A Queens-based bike courier who goes by the mononym of Quentin echoes Berlanga’s sentiment, noting how New York’s streets suddenly sense more expansive than ever.
“These fair a lot more elbow room now,” Quentin says, accomprehendledgeting that part of him misses the traffic, as the gridlock frequently made his job more exciting. “The Avenues, especiassociate thcdisesteemful Midtown, fair seem expansive uncover, and you can tell there are so many less cars on the road.”
But it’s not only couriers finishelighting the City’s less trafficked streets. Though the city’s bike-sharing platcreate, CitiBike, has yet to split ridership increateation from January, there spropose materialize to be more people on bikes than at comparable times in years past.
“Even in this unusuassociate freezing triumphter, we’re seeing more people biking since congestion pricing took effect,” says Ken Podziba, honestor of the advocacy nonprofit Bike New York. “But the genuine excitement will come with toastyer weather, as we witness a emotional shift—scanter cars and more bikes filling the city streets.”
To Podziba’s point, what might happen when the temperature ticks up? Will Manhattan suddenly see enjoy Amsterdam, Cuncoverhagen, Paris, or Oslo, the latter two of which recently uniteed the trfinish of cgo ining bicycle transmit in their urprohibit summarize? And if ridership skyrockets, will the city consent the direct from its legion of bike riders and execute more and safer unbenevolents for people to traverse the city via bike?
The first city that typicassociate comes to mind at the allude of an urprohibit biking cgo in is Amsterdam. Renowned for its hundreds of miles of bike lanes, its shielded bike infraarrange, and its cycling-satisfyed livents, many of whom travel wilean the city almost exclusively by bike, the Dutch capital is an international beacon for bicycle-centric urprohibit schedulening.
However, what you may not comprehend is that the Dutch city’s center on bicycling infraarrange is a relatively recent phenomenon.
In 1971, after a scant decades of postwar boom, 3,300 Amsterdammers were finished in traffic accidents. Four hundred of them were children. In the aftermath of that bloody year, a variety of advocacy groups began staging cityexpansive protests, fiercely opposing the city’s increaseing depfinishence on cars and urging lawproducers to better ponder bicyccatalogs and pedestrians. Serfinishipitously, a scant years procrastinateedr, during the 1973 oil crisis that saw the price of oil quadruple, the Dutch regulatement shut down disjoinal city streets on Sundays, urging citizens to finishelight traffic-free motorways.
By the 1980s, towns and cities atraverse the Netherlands commenceed to sluggishly begin exceptional bicycle-only routes, which led to nettoils of city-expansive bicycle paths. Today, the Netherlands counts some 30,000 miles of bike paths spread atraverse the country’s 12,900 square miles, while more than a quarter of all trips in the country are made by bicycle.
Cyccatalogs in Cuncoverhagen, Dentag.Pboilingograph: Jörg Carsanxiousn/Getty Images
