[rayiner]

Is optimizing for bikes worth the disruption to traffic? It seems like a handful of bicyclists hold up a lot of people in cars.

(Also, the anti-suburb sentiment is quite ... problematic. Hint: There is a reason most of the good ethnic food in New York is in actually in Westchester and Long Island.)

[btrettel]

As a daily transportation cyclist, I doubt I add any measurable amount of time to the commutes of drivers I encounter on the road. In fact, it's not uncommon to see the same drivers at multiple stoplights because the effective speed (due to the stoplights) is sometimes a bit slower than I ride.

That of course leads to another problem: Impatient drivers giving me close "punishment passes" only to wait at the stoplight. This is a common experience for cyclists.

Add on top of this the fact that most cyclists usually take different routes than drivers would from point A to point B. (Routes with less cars.)

[hannasanarion]

That "handful" you perceive are way more than the number of people in cars using the same space.

A bicycle needs less than a quarter as much space on the road as a car does, it seems there are fewer of them because they are physically smaller.

[francisofascii]

You have to realize the number of bicyclists is significantly constrained because of the danger caused by the cars.

[int_19h]

So, not mixing cars and bikes together would be a win-win.

[mannykannot]

The Bronx is not Westchester.

[rrdharan]

And Queens is not Long Island.

[rayiner]

1) Gentrification has moved most of the lower-income folks in Queens away from the subway lines. And in the Bronx, there is not much subway access to begin with (the lines are spaced as far apart as the entire island of manhattan).

2) The NYC congestion pricing scheme would apply to folks entering Manhattan. That would seem to include folks coming in from the Bronx and Queens.

The overall point remains--the "bridge and tunnel crowd" aspersions always were classist, but the gentrification of manhattan has now made it quite racist as well.

[joemaller1]

well, technically...