A Tale of Two Cities

My loyal readers (I know there is more than one now!) may have noticed a bit of a drop off in my posting of late. Part of this may be attributed to shear laziness, but more-so to the absence of my honk inducing presence on the streets of Dubai. No, I haven’t given up riding – I’ve been on holiday! Sure, I booked the tickets in order to go to a wedding, but it also gave me a great opportunity to objectively compare my riding experience here in Dubai with that in New York City.

I hadn’t been back to New York since last November, and on that trip I wasn’t able to get out and ride due to time constraints. Plus, recently there has been a rash of new bicycle and pedestrian projects popping up all over the city thanks to the new leadership at the DOT. There are now several on-street protected bike lanes, along with loads of new standard class 2 bike lanes and a host of new pedestrian plazas – most strikingly in Times Square!

8th Avenue Cycle Track

I worked in Times Square for 7 years and did battle daily with the heaving masses of humanity coursing down the sidewalks. Talk about level of service problems, the sidewalks in Times Sq. would easily get an F if anyone actually cared to measure it. There have to be more people passing through on foot than in cars, yet cars take up, or shall I say took up, a lions share of the space. The only place in the city that I could see being worse off is 7th Ave and 34th St around Penn Station. At least there most people are commuters know what they are doing. Times Sq. is chock full of gawking tourists who walk erratically, slowly and stop suddenly without warning – much like children now that I think about it. I suppose this is due to the fact that wherever it is they come from, no one walks to get anywhere. Its more a strolling through the mall on a Sunday afternoon kind of crowd. I had a chance to visit the new layout in Times Square, and it is in one word, AWESOME. It is so much more pleasant to move around now, and it appears that both locals and tourists love the new layout. Even a cabbie admitted it helped out the traffic flow.

Broadway through Times Square (photo from NY Times)

Anyhow, I am getting ahead of myself. What I really wanted to find out was if my claim was correct that Dubai was no less difficult to ride around than New York or London. It’s always difficult to gauge rival experiences since it is impossible to actually be in both places at the same time. I could however manage to be in two different places within a day or so, which despite my notoriously bad memory, would provide me with a pretty good comparison.

I had always sort of been able to compare Dubai with NYC, but not so much NYC with Dubai since I hadn’t been back since moving here, it’s a strange distinction, but I think it holds water (one being a bit more distinct in memory than the other). The thing that really struck me and that I seemed to have not noticed earlier was the massive difference in average road speeds and how this affected the ‘feel’ of the street. New York has some fairly wide avenues to rival some of the larger streets in Dubai (not the great wall of SZR, but we’ll confine our comparison to surface streets). However, what New York also has is an abundance of cross streets (one every 80m) and a 30 mph (48kph) speed limit that is mostly obeyed (mainly because the lights are timed to flow at 30 mph). The massive difference in speeds made an equally massive difference in perception of the street. It ‘felt’ calm, at least in comparison to where I had just came from.

It was really a very strange feeling. I had lived in NYC for so long, and felt a certain way about the traffic – too fast, too loud, etc – but now here I was exposed to the exact same scene and I found it near bucolic! It was amazing, sort of like stepping out of a sensory deprivation chamber or something; this is what a real city feels like!

I was eager to get on the bike and try out the new bicycle infrastructure. Since many of my bikes were weeping gently in Dubai, awaiting my return, and I was travelling with my better half – we opted for the tandem. This is not the most comfortable bike to ride due to some gearing, geometry and seat issues (oh, and a bent pedal), but it’s quite nice since you can have a conversation and of course I get to drive.

The biggest coup was that we (cough) ‘forgot’ to bring helmets with us. I will generally wear a helmet whilst cycling around NYC, but for some reason don’t feel the need when I hop on the Schwinn. Perhaps it’s the relaxed pace, or the upright seating position, but I just feel safer. Seeing as how the tandem has one gear and a very low maximum speed, I wasn’t incredibly worried, but my riding partner is generally something of a helmet-Nazi, so this was a rare treat. I feel riding without a helmet (though perhaps slightly more unsafe if one gets in an accident) makes me feel more human somehow. I feel a smaller divide between me and the peds. I am less of a vehicle and more of a hyper-mobile human!

We headed south from my hilltop hideaway in newly landmarked Audubon Park (Washington Heights), down the Hudson River Greenway. It wasn’t long before I got my first taste of new bicycle infrastructure as they had completed a section of the greenway through Harlem in my absence.

Hudson River Greenway in Harlem

What was formerly a Fairway Supermarket parking lot was now a lovely riverside park with a separated bike path – Bueno! Further on down the path I saw the genesis of the long awaited 83rd street greenway connector (only up to the piling stage at the moment). At present one must divert landside up a big hill and back, but soon we’ll be able to stay waterside the whole trip from Battery Park City to the GWB.

By the time we reached midtown the inadequacies of the tandem were starting to take their toll on the booty, so we stopped for a spell at the newly renovated pier 66. Lucky for us the Lightship Frying Pan had just recently received its operating license from the city and we were able to sit back and enjoy a brew with an amazing view of the city and the river.

When we hit the village I turned left and headed inland. It wasn’t long before we found a nice cross-town bike lane (now painted green to stand out better), and cruised along easily over to the east village for some sushi. After lunch it we meandered over to Williamsburg Brooklyn, finding ourselves on bike lanes a good portion of the way. The massive increase in bike lanes was frankly spectacular – they seemed to be everywhere! It wasn’t that riding without them was that much of a problem, but riding IN them was something of a treat. Also of note was the stunning increase in cyclists. To be fair, it was a very pleasant day, but there were bikes everywhere. Quite a significant increase from two years ago from my perspective.

So what does this all mean? Are the mean streets of New York safer than the mean streets of Dubai? Why is it that there are so many more cyclists in New York than here? I think the second question is more important than the first; mainly because there weren’t always so many cyclists in New York for many of the same reasons people cite for not cycling here, like crazy drivers.

The recent efforts by the NYC DOT (over 200 miles of new bike lanes in three years) show that improved cycling infrastructure can help attract new riders, which in turn improves the safety of cyclists, which then attracts more cyclists. The roads are perceived to be safer, and in fact they are.

Crash Data vs Ridership

As you can see from a recent Transportation Alternatives study, despite a boom in cycling (more than doubling in the last 7 years, and a whopping 35% increase last year alone), the accident rate overall has dropped 25%. That means, despite there being twice as many cyclists on the road, there were one quarter fewer accidents. Not as a percentage, but overall!

Note that the drivers in NYC didn’t suddenly become saints, they still get voted the most aggressive drivers in the country, but what they did do apparently is start looking out for bicycles. This wasn’t out of some altruistic kindness, it was a subconscious response to seeing more bicycles on the road. Because there were more bikes they expected them to be there, and thus are more likely to avoid hitting them.

This is rather informative, and it ties in with my feelings riding in Dubai after returning from holiday. I realized that a lot of the near criminal behaviour directed towards me was due less to pure evil on the part of the motorist, and more to ignorance and surprise. People are genuinely surprised by my presence on the road (and more often than not, angered, since I tend to slow their supersonic pace by a hair). If there were say, 10,000 of me riding to work everyday, I would imagine traffic would soon grow accustomed to the sight of cyclists on the road and dare I say, be slightly less belligerent towards them.

So how can Dubai start attracting more cyclists? Well, building the bike lanes and tracks outlined in the BMP would be a good start. I know there are other commuter cyclists out there, hibernating, waiting for the proverbial spring thaw when they can mount their trusty steed and take to the streets. I don’t think many will though, until the bicycle infrastructure is in place – the perception of safety, or lack thereof is still too great. Hopefully the opening of the metro will spur some to at least ride to the station, and that ride might not seem so bad, which then might lead them to venture a bit further. It could be the seed from which our cycling tree grows!

I have heard rumours that the RTA is looking into starting a bike share program which would have kiosks at metro stations (this is also mentioned in the BMP). This would be a great step, even just the presence of bikes at the stations might stir some cyclists from their slumber. “What, I can ride in Dubai?” they might think, hmmmm, perhaps I will give it a try!