Does Your City Need Wider Bike Lanes? Here’s What We Did To Make It Happen!
In New York City during the years following the initial Covid pandemic, it was apparent there were huge increases of bike & micromobiity users on some of our longest avenues with protected bike lanes.
Being a 30+ year bike rider I never witnessed a bike boom of this scale. It was 2021 and at rush hours the lanes were packed. It was fun to be riding with so many people! Of course we had “cranks” claiming bike lanes were barely used but that didn’t sync with the real world.
So I did this first count on 2nd Ave placing my camera down 3 times and the results were promising: 171 bikes, 323 vehicles, 11 buses which led to a ½ dozen elected officials calling for widening it. I did a half dozen others including this one that showed a nearly 1:1 ratio of bikes to cars at the base of the Queensboro Bridge Bike Path, of course that being a bike entry to point to Manhattan it did help skew the numbers a bit, but impressive.
Of course it being 2021, NYC was just starting to try to get back to some normal and consumed by more urgent issues. But it was good to put the bug in everyone’s ear. When 2023 rolled around it again brought record numbers of bikes and I felt it was time to once again to show the numbers AND what crowded looked like so I posted another count (above) in 30 minutes. More impressive numbers: 321 bikes, 530 cars - which added more fuel to the city’s announcement to at least explore widenings.
Anytime I had an opportunity in an interview or social media to call for wider lanes, I would implore the city to “build for the future, not for the present”. Much joy came later in 2023 when NYC DOT announced the installation of a 30+ block section of a new protected bike lane on 3rd Avenue, they said it would be “double wide” in most spots. You can take a look at how gloriously that turned out above (note: now the lane runs over 100 blocks along most of 3rd!)
The bike lane widenings on 2nd Avenue many near spots where I filmed came late in 2024, (I had a hunch a few months earlier when an unnamned person working at NYC DOT told me they did counts as high as 900+ from 5 to 6pm Upper East Side on 2nd Avenue.) The above is what it looked like in midtown with improvements in the 50s and below in the teens of the lower east side.
So I think this is the point where I should offer my specific recommendations.
Most important if you think a bike lane needs widening, you’re gonna need to document the numbers.
Choose a time period it’s busy (almost always am or pm rush hours).
Try to do a continuous 30 min or 1 hour time period.
Obviously don’t do a bad weather day and avoid cold or wet weather.
Try to set up so you can record not only bikes but other traffic. I’ve never done it but finding a spot high above the traffic would be a pretty awesome thing.
If you count the numbers manually, do it twice just to make sure you get near the same number.
It’s also important to have a strategy to get the video out there.
Get it out on social media. Try to find local writers, bloggers or even tv that might consider a story on it.
Find local leaders/elected officials that will support you or offer soundbites.
The smart thing is to speed up for your post cause no one wants to watch a 30 minute tape. (But keep the original tape parked somewhere. I had two different cranks say I made up the numbers. I sent them a link to my original and…well…they either didn’t feel like counting or did and realized I was right and retreated.)
Make sure you have a nice
