I misnamed the bridge as i was distracted, Williamsburg bridge. It dumps out on Delancy once you hit Manhattan, and Delancy is the first subway stop on that side of the water.
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I think when it gets to the point where you dismiss the realities of lives unlike your own as impossible, and insist that such people should just rent a car.
You’re really just proving my point.
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Car club membership is treated as a viable alternative to owning a car where I live.
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Yeah and people in socio-ecconomic classes that are vastly less likely to have access to banking, credit cards, and drivers licenses can totally rely on that in combo with bike lanes.
No need for dirty, polluting, expensive public transit!
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Ryu, I really don’t want to be contentious. I generally enjoy your comments. I definitely think there should be more public transit. I think mass transit is great, and I’m aware it can be done ecologically and eventually offered at low cost, but such projects are ambitious for many areas of the country.
I think you’re making a lot of unwarranted assumptions about bike users, and possibly overestimating how many people could use public transit. Most folks in the US can’t use it now, certainly, and while I’d love for it to be omnipresent, I don’t know that the country will change that for decades.
I don’t see a downside to the faster/cheaper step of adding bike lanes/trails. My hometown was greatly improved by adding bike lanes and dedicated bike trails. Due to the lack of industry, no one is ever going to buy them a monorail or any major transport. Largely blue collar town, average income 25k. The bike paths are popular. They have a clunky bus route, as many small cities do, biking is now often faster than using it. I’m aware that a better bus service would be great, but if that’s easy, I don’t know why buses always seem slow and inconvenient for most of where I’ve lived. I have also lived in or near three major cities, for only one of them could I routinely make use of mass transit, would have loved to if I could have. I bike when I can, but the limiting factor is often fear of death from having to share roads with traffic not looking for bikes. Sedentary life style and climate change are concerns for the planet, more biking helps with both.
I thought this was an interesting article on transit compared to bike use, in Europe and the US. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20161206-is-cycling-to-work-really-cheaper-than-public-transport
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Those people would not be considering an alternative to owning a car, would they?
Yep. Have friends who attempted the zipcar route for all of their car needs in Brooklyn, and this went like a Citibike rental with the added stench under the seat of old burrito or whatever and they gave up once they had car seats to contend with. Not a very practical idea for NYC… again, a very dense part of LES/Williamsburg/Bedford Stuy perspective on what makes sense. One of the things NYC urgently needs is an EV charging system… because when you live in Bayside or Douglaston you’re in car country until they bring the 7 train out a few more miles… train to bus takes over an hour even from other parts of Queens.
That’s a long haul in most places, but in NYC you’re looking at 9 million people who are already extremely heavy public transportation users, and most of that train users, because anything else gets stuck in hours of traffic. So what I think Ryuthrowsstuff is getting at is that NYC’s very used and functional system would get more use if it got reconfigured for where all of the people have wound up since the last great round of train building in the 50’s…
I don’t drive, and I don’t cycle much. I am very confident my reaction has nothing to do with projection, or with any prejudice about cyclists.
And it’s not like I spend a lot of time thinking about the minority of people who go around being jerks, either. What riles me about the OP is the perversion that being a jerk in this way is admirable.
Yes, it looks like fun. But whether you’re into something has nothing to do with whether it’s right. There’s a bunch of stuff which is fun to do in games, and unthinkable to do in reality. Let’s unlock the achievement of knowing the difference!
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Again, I think you’ll find whataboutism gets you nowhere here. The fact that cars also do stupid things does not excuse cyclists doing stupid things. You’re also willfully ignoring the key difference of being a dick by choice versus doing what you have to to get to work every day. This has been pointed out multiple times to you, so it’s clear you’re not genuinely interested in a real conversation about this.
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Looked like a skitch off of the rear-driver’s-side door handle to me.
Most people agree that adults riding full speed all the time on the sidewalk is not a good idea. That’s not how most adults ride on the sidewalk though. Speaking for myself I ride on the sidewalk only between the street and where I’m going to park my bike. Perhaps crossing courtyards. Perhaps riding the last half a block on the sidewalk instead of going the wrong way on a one way street. Or to cross at an intersection instead of jay-biking across in the middle of a block. When I do so, I slow to walking speed near pedestrians. I’m actually safer on the bike in crowded areas because walking alongside the bike doubles the width that oncoming walkers have to part to get around, increasing friction.
Like anything with biking, it’s not a black and white thing where you are either a pedestrian or a car. There’s a middle ground that’s safe and sane, but often unfamiliar to those who don’t commute by bike.
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I bike to midtown Manhattan every day. There is no defensive of both of these persons recklessly doing what they did. It figures that they came across the Williamsburg Bridge (as the douche factor of residents living in Williamsburg-ish area is higher than other areas of the city, my own opinion). Pedestrians are extremely unpredictable. Most cars are also trying not to do injury anyone and you have to be mindful of their blindspots just as you have to realize most pedestrians will only pay attention if they absolutely have to. I can get running red lights AFTER stopping to look for pedestrians and then for cross traffic and then before crossing, look again on the other side for pedestrians. Most people who think they are making such good time by recklessly running lights and just being an over all douchebag, are not making any better time if they just had decent biking-leg power. Yea, sure they might shave half a minute over someone that is faster than them… maybe but the time lost due to an accident and the risk of injury to self and others is so not worth it. That’s like taking the Brooklyn Bridge on a nice sunny warm weekend to save the minute it would be over taking the Manhattan Bridge. Can you gain that time, yea sure but why would you want to go through the risk/frustration? Ah, b/c of the likes and views on the video that after 2 months no one is going to care about.
If I were to venture a guess: it went sour? 
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