This is good news:
Since 2007, New York City has added 31 miles of protected bike lanes — that is, lanes protected by a physical barrier, such as a row of parked cars or a curb.
The main point of building protected lanes was to make biking in the city safer. But when the NYC Department of Transportation recently studied the impact of the lanes, they found a secondary benefit: on several different avenues in Manhattan, the lanes actually helped speed up car traffic.
“on columbus and 8th ave., car speeds increased significantly after bike lanes went in”
The new report, spotted by Eric Jaffe at CityLab, found that on Columbus and 8th avenues, the time it took a car to traverse a specific distance dropped significantly after the installation of the lanes, while on 1st Avenue, it increased only slightly. At the same time, rates of bicyclist injuries declined steeply on all three streets, along with Broadway, 8th, and 9th avenues.
So how did the bike lanes speed up traffic? It seems that two factors were important.
I’d like to see more bike lanes in urban areas. Hell, I’d like to see more sidewalks in suburban areas. I’m not a car hater, as they are a simple necessity for many Americans, but some things just make me wonder wtf is wrong with people:
What will $1 million buy you in New York City?
A diamond-encrusted Cartier men’s watch. A small fleet of 2014 Bentley Continentals. Or maybe your very own parking spot in SoHo.
A new development, 42 Crosby Street, is pushing the limits of New York City real estate to new heights with 10 underground parking spots that will cost more per square foot than the apartments being sold upstairs.
The million-dollar parking spots will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis to buyers at the 10-unit luxury apartment building being developed by Atlas Capital Group at the corner of Broome and Crosby, itself the former site of a parking lot. At $250,000 a tire, the parking spaces, to be housed in the building’s underground garage, are more than four times the national median sales price for a home, which is $217,800, according to Zillow.
Why? I don’t understand the allure of a car in a dense urban setting to begin with, but if you have that kind of scratch, you can afford a limo. A million bucks will buy you a dedicated limo service for years and years. Even if you need to have a limo available 12 hours a day every day of the year, you can have that for 300k a year and ride in a nice Lincoln Town Car. You don’t have to worry about parking, maintenance, drinking and driving, and you can do actual things while riding as a passenger.
If you are paying a million bucks for a parking space, you aren’t paying for parking. You’re buying a status symbol.
SP
Presumably, as opposed to buying a service, if you buy the spot you can sell it to the next sucker to get back some of your money. Until someone is left holding the bag when the FSM puts us all out of our misery for what we have become.
mac007
“If you are paying a million bucks for a parking space, you aren’t paying for parking. You’re buying a status symbol.”
*Ding! Ding! Ding!* We have a winner!
srv
Don’t even get me started on the Bike Coalition jihad takeover of San Francisco.
I don’t want a car, and have lived without one for 2 years, but life has placed a requirement necessitating 24+ weekend rentals annually. That doesn’t even cover my work rentals. At some point, I have to face an economic reality.
In other news, probably applicable to blogs:
SatanicPanic
At $1 million dollars people better not drop gum on it. And no engine oil either.
BGinCHI
I suppose in the dystopian future that is nigh these folks will live in their parking spots.
JGabriel
At 1 million dollars, if you park there every day for the next 50 years, you’ll still average over $54/day for parking.
And if you’re there for only 25 years, then it will be well over $100/day.
KG
the protected bike lanes popped up in downtown long beach a couple years ago. other parts of the city have the “green lane” where bikes can use the whole lane, which is always interesting. the protected lanes make a lot more sense.
chopper
I’ve got a bike. You can ride it if you like.
It’s got a basket, a bell that rings and
Things to make it look good.
I’d give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it.
You’re the kind of girl that fits in with my world.
I’ll give you anything, everything if you want things.
catclub
@JGabriel: You did not read the first response.
If you sell it for $1.2M you have been PAID to park your car.
Keith G
wrong thread
mac007
@JGabriel: That’s right. There is absolutely no way in hell this makes sense from a practical standpoint. It is simply a way for obscenely wealthy psychopaths (H/T to srv) to brag to other obscenely wealthy psychopaths. Like a $15,000 umbrella stand on steroids.
PsiFighter37
If I didn’t live in NYC, I would own a car for sure. SF is the 2nd-densest city in the country, and you sure as hell need a car to get around that city unless you want to spend tons of time getting from place to place.
catclub
@JGabriel: Remember the story of the man who owns a Rolls Royce and asks a bank for a three month loan while he goes to Europe? The bank takes the Rolls for collateral. The man gets virtually free parking for the Rolls for three months.
schrodinger's cat
Are you a fat bottomed girl?
Schlemazel [was Schlemizel till NotMax taught me proper yiddish!]
@JGabriel:
We asked about parking at the hotel in NYC & were told it was $80/day with in-out privileges (and that was 6-7 years ago). No, we did not park in NYC, we parked at a park & ride in NJ, took their shuttle to Newark AP & the hotel shuttle into town. No way I would own a car if I lived there.
Read about some new place going up on the island that will have 3 floors dedicated to rooms for “the help”. The estimate is prices will be 8-figures for a place there not including one of those rooms. If you are paying $10 mill for an apartment what another for a place to store the S600 Pullman?
Roger Moore
One thing you might have missed is that the parking space is a capital asset; they’ll be able to sell it to some
greater foolfuture owner and get their money back out.gbear
Maybe five guys with motorcycles could buy one of those spots for $200,000 each.
My local scooter shop will store your scooter over the winter for $300.00 and include a spring tune-up in the price.
slag
@JGabriel: Maybe the status they’re looking for is, “I’m a dumbass who is too stupid to spend my money on things of real value.”
The “Dumbass Status” is pretty much the status I see when people drive by me in a car that costs much over $20,000. Really people? You couldn’t find any better ways to spend that cash?
Money is wasted on the wealthy.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@slag:
À chacun son goût.
The Pale Scot
Actually, you’re buying a space to keep your status symbol.
Back in the togo 80’s I saw yellow Lamborghini being floored, tires smoking from light to light up 7th ave in the 20’s, slamming on the brakes making a racket. The driver must of used my weekly salary in rubber and brake maintenance to make it to midtown.
slag
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): It’s not so much about taste as it is about perspective. If rich people had to interact with the poors on the reg, they would be thinking twice about what that money could really do in the world. Besides just contribute to global warming, suburban sprawl, and the obesity epidemic, that is.
RobNYNY1957
@Schlemazel [was Schlemizel till NotMax taught me proper yiddish!]:
Separate servants’ quarters in NYC apartments are nothing new. The famous Dakota (John Lennon, Ruolf Nuryev, Lauren Bacall) has them (though they are now mostly separately owned units). The Dakota also has an underground garage (of its day) in the form of stables in the cellar.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@slag: The thing is, you can make that argument for just about anything beyond the basics of life.
slag
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Yes. Though cars and car culture are arguably the most devastating accomplishments of the human race so far. They’re a plague on the planet, and our utter reliance on them has de-stabilized and de-civilized our society in countless ways. So, they get special derision.
kindness
Well yea and no John. My brother has lived in a 600 square foot walk up in the East Village for 20 years now. He has my mom’s old car and he deals with street parking every day. My sister who is better off financially lives a few blocks north of Washington Square and they rent a couple spaces in one of those parking places a couple blocks from her place where you have to call them a day before to get your car. Both of them use the cars enough that they like the independence.
Me? I moved west in the 70’s. Mind you when I go to NYC to visit friends & relatives I use taxis & subways but I am not one that can throw stones. SOHO though….
JustRuss
There’s an old Jack Lemmon movie (How to Murder Your Wife) where he lives in a NYC townhouse with his car parked in a garage under the house. Always struck me as a pretty cool set up, but probably works better in the movies than real life. Like most things.
RobNYNY1957
I have the sort of education that attracts intelligent sociopaths. (I stop short of calling them psychopaths.) It’s been interesting watching how sociopaths have changed their career goals over the decades. In the 1970’s, sociopaths wanted to go to medical school. In the earlier 1980’s, management consulting. That gradually changed over to investment banking/hedge fund management to the point where over 40% of Harvard College’s 2007 graduating class was going into finance of some form. Law tended to attract security-seekers and people who thought their language skills were better than their math skills.
Liquid
@JustRuss: I hear “How To Murder Your Wife” is a favorite of one Basil Fawlty.
p.s. ” ‘Faulty?’ what’s wrong with him?”
Jay C
Thanks for the link, John: We live (with car) on the UES near First Avenue: one of the streets that was re-done for a bike lane: – at first I though it was merely going to intensify Traffic Hell – like most “improvements” in the City tend to: but I haven’t noticed much, if any, difference. Except that one now has a dedicated lane to watch out for daredevil restaurant deliverers on bikes (who seem to be the main users of the dedicated lanes). I had thought it odd that traffic on the Avenue seemed to have improved: now I know why….
$1,000,000 for a f*ck*ing parking space??? I’m not going to complain about my garage fees for a while!
MomSense
I spent about five years in NYC and I can’t imagine wanting to drive a car there. BITD the subways weren’t nearly as nice as they are now and yet somehow I managed.
I commute to and from work on my bike and it is always a bit disconcerting when cars pass me too close. Most of my experiences with drivers have been positive though. The town has been putting in bike lanes and the schools have biking days. My son bikes to school every day and my older boys bike to work.
Fred
The expansion of bike/pedestrian networks in NYC has been great. In fact, it’s actually one of the few political causes I can say I’ve directly contributed to, myself.
I occasionally volunteer with Transportation Alternatives, the main group in the city advocating for these kinds of changes. Even in the face of overwhelmingly positive evidence like the report being highlighted, you’d be surprised how AWFUL some of the local politics around it can be.
If anybody else is interested in the issue, check ’em out at TransAlt.org. It’s a solid group of progressive folk. Smart and savvy campaigners, too (no inane rallies with interpretive dance to worry about!).
Alex Milstein
I lived in Manhattan from January 1972 through July 1978. For that whole time, the only method of transportation I owned was a three-speed bike. Rode it to work and back just about every day that it didn’t rain or snow. When I got married and moved into a new building, the landlord told me I could have a space in the garage for $125 a month, which was twice the rent as my last apartment in grad school in St Louis. If my wife and I wanted to go away for a weekend or on vacation in the area, we simply rented a car.
Mike G
@The Pale Scot:
FYI, the Bugatti Veyron sports car (about $2m) uses custom tires that cost $30k a set and last about 5000 miles (no doubt much less when burning rubber).
So some rich douchebag is paying $6 a mile JUST FOR TIRES.
burnspbesq
Being schlepped around in a Town Car is not a viable alternative on Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, or Block Island. Gotta have your own wheels. And you need someplace to park it during the week.
Mnemosyne
Protected bike lanes seem to be the wave of the future, and I for one welcome our new bike lane overlords. Even drivers prefer them, since then it’s clear where bikes go and where cars go with a minimum of fuss and confrontation.
No, they won’t work on all streets in all locations, but on heavily trafficked main roads, they’re a great idea.
Jeff
One small problem. Protected bike lanes are actually more dangerous than nothing. (verified by a bunch of studies, in a variety of locations). Yes, people feel safer on such facilities, but feeling isn’t the same as measured safety. (people are afraid of flying, when the dangerous part is the drive to the airport).
People are afraid of overtaking collisions, even tho they represent less than 2% of all collisions that result in reportable injuries. Most common is actually the “right hook”, where a car passes, then turns across the path of the cyclist. Left cross is in second place (again straight traveling cyclist, and turning motorist), with “door prize” in third.
Its traffic 101, you separate streams of traffic by destination, not by type, and you try real hard not to ever cross them. You don’t make right turns from the left lane, but that is the situation that the average cycle track sets up.
Oh yea, one other issue: non-barrier separated bike lanes result in lower passing clearances. If there isn’t a stripe many motorists will move to the edge of their lane when passing, with the stripe, they don’t shift position.
billB
You’all are thinkin like poor folk, rich scum like Rmoney and Obummer need tax write-offs, like say, million dollar parking. CHA-Ching, they pay no taxes after writing it off, and you fools, the common amurican pay for it. Deal
Tractarian
If I had unlimited money and lived in NYC, I would definitely rather drive (and park) my own luxury automobile than be chauffered around in a limo like Monty Burns.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@billB: How is a million dollar parking spot a tax write-off?
StringOnAStick
Now that I’m back working at the U, I can ride my bike, least until it gets too cold and snowy. I commit the sin of riding on the sidewalk to get to the designated bike path because the most recent traffic study on that street shows that 85% of the drivers are going 45 or more in a 25mph zone. Give me a ticket, I don’t care; I am not mixing it up with the crazed speeding suburbanites from the rich ‘hood adjacent to our middle class zone.
A neighbor approached the city to get that traffic study done, and we’ve been rallying for traffic calming since that stretch also has bus stops on it for middle and high school kids. The city’s rule is 60% of “affected residents” have to agree via petition, but the rich ‘hood is bigger. We got 96% of the people in our ‘hood to agree to traffic calming, and just a few from the rich ‘hood. Here’s a couple of the nastier comments from rich ‘hood residents: “we don’t have kids, so why should we suffer?”, and “you people are lucky our nicer neighborhood is there to improve your home values, so our speeding through your neighborhood is the price you have to pay.” I know which house made the first comment, but I really, really wish I knew who made the second because after all, Halloween is coming.
We have a big city council meeting this Thursday night, and the council seems to realize (1) the petition process we’ve just gone through as the first guinea pigs has been a total CF, and (2) leaving the road without traffic calming exposes the city to liability if someone gets hurt by a speeder since they now know they have 85% of the traffic breaking the law by 20+mph. I have to prepare my 3 minute speech tomorrow for the comments segment of the whole affair, which is bound to be loud and testy.
Mnemosyne
@Jeff:
The Dutch disagree with you. Any links to those studies that purportedly prove the Dutch are lying?
Mnemosyne
@StringOnAStick:
I’m not sure if you saw this suggestion last time, but I wonder if you can influence someone at the police department and/or City Hall to station a motorcycle cop on your street. If nothing else, it sounds like a speed trap would be a nice source of revenue for your town. ;-)
Mnemosyne
@Jeff:
Far too late to edit, so this has to be a separate comment: what I’m specifically looking for are studies which show that separated bike lanes increase the number of car vs. bike accidents, not that they increase the bike accident rate overall. Bike vs. bike or single-bike accident rates increasing with separated lanes don’t prove a thing about the overall safety of separated bike lanes.
Personally, I would much rather get into an accident with another bike or take a spill on my own than be hit by a car. Wouldn’t you?
The Other Bob
@Mnemosyne:
I can see the problem with a bike lane at the right, when a car – at your left – needs to cross it to make a right turn. When riding a bike on a street with bike lanes, I move into the car lane at each intersection, so I won’t be run over by a car turning right in front of me. You need to do the same for left runs anyway.
The Other Bob
@Mnemosyne:
I can see the problem with a bike lane at the right, when a car – at your left – needs to cross it to make a right turn. When riding a bike on a street with bike lanes, I move into the car lane at each intersection, so I won’t be run over by a car turning right in front of me. You need to do the same for left turns anyway.
Mnemosyne
@The Other Bob:
There are some interesting new proposals to handle the left-turn problem — this one essentially has cyclists do a “box turn” (crossing the street and then going left) and keeps them out of car traffic entirely. However, it does require that both of the intersecting streets have separated bike lanes.
So there are definitely ways to solve the problem and keep everyone safe, two wheels or four wheels. Honestly, I sometimes suspect that the objection to protected bike lanes by some cyclists is that they like being singular riders out there, battling it out with cars. They don’t want the sedate city cycling that you get in Amsterdam — they want to go fast and not have to deal with rush hour traffic.
ETA: Though it’s funny to see in that video that even Amsterdam has jerkasses who insist on running the red light!
Uncle Jeffy
Still more proof (as if it’s needed) that marginal tax rates aren’t high enough.