Originally Posted by
Charles Wahl
In NYC, the protected bike lanes are typically one-way by design; but if you ride on one, be prepared for "bike salmon" (coinage by The Bike Snob, I believe) coming at you on e-bikes and even combustion-powered scooters -- and they're not all delivery guys either. I actually feel safer riding with the automobile/bus traffic. The bikeways in parks are pretty much the same, though at least those are two-way; but the runners/joggers have decided that they can use them too (even though clearly marked for use only by non-motorized bikes, scooters and roller-bladers, and there are separate lanes for pedestrians and joggers. Honking by car drivers (illegal in NYC except for emergencies) has become endemic (a good toot or three at practically every change of the light to say "get out of my way"), and of course the ban is never enforced by our Finest. As a rider on streets, I have noticed that many times cars passing me will come within inches, leaving more gap on the driver side than on mine.
Those lanes were a bit of utter brilliance that Janette Sadik-Khan was able to get built under the Bloomberg era, and they're currently suffering from an immense demand that the city has failed to accommodate. It's 100% on DeBlasio for sitting on his fat butt for years doing nothing to improve or expand them to meet NYC's exceptional needs.
So many of them aren't really protected either, but buffered - NJ has the upper hand in many cases (e.g., Merseles St.).
Curbed has a great article about how the NYC street format could be vastly improved - including improved PBLs:
https://www.curbed.com/2021/11/perfe...yc-street.html
While we're at it, we should be directing some additional ire to the NYPD clowns who spend more time parking in bike lanes and ticketing riders for leaving the bike lane rather than keeping those who aren't legally supposed to be in the PBL out of the PBL.
-Kurt