sashae

Transportation Alternatives' Top 10 Worst Locations for Cyclist Injuries (not surprising how bad 6th ave between 14th and 34th looks... that area is awful for riding) and Manhattan crash maps.

Interesting stuff. Just looking at the area around my work/home, I intuitively knew that 6th Ave and Herald Square were particularly bad -- this just proves it.

abe1x

so everything pretty much makes sense except that 96th and Bway, what gives up there? I went through that intersection nearly every weekday of my life K-12 often waiting for the bus and never saw a bike accident, I'm guessing it has more to do with the shop/rental place than anything else.

In the end I'd say #2 Broadway and Union Square West is the worst designed intersection in town, there is something deeply wrong with the way the lights work there, as a ped you always start to cross just as the bway traffic gets the light to turn into you on 17th... On a bike its just an absurd mess of people and turning cars...

mareesha

Canal street.
That whole stretch is a horrible mess of potholes, people who don't know how to drive in the city, and lost tourists staring up at the sky while wandering out in the street.

turd

those crash maps are an eye-opener but i wish the stats were a little more up to date -- a lot has happened in 5 years, including the changes to the various entrances/exits to bridges

turd

also, i don't know why the city gives the WORST possible routes to get to those bridge entrances for bikes.. for example, the bike route signs to get onto the williamsburg bridge tell cyclists to go along delancey all the way from allen street -- a ridiculously dangerous stretch for two reasons:
(1) the smaller streets above and below delancey are much quieter and
(2) the person who relies on those bike route signs indicates an inexperienced rider, making that stretch of traffic all the more daunting.

sashae

No joke. I'm curious whether the relationship between the number of bike accidents on 6th is correlated with usage of the bike lanes (ie, bike lanes are more dangerous than the street) or if it's correlated with increased bicycle use on 6th because the lanes exist (thus, similar percentage of accidents per x number of riders on the avenue, but increased ridership.)

Be something interesting to find out from TA, if they knew.

visitordesign

bike lanes are definitely more dangerous than streets. the city even loosely alludes to that in their "master plan for cycling in new york city" publication that i came across at my dad's engineering firm's library. that's actually an interesting publication. i'll see if i can find it and PDF it sometime this week.

mrRed

bike lanes are scary ... very very scary

Yoshi

Hahaha, that's how I get on the Williamsburg bridge. Of course, I can count on one hand the number of times I've ridden over it (okay, maybe I'd need two hands).

brokenrobot

I would LOVE to see a copy of the master plan - heard a lot about it, but never seen it!

Pretty much all of the intersections on the top-ten list have some kind of funky light scheme, it seems to me... like left-turn lights for traffic travelling in one direction but not the other, or the goofy three-way intersection at B'way / Union Square W, or things like that. I know I've gotten myself in trouble at more than one of them over the years by "anticipating" a light change that turned out not to be entirely in my favor... I wonder what percentage of the accidents at some of them come from cyclists who jump the gun / try to push yellows, and get caught off guard when the right-of-way changes in unexpected ways?

jayrooney

Even with the bike lane, 6th ave is probably the worst ave to ride on in the city.
The bike lane always has trucks parked in it causing people to merge into traffic.
You're also forced into traffic on 6th when you have to go around all the trucks waiting to make left turns.
and on garbage day, the bike lane is covered in leakage from the garbage trucks. not good.

bklyn74

it kills me that TA puts so much energy into bike lanes which are the scariest places in the entire roadway to ride a bike. outside of that though, i'm a proud member. as you all should be also. wink wink.

monkey

How many people get killed every year on Houston?
That street is nuts.

schloe mo

this is good info for us out-of-towners coming to Monstertrack.

apart from the worst streets, can anyone offer up some of your favorite routes
getting around NY and Brooklyn?

timmhaan

i guess because bike lanes are tangible and it's a way to quantify progress. you can actually measure the miles of new bike lanes. can't really do that with a plain road.

turd

i really don't think alleycats (esp. monstertrack) has any relevance at all within this thread abt RIDING IN TRAFFIC SAFELY.. hahahah!

schloe mo

i agree. i'm thinking more about riding around, going to bars, etc the rest of the weekend.
EDIT: my trip is as much about seeing old friends, as racing in MT.

morbot

with a name like "the master plan", is it that hard to figure out what they really mean here? bike lanes are built to delude cyclists into thinking they're safe, when their true purpose is to kill them off and rid the city once and for all of this scourge upon mankind

eddiebrannan

#! bowery and west houston

don't intersect

turd

well for that weekend -- i say follow the most sober dude

schloe mo

if i can find one.

bklyn74

east houston, dog. picky picky.

visitordesign

haha. more or less, the thing says that it's amazing that anyone rides a bike in NYC, but that riding a bike in a city like NYC is a great idea. there's a lot of interesting information in it. i'm gonna try to dig up and post the publication tonight.

eddiebrannan

well **** get it right! anyway, what's wrong with that intersection? seems like one of the saner ones to me, and i ride it every day on my commute

bklyn74

yeah, i dunno, seems ok to me too. people riding w/ their eyes closed?