where else would you like him to pull over, on the right side? then you'd having moving cars driving on the bike lane. and please don't say he shouldn't be pulled over in the first place; this is NYC things need to be delivered in order to keep things going. i don't think you'd be happy if your bank wouldn't have cash in its ATMs.
NYC bikers, stop deluding yourself. the city is for cars and prefrence, rightfully so, is given to them. we're not in europe where public transportation is excellent and urban sprawl is foreign to them. most pple in the city do not live in manhattan and taking public transportation takes double the amount of time. CARS are here to stay. go move to amsterdam you europhiles, and admit for once that you are in the wrong! then they shouldn't have put bike lanes on the pavement? that's true, it was only placed there to cater to your bike lobby regardless of how inappropriate they actually are. can't you tell that the reason there are so many violatoins is that there is no alternatives for cars, for the largge part. yes, many times drivers are wrong. but the city is designed for cars not bikes and so enforcing bike lanes is impossible simply because its laws cannot be adhered to. !!!!
I will adress that, in this situation, there are safer options right across the street.
I'm not going to respond to respond to your petty insults, though.
Please break your paragraphs if you want me to read the whole thing.
I would rather thave him double-park opposite the bike lane. That is what the law requires him to do. The cars that need to pass him can do so through the bike lane, but only if tyhey can do so safely without interfering with bicyclists proceeding in the bike lane. That's how it is supposed to work. Bicyclsits have the preference in the bike lane.
The notion that the "city is for cars" may be your preference but does not reflect reality. The majority of city residents don't even own cars, we have the most extensive mass transit system in the workd, and the streets are so full of pedestrians that the presence of cars creates a huge safetey hazard that is reflected in hundreds of traffic fatalities every year. Manhattan was designed, for the most part, in the early and mid-19th century when cars were not invented. The city clearly was not designed for cars.
they were designed for omnibuses actually. and besides that when you have many cars which = 2 tons of metal driving at 5-35mph on the same road as bikes which= abour 10lbs of same titanium whatever driving at 10mph on one road, well you do the math.
"the city is for cars and prefrence, rightfully so, is given to them. "
This may be the 'current reality', but it should be something you and I want to change - a city should be able to function by and for people and non-pulluting means of transportation
"CARS are here to stay."
Not if things move in the directon they are - (Congestion pricing and the invetiable - albeit slow - improvment of our Public transportation system.
"admit for once that you are in the wrong!"
I don't know what you're talking about. Do I know you from somewhere?
the rest of my rant was pretty cogent so that's hard to believe. secondly, congestion pricing doesn't work. look at london, do you know that now the cost is something like 15 pounds a day, up from 5 pounds when the program was started (nothing to do with inflation). sure it may stop a few cars from coming in but that's about it. and as far as this:
"the city is for cars and prefrence, rightfully so, is given to them. "
This may be the 'current reality', but it should be something you and I want to change - a city should be able to function by and for people and non-pulluting means of transportation
so people driving are "worth less" than people on bikes?
and yes cars are here to stay. think of all the cars and truck coming into manhattan everyday. these people from NJ and brroklyn and queens etc, who come via their own cars for a reason, trust me, theyve considered PT and apparently it is not a viable option. mass improvements to the PT infrastructure linking manhattan with other boros will not happen for at least 100 years. so you know and i know theyll still be driving in, representing a bulk of the City's traffic.
forgot to answer your post #5. if he parks across the street cars will be forced to drive on the bike lane. and motorists should wait for bikes to keep passing the bike lane? do you know how much traffic would be backed up if that would happen?
Let them drive in and pay for the privilege. We'll get fewer cars and the money will be used to pay for mass transit improvements and maintaining the roads. No one is calling for the eliminination of all motor vehicles from the city. But they obviously impose costs on the *majority* in the city that do not use them--pollution, noise, road maintenance, and danger of behing hit. Motorists should be made to pay those costs, just like smokers and tobacco companies should be made to pay the costs of all the lung cancer patients in hospitals paid for by the medicare payroll tax taken out of my check each week.
As for the bike lanes, they are for bikes, just like sidewalks are for pedestrians. Cars don't belong. tterca, do you think that cars shoudl be allowed to drive on the sidewalks because "the city is made for cars?"
why should it be, or as you suggest, it is, a privelge to drive in new york city? for road maintenance? that's what we pay taxes for? so then the bikers shouldn't pay taxes for road repairs? hey, i've never gone to jail so why am i paying the salaries of the DOC (corrections). hey, why whould my tax dollars be spent on paint which is used to make bike lanes? i don't drive a bike.
and steve, your first sentence didn't make any sense. i just said that charging money to drive into the City will not help, as evidenced by London's constant congestion price increase and stats
So tterca, which car is yours? How many violations on this site do you have?
You have a point of view that is in conflict with the people with whom you are arguing. Continuing to posit that cars are here to stay and deserve preference on the roads is futile. There are rebuttals to each of your statements, though you may not agree with them. That continues to be a matter of perspective.
I suggest you give up this argument, because there will never be a clear winner on either side within this posting.
"forgot to answer your post #5. if he parks across the street cars will be forced to drive on the bike lane. and motorists should wait for bikes to keep passing the bike lane? do you know how much traffic would be backed up if that would happen?"
Wrong. Many vehicles park on the right side, and they do not block the traffic, so in many of the situations, especially like the one posted above, it would be safer to park on the right side of the street.
It might be more productive if you worked to get the DOT to allocate more curbside space for trucks making deliveries, and for taxi drop-offs. I'm sure most folks posting here would support you, in exchange for the ending of the Finance Dept's "Stipulated Fine Program".
However, arguing that New York was meant for cars and that therefore people driving them can break any law they want and endanger bicyclists, pedestrians and other drivers, is all quite ridiculous. I think you know this, but are unable to articulate a real, workable solution. Listen, and you might find one.
tterca, have you ever even been to this city? Get on a train at rush hour and tell me everyone in this city drives. The mass transit system sucks, yeah, but it's what we got, it's cheap. With it's volume of passengers, it is FAR cleaner than cars will ever be. Steve didn't make points to argue with, he stated FACTS. Most new yorkers don't own cars because if they did half city would need to be razed and blanketed with parking space. This city has NEVER been for cars, a stated fact that you dodged badly by correcting it to omnibuses. The simple fact is that NYC was never designed to handle this many cars and more because it CAN'T. The islands themselves simply do not have enough square footage to handle the thousands of monstrosities (you know, the kind that only a peace loving american drives, the kind that has gas footage instead of mileage) that pour into it. The attitude you have is the majority of what's caused this city to get as disgusting as it is, a situation we are trying to FIX.
Wow, I never thought I would find a troll on this board!
But sticking to observed data:
During the period of time when the city operated on free market rules (i.e. before Robert Moses) transportations was horse, wagon, foot, bicycle, street car, bus, train, and some cars. After Moses, the TBTA, the PANYNJ, and the Defense Highway System somehow people in Manhattan wound up paying for roads for everyone else. There is only one mile of Interstate Highway in Manhattan.
Examine the history of the Martha level of the George Washington Bridge -- It was supposed to have been a continuation of the A train. Examine the plans for the original J, M, and Z lines. They were supposed to have gone deep into Queens where no subway had gone before. In both cases (and these are just examples) people in "good" neighborhoods and towns objected to having their property accessible to urban riff raff. Consider the contrasting example of the NJ Transit line to Montclair. A racially mixed town pushed through train line straight into Manhattan, and now they're sitting pretty. So let the snobs pay for their decisions!
Today, people in Manhattan get around primarily by foot, train, bus, bicycle, skateboard, and rollerblade. There is a race every year from the boroughs to Midtown, and the bicycle always wins. Anyone who wants anything delivered fast in Manhattan gets it where it's going by bicycle. The relative handful of cars in Manhattan, mostly coming from elsewhere, costs me roughly $5 billion per year in medical care for lung disease. The price of oil wars lately is approaching half a trillion dollars, which I have to pay for.
Go back to the free market and let people pay for what they use. There will be a bike lane through the Holland Tunnel in about 10 minutes.
Finally, I will challenge anyone's car commute into Manhattan arriving any time between 8:00 AM and 10:00 AM. I have a standard offer on several boards, groups, and listservs for this challenge, best 3 out of 5 times.
You pay taxes, but in the end, you pay the minority of the expenses you create for the city. Who is contributing to more health issues, congestion, destruction of the street infrastructure, noise pollution, etc. Me on my bike, or you in your car?
Wanna bet I pay more taxes to the city than you do. From what I can tell, you owe *me* money. My bike does not pollute the air. My bike does not cause congestion. My bike does not honk or rev its engine. My bike does not create potholes in the road. And yet, I pay city taxes the same as you. Actually ... given many cars in the city are not even from the city, maybe you don't pay *any* taxes to help clean up your mess.
You expect that you deserve the majority of the public space and free parking. You expect you can rev your engine and drive as dangerously as you want. You expect you can drive in the bike lane, on greenways, on sidewalks. When you run over a pedestrian or cyclist, you expect that it should be called an "accident" and that you should not be punished. You are ingrained in the car culture so deeply that you have mistaken your privilege as a right. A right to intimidate, poison, annoy, and even murder the pedestrians and cyclists of the city. You are confused.
And you have gotten away with it. And the city has subsidized your abuses, but seems times are a changing. More bikelanes are coming, which means more cyclists. Congestion charging is coming, which means you will have to pay to take your unnecessary trips. Free parking is next on the agenda, and rest assured, that will change as well. You want to park in the city. Be ready to pay market rates for a square foot in NYC. Congestion will reach a point where it will be practically impossible to get anywhere in the city by car. I already can get anywhere in the city on my bike faster than you can in your car during rush hour. Wait until rush hour is a 16 hour ordeal.
Like it or not, your expensive gas burning death machine that you bought to compensate for a small ... ego is going to become more and more and more of an expense and a burden to you. By the time you give up on trying to drive, you will likely be to fat from sitting behind the wheel to actually get yourself around by your own power. Then I suppose I will continue to subsidize you by paying for your health car with my taxes ... again.
21 Comments
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Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 06:16 AM
I see this one alot - and the "Safety alert" calls have clearly done NOTHING.
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 10:18 AM
where else would you like him to pull over, on the right side? then you'd having moving cars driving on the bike lane. and please don't say he shouldn't be pulled over in the first place; this is NYC things need to be delivered in order to keep things going. i don't think you'd be happy if your bank wouldn't have cash in its ATMs.
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 10:32 AM
Good point. City deliveries so that the economy doesn't slip up > safety.
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 10:35 AM
NYC bikers, stop deluding yourself. the city is for cars and prefrence, rightfully so, is given to them. we're not in europe where public transportation is excellent and urban sprawl is foreign to them. most pple in the city do not live in manhattan and taking public transportation takes double the amount of time. CARS are here to stay. go move to amsterdam you europhiles, and admit for once that you are in the wrong! then they shouldn't have put bike lanes on the pavement? that's true, it was only placed there to cater to your bike lobby regardless of how inappropriate they actually are. can't you tell that the reason there are so many violatoins is that there is no alternatives for cars, for the largge part. yes, many times drivers are wrong. but the city is designed for cars not bikes and so enforcing bike lanes is impossible simply because its laws cannot be adhered to. !!!!
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 11:16 AM
I will adress that, in this situation, there are safer options right across the street.
I'm not going to respond to respond to your petty insults, though.
Please break your paragraphs if you want me to read the whole thing.
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 11:18 AM
you are right, i did make one petty insult which was not called for. however, please address the substance of my arguement.
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 11:27 AM
tterca,
I would rather thave him double-park opposite the bike lane. That is what the law requires him to do. The cars that need to pass him can do so through the bike lane, but only if tyhey can do so safely without interfering with bicyclists proceeding in the bike lane. That's how it is supposed to work. Bicyclsits have the preference in the bike lane.
The notion that the "city is for cars" may be your preference but does not reflect reality. The majority of city residents don't even own cars, we have the most extensive mass transit system in the workd, and the streets are so full of pedestrians that the presence of cars creates a huge safetey hazard that is reflected in hundreds of traffic fatalities every year. Manhattan was designed, for the most part, in the early and mid-19th century when cars were not invented. The city clearly was not designed for cars.
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 11:30 AM
they were designed for omnibuses actually. and besides that when you have many cars which = 2 tons of metal driving at 5-35mph on the same road as bikes which= abour 10lbs of same titanium whatever driving at 10mph on one road, well you do the math.
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 11:32 AM
"the city is for cars and prefrence, rightfully so, is given to them. "
This may be the 'current reality', but it should be something you and I want to change - a city should be able to function by and for people and non-pulluting means of transportation
"CARS are here to stay."
Not if things move in the directon they are - (Congestion pricing and the invetiable - albeit slow - improvment of our Public transportation system.
"admit for once that you are in the wrong!"
I don't know what you're talking about. Do I know you from somewhere?
I got kind of lost in the rest of your rant.
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 11:41 AM
the rest of my rant was pretty cogent so that's hard to believe. secondly, congestion pricing doesn't work. look at london, do you know that now the cost is something like 15 pounds a day, up from 5 pounds when the program was started (nothing to do with inflation). sure it may stop a few cars from coming in but that's about it. and as far as this:
"the city is for cars and prefrence, rightfully so, is given to them. "
This may be the 'current reality', but it should be something you and I want to change - a city should be able to function by and for people and non-pulluting means of transportation
so people driving are "worth less" than people on bikes?
and yes cars are here to stay. think of all the cars and truck coming into manhattan everyday. these people from NJ and brroklyn and queens etc, who come via their own cars for a reason, trust me, theyve considered PT and apparently it is not a viable option. mass improvements to the PT infrastructure linking manhattan with other boros will not happen for at least 100 years. so you know and i know theyll still be driving in, representing a bulk of the City's traffic.
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 11:52 AM
forgot to answer your post #5. if he parks across the street cars will be forced to drive on the bike lane. and motorists should wait for bikes to keep passing the bike lane? do you know how much traffic would be backed up if that would happen?
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 11:56 AM
Let them drive in and pay for the privilege. We'll get fewer cars and the money will be used to pay for mass transit improvements and maintaining the roads. No one is calling for the eliminination of all motor vehicles from the city. But they obviously impose costs on the *majority* in the city that do not use them--pollution, noise, road maintenance, and danger of behing hit. Motorists should be made to pay those costs, just like smokers and tobacco companies should be made to pay the costs of all the lung cancer patients in hospitals paid for by the medicare payroll tax taken out of my check each week.
As for the bike lanes, they are for bikes, just like sidewalks are for pedestrians. Cars don't belong. tterca, do you think that cars shoudl be allowed to drive on the sidewalks because "the city is made for cars?"
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 12:01 PM
why should it be, or as you suggest, it is, a privelge to drive in new york city? for road maintenance? that's what we pay taxes for? so then the bikers shouldn't pay taxes for road repairs? hey, i've never gone to jail so why am i paying the salaries of the DOC (corrections). hey, why whould my tax dollars be spent on paint which is used to make bike lanes? i don't drive a bike.
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 12:03 PM
and steve, your first sentence didn't make any sense. i just said that charging money to drive into the City will not help, as evidenced by London's constant congestion price increase and stats
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 12:04 PM
edit to post 13: that's what we pay taxes for should not end with a question mark. sorry.
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 01:15 PM
So tterca, which car is yours? How many violations on this site do you have?
You have a point of view that is in conflict with the people with whom you are arguing. Continuing to posit that cars are here to stay and deserve preference on the roads is futile. There are rebuttals to each of your statements, though you may not agree with them. That continues to be a matter of perspective.
I suggest you give up this argument, because there will never be a clear winner on either side within this posting.
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 01:19 PM
"forgot to answer your post #5. if he parks across the street cars will be forced to drive on the bike lane. and motorists should wait for bikes to keep passing the bike lane? do you know how much traffic would be backed up if that would happen?"
Wrong. Many vehicles park on the right side, and they do not block the traffic, so in many of the situations, especially like the one posted above, it would be safer to park on the right side of the street.
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 01:24 PM
tterca,
It might be more productive if you worked to get the DOT to allocate more curbside space for trucks making deliveries, and for taxi drop-offs. I'm sure most folks posting here would support you, in exchange for the ending of the Finance Dept's "Stipulated Fine Program".
However, arguing that New York was meant for cars and that therefore people driving them can break any law they want and endanger bicyclists, pedestrians and other drivers, is all quite ridiculous. I think you know this, but are unable to articulate a real, workable solution. Listen, and you might find one.
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 08:35 PM
tterca, have you ever even been to this city? Get on a train at rush hour and tell me everyone in this city drives. The mass transit system sucks, yeah, but it's what we got, it's cheap. With it's volume of passengers, it is FAR cleaner than cars will ever be. Steve didn't make points to argue with, he stated FACTS. Most new yorkers don't own cars because if they did half city would need to be razed and blanketed with parking space. This city has NEVER been for cars, a stated fact that you dodged badly by correcting it to omnibuses. The simple fact is that NYC was never designed to handle this many cars and more because it CAN'T. The islands themselves simply do not have enough square footage to handle the thousands of monstrosities (you know, the kind that only a peace loving american drives, the kind that has gas footage instead of mileage) that pour into it. The attitude you have is the majority of what's caused this city to get as disgusting as it is, a situation we are trying to FIX.
Posted on Wed, Sep 26 2007 at 09:29 PM
Wow, I never thought I would find a troll on this board!
But sticking to observed data:
During the period of time when the city operated on free market rules (i.e. before Robert Moses) transportations was horse, wagon, foot, bicycle, street car, bus, train, and some cars. After Moses, the TBTA, the PANYNJ, and the Defense Highway System somehow people in Manhattan wound up paying for roads for everyone else. There is only one mile of Interstate Highway in Manhattan.
Examine the history of the Martha level of the George Washington Bridge -- It was supposed to have been a continuation of the A train. Examine the plans for the original J, M, and Z lines. They were supposed to have gone deep into Queens where no subway had gone before. In both cases (and these are just examples) people in "good" neighborhoods and towns objected to having their property accessible to urban riff raff. Consider the contrasting example of the NJ Transit line to Montclair. A racially mixed town pushed through train line straight into Manhattan, and now they're sitting pretty. So let the snobs pay for their decisions!
Today, people in Manhattan get around primarily by foot, train, bus, bicycle, skateboard, and rollerblade. There is a race every year from the boroughs to Midtown, and the bicycle always wins. Anyone who wants anything delivered fast in Manhattan gets it where it's going by bicycle. The relative handful of cars in Manhattan, mostly coming from elsewhere, costs me roughly $5 billion per year in medical care for lung disease. The price of oil wars lately is approaching half a trillion dollars, which I have to pay for.
Go back to the free market and let people pay for what they use. There will be a bike lane through the Holland Tunnel in about 10 minutes.
Finally, I will challenge anyone's car commute into Manhattan arriving any time between 8:00 AM and 10:00 AM. I have a standard offer on several boards, groups, and listservs for this challenge, best 3 out of 5 times.
Posted on Thu, Sep 27 2007 at 10:49 AM
To car drivers in NYC:
You pay taxes, but in the end, you pay the minority of the expenses you create for the city. Who is contributing to more health issues, congestion, destruction of the street infrastructure, noise pollution, etc. Me on my bike, or you in your car?
Wanna bet I pay more taxes to the city than you do. From what I can tell, you owe *me* money. My bike does not pollute the air. My bike does not cause congestion. My bike does not honk or rev its engine. My bike does not create potholes in the road. And yet, I pay city taxes the same as you. Actually ... given many cars in the city are not even from the city, maybe you don't pay *any* taxes to help clean up your mess.
You expect that you deserve the majority of the public space and free parking. You expect you can rev your engine and drive as dangerously as you want. You expect you can drive in the bike lane, on greenways, on sidewalks. When you run over a pedestrian or cyclist, you expect that it should be called an "accident" and that you should not be punished. You are ingrained in the car culture so deeply that you have mistaken your privilege as a right. A right to intimidate, poison, annoy, and even murder the pedestrians and cyclists of the city. You are confused.
And you have gotten away with it. And the city has subsidized your abuses, but seems times are a changing. More bikelanes are coming, which means more cyclists. Congestion charging is coming, which means you will have to pay to take your unnecessary trips. Free parking is next on the agenda, and rest assured, that will change as well. You want to park in the city. Be ready to pay market rates for a square foot in NYC. Congestion will reach a point where it will be practically impossible to get anywhere in the city by car. I already can get anywhere in the city on my bike faster than you can in your car during rush hour. Wait until rush hour is a 16 hour ordeal.
Like it or not, your expensive gas burning death machine that you bought to compensate for a small ... ego is going to become more and more and more of an expense and a burden to you. By the time you give up on trying to drive, you will likely be to fat from sitting behind the wheel to actually get yourself around by your own power. Then I suppose I will continue to subsidize you by paying for your health car with my taxes ... again.