher, a professor of urban planning at Rutgers University, said no.

“It simply is not true that European cities, and Europeans, were always bike friendly and walking friendly,” he said.

“It's become more and more bike oriented and walking oriented and transit oriented over the past three or four decades and they have implemented a whole package of self reinforcing policies that have enabled this.”

Like Denmark’s 186 percent sales tax on cars, for example. Gas taxes are also much higher, speed limits are lower, and parking your car in a central city is an expensive and often impossible proposition.

But here in New York, the 250 miles of new bike lanes have caused 250 tons of drama. Hours of community board meetings, city council hearings, even police precinct open houses have all been devoted to what is a surprisingly polarizing topic.

This week Transportation Nation got a tweet from someone self-described as “into tai-chi, cooking and long walks:” It read:

Nasty cyclers ride the wrong way down a one way street, endanger & injure pedestrians; wish I had a stick 2 put in spokes

This doesn’t surprise Hunter College professor William Milczarski. “New York City is going to be a tougher nut to crack,” he said. “Eight million people, people set in their ways, special interest groups -- everybody has an axe to grind, it seems.”

His research shows that everyone flouts the law. Pedestrians, drivers, and bikers all behave badly -- and all feel their rights are being trampled. His study found a third of cyclists run red lights, and smaller numbers ride the wrong way on streets or cycle on sidewalks.  But, he also found that on a ten-minute ride, the chance of a cyclist encountering a bike lane blocked by a car or a pedestrian is sixty percent. Milczarski said it’s about all contested space.

“When we have this area below 60th Street, and 3.6 million people come into that space every day -- it’s a very crowded area. To make it work, it's going to take a period of adjustment.”

All the experts we talked to said there’s another problem in the United States: education.

A German driver’s license requires practical, theoretical, and first aid classes, and drivers must demonstrate that they’re looking out for cyclists.  But in New York? Ken Brown, a spokesman at the New York State DMV, said the law requires that the 20 questions on the driver’s test include seven on alcohol or drug use, and at least one each on road rage, work zone safety, and emergency vehicles. So there is no consistent one or two questions on the test about bikes? “No,” he said. “It’s not one of the mandated questions that has to be required on the test.”

Better education for everyone would go a long way, according to Sam Schwartz, who runs an engineering firm and writes the Daily News’s “Gridlock Sam” column. In the 1980s, he was Mayor Ed Koch’s traffic commissioner. So he's no stranger to public outcry.

“I as a city official never worked on a project -- even when I thought the project benefited everyone -- in which some group didn’t come out and oppose the project.”

Exhibit A: This framed letter on his office wall. Schwartz reads: “'Dear Commissioner Schwartz: I am writing to protest the recently announced plan establishing bus corridors on 49^th and 50^th streets. Signed Katharine Hepburn.'”

He said there’s only one way to see if these plans will work out better for motorists, cyclists, AND pedestrians.

“If the mayor has backbone, let him support what’s going on right now and let’s see what happens over the years,” he said. “The problem gets to be when suddenly you have flip flops on issues and we never get to see if they work or not.”

In 1980, Mayor Ed Koch built two bike lanes, and a month later, the man famous for asking “how’m I doin?” ripped them out. This time around, the Bloomberg administration says it’s sticking with its plan to build a network of bike lanes that stretches across the whole city.