Mapping Your NYC Bike Commute

<br> <p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[music]</font> <br></p> <p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Clarence Eckerson Jr.:</i>  [00:16] Statistically, visually or anecdotally, whatever way you want to measure it, bicycling is way up in New York City in the last few years, and I’d like to do whatever I can to keep that trend going and I thought, what a better way to do that than to convince you to bike to work.  Now I recently moved to Jackson Heights, Queens, and if you look at where that is in relation to Lower Manhattan where the Streetfilms headquarters is, it might seem a little daunting to get there by bike.  But I’m here to say that if you use a little moxy and the New York City DOT Cycling Map, it’s really not that hard at all.  I figure out a few different ways to get to work from here, but my safest and most enjoyable option takes me through Brooklyn using the Manhattan Bridge.  At eleven miles each way, it’s a few miles longer than my other options, but I enjoy coming into Manhattan with only about a half mile up you’ve got to go to work.  Plus by going this way I get to enjoy some of New York City’s most diverse bicycle facilities.  Let’s go.  I start my commute by riding one mile on the 34^th Avenue bike lane in Jackson Heights, Queens.  It’s one of the city’s oldest bike lanes.  One of the nicest features about it is it has a green medium with trees and plants, and it helps calm traffic.  For the next two miles I ride a complementary series of sharrows and bike lanes which weave you safely through the Sunnyside neighbourhood.  Sharrows are a Class 3 bike facility and feature big bike stencils on the ground that show the rider where to safely ride out of the door zone, and also tells drivers they should be looking out for cyclists here and to share the road.  Eventually the bike lane on Skillman does end, leaving me with about a mile of riding on streets with no bike lanes, but nothing dangerous here at all.  Next up we reach the Pulaski Bridge.  It’s an integral link in the cycling network and connects the communities of Green Point, Brooklyn and Long Island City, Queens.  Sometimes during rush hours it can get quite crowded with pedestrians and bicyclists, and what I would like to see someday is to see one of the lanes on the roadway taken back and given exclusively to cyclists.  </font></p> <p> <br></p> <p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[music]</font> <br></p> <p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Clarence Eckerson Jr.:</i>  [02:13] So here we are at the Kent Avenue bike lane, and this has got to be one of my favourite bike lanes in all of the city.  It’s a Class 1, two-way, floating parking protected, separate bike path which runs for a few miles along the Williamsburg Waterfront.  I love this path.  It’s swift and safe.  It’s remarkable.  Beautiful.  And it’s always packed with cyclists most of the day.  A popular route and works well with this type of facility.  </font></p> <p> <br></p> <p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[music]</font> <br></p> <p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Clarence Eckerson Jr.:</i>  [02:44] The Kent Avenue bike lane eventually deposits you on Flushing along the Brooklyn navy yard.  This time the physical separation is done with concrete barriers instead of the floating parking.  When the two-way bike lane ends, on the westbound side it becomes a kerbside lane, which I particularly like and have been impressed that few people have been parking in it.  Approaching the Manhattan Bridge, you’ll get to use another incredible bike facility on Sands Street.  Check out how innovative this physically separated centre median, two-way bike path works.  One part is safely physically separated right down the middle of traffic while another long block has a raised bike path in the median.  </font></p> <p> <br></p> <p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[music]</font> <br></p> <p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Clarence Eckerson Jr.:</i>  [03:23] At this point it’s over the Manhattan Bridge, and if you know anybody who rides a bike over it, they’ll tell you how packed it is with cyclists just about any time of the day, but particularly during rush hour, much like what you would see in San Francisco on Market Street or on the Hawthorn Bridge in Portland.  It’s just totally cool to ride with this many cyclists.  </font></p> <p> <br></p> <p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[music]</font> <br></p> <p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Clarence Eckerson Jr.:</i>  [03:44] So once I get off the Manhattan Bridge it’s only about a half mile of riding on Manhattan streets to get here to work.  And I’m here and I’m happy.  Now to recap – that was almost an eleven mile trip all the way from Jackson Heights to Downtown Manhattan.  The breakdown goes as follows – we had 1.6 miles of roads with sharrows, we had three miles of roads with bike lanes, almost five miles of parking protected, physically separated bike facilities, and only 1.6 miles which had no bike lanes at all.  So we hope by showing you my commute I may have encouraged you to try to do the same.  I mean use that New York City bike map experiment, try to link up some of the safest routes and get yourself to work.  Hope to see you out on the roads.</font> <br> </p> <p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[music]</font> <br></p> <a href="http://transcriptdivas.ca/transcription-canada/">Transcript Divas Transcription Canada </a>