To mark the start of NYC’s annual Bike Week, sponsored by the NYC Dept. of Transportation and Transportation Alternatives (T.A.), City Councilmember David Yassky introduced a bill last Thursday (Intro 458) that would require building owners to make provisions for employees and tenants to bring bicycles into buildings. The measure could indeed boost city bike commuting — a 1990 city DOT study found that 45% of Manhattan office workers commuting less than 5 miles to work would consider traveling by bike if safe indoor bicycle parking available was available. Indoor parking addresses New Yorkers’ concerns about theft and vandalism. As T.A.’s Bicycle Blueprint points out, "Bicycles are lightweight, simple to operate and inherently mobile — hence, easy to steal."

The bicycle parking environment indeed received the lowest marks in Transportation Alternatives’ annual city cycling report card, presented in the group’s current magazine (see www.transalt.org for more info). Bike parking conditions received a D (down from C+ last year).

While on-street bike parking improved in 2002, bike access to buildings saw no progress.

In other areas, the report card gave government efforts to promote cycling in NYC a C+, down from an A- last year. The group cited ongoing development of bike lanes and paths, but is disappointed in the city’s failure to better inter-connect the emerging segments into a more coherent network. Dangerous and/or confusing access to East River bridge bikeways, among the most critical bike infrastructure in the city, remained a problem, as did the lack of safe conditions environment on major roadways like Flatbush Ave and Queens Boulevard. Although the city made progress on the Hudson River Greenway (by closing four motor vehicle crossing and redesigning eight), generally in 2002, greenways in the city were overcrowded, and suffered from the absence of a full-time Greenway Coordinator at the Parks Department. T.A. says DOT officials were more accessible to the public than in previous years. But overall, their efforts to build bike ridership did not keep pace with efforts in previous years. Top government marks went to NYC Transit for maintaining its "common sense" approach to bikes on subway trains.

For more on city cycling, see the full calendar of 2003 Bike Week events at bikeweeknyc.com. 

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