I bike in New York City. I commute between my home in South Brooklyn and my office in Chelsea. This is my bike, Boltzmann, named after a 19th century physicist famous for taming disorder:

Boltzmann, looking handsome af down in Red Hook, Brooklyn

War Stories

I’ve been doored, hit from behind by an octogenarian in a 45-foot Buick at a stoplight, and chased by a cigar-smoking bus driver with anger management issues (in his bus and then on foot). I’ve had a silver Mercedes swerve to hit me, or at least scare the shit out of me (a white knight stayed on the scene and called the cops; what a hero).

Photograph of the bus that chased me down Tillary.

I’ve collided with people twice: once with a pedestrian who lunged through a line of parked cars and once into a bystander’s nuts with my head after being skewered by a hopelessly green and apologetic woman on a folding bike headed down Hudson River Park to the Brooklyn Bridge. I’ve gotten 2 tickets: one for not riding in the bike lane (which is not a law) and one for rolling through a red at the T-intersection of Hester and Chrystie. I’ve had my front wheel stolen. I’ve had my saddle stolen. I’ve had lights stolen. I’m drenched in sweat when I get to work. It’s the best.

It’s clearly not for everyone — but it should be, because accommodating cyclists makes cities better for everyone [1]. It can be, because I know exactly how to do it: get rid of cars.

Before I explain what I mean by “get rid of cars,” and before you jump straight to the comments to etch my name in blood with your pitchforks, let me acknowledge that anything that fits that bill would be a radical change to our city, and sell you on why NYC is exactly the right place for that kind of change.

Cue Orchestral Crescendo For Inspiring Montage

When I moved to NYC 12 years ago, I did so because it was the best — by far the beastliest, scariest, most exciting and powerful place in the US. It demanded excellence out of anyone who wanted to get by. Sinatra crooned about this. It was a place where millions of people who had their shit together were wantonly living in squalor.

If you can bike here, you can bike anywhere.

We all sacrifice a lot because that excellence is reciprocated. We have the best selection of almost every way of enjoying life on a daily basis: food, parks, booze, people. We expect things to be our way, which is why we lose our fucking minds when tourists stop in the middle of the sidewalk.

And yet there’s one omnipresent thing that’s at odds with the lifestyle of everyone I know here: cars. Sure, a few friends own cars, but they are mostly unused luxuries. They are not driven every day, because it wouldn’t make sense. We have extensive, cheap — and despite my whining, efficient and reliable — public transportation. And traffic is terrible. Nobody I know drives into Manhattan with any regularity. And yet we sacrifice an ungodly portion of our home to this unfitting, residual tumor of suburban sprawl.

So why do we put up with it? The main reason is that we have this inborn, American assumption of cars’ place in our lives. This leads to systemic inequalities which I’ll address below; but there’s another reason, too — a more New York reason: I think we’ve forgotten how to say fuck you.

I eat buildings.

We erected the Empire State Building in just over a year back in 1930. It was the world’s tallest building for 40 years. There’s this great bit in Rem Koolhaas’ Delirious New York about how the ESB cannibalized an entire city block to sit on that throne. That’s the New York I think my compatriots identify with; brutality, excellence, unwavering dedication. Why did it take 10+ years to get to work on the WTC site? Why does Penn Station look like a post apocalyptic strip mall? Why do we yield our streets so unflinchingly to a 24/7 multi-ton mechanical death rally?

We need our chutzpah back. We need some serious “fuck you, fix it”s in response to whatever answers are given to the questions above.

Anti-bike and pro-sexual harassment scourge, Simon Weiser, who sits on CB1 in Williamsburg and almost certainly drives a minivan.

And so we need to tell yutzes like this guy over here to fuck off and leapfrog places like Copenhagen that are touted for their bike-friendly culture. We need to do this in a New York City way. Our way; Sinatra, again.

The Proposal

OK, here’s my lunatic 2-point list of what I mean by “get rid of cars”:

Make it prohibitively expensive to drive non-commerical vehicles into Manhattan — a $100 toll, e.g. What would this do? There are 1.6 million people who commute into Manhattan every day, 16.2% by car [2]. Assuming the toll effectively dissuades those commuters from getting behind the wheel, it rids the city of close to 260,000 cars a day. That’s ~3 cars per second over the course of 24 hours and according to [3], almost 8% of the total potential capacity for traffic into Manhattan. Noting that this would also discourage tourists/daytrippers from driving in and that we’re nowhere close to that capacity, it’s fair to assume that percentage is much, much higher. Now this does of course shift that burden onto trains/buses/bikeways and affect ancillary businesses like parking garages and gas stations, but that’s how all change works. Make streets single-side parking only with designated loading zones on every block; offer extended pedestrian walkways and protected bike lanes on the opposite side. In the case of avenues, additionally steal an entire lane. This reclaims space that by behavioral right belongs to pedestrians. NYC, and especially Manhattan, is about walking around. We don’t want soft biological things sharing space with 3-ton machines; we want physical separation. And by losing parking on one side of the street, illegal parking necessarily happens in a way that blocks other car traffic instead of bike lanes. NYPD and taxi horns are much better at enforcing this infringement.

Crap Culture

Now this, despite being conceptually concise and straightforward, sounds insane. And that’s because every piece of our culture bends and flexes to accommodate cars. If you ever want to get away with murder, all you have to do is hit someone with your Subaru and call it an accident. You’ll walk with nothing more than a slap on the wrist [4,5,6,7].

Who doesn’t love this?

It’s a recognizable pattern from any situation that involves the disenfranchised on one side and the privileged on the other (racially-fueled crime, sexual assault etc.): we victim-blame while thoroughly considering every conceivable leniency for the perpetrator. “Well what was she wearing?” becomes “Well what was she wearing on her head?” when a cyclist is struck and killed.

So my proposal doesn’t sound insane because it’s actually wildly at odds with our ideals as New Yorkers, it sounds insane because we’re subject to a cultural construct that we don’t make an effort to reevaluate from first principles.

No, I Still Think You’re Insane

Fair enough. But at the heart of almost every one of my war stories above is a problem that much better biking infrastructure solves. And current policy is moving us in that direction.

New York Parking Department

We’re slowly painting the city green, CitiBike is expanding, almost 4% of pedestrians now look before stepping into a bike lane [8], and more people than ever are considering a bicycle as a serious commuting option. But community boards slow the whole process down and cater to statistically unswayed elderly [9], unprotected bike lanes don’t really work well enough and are completely ignored by the NYPD, and incremental changes allow motorists to drive with continued impunity. Having said all that, if we do just keep hammering away, we will eventually have an urban landscape that’s truly bike-friendly.

But that’s not the Empire State Building way; that‘s not emblematic of who we want to be as New Yorkers. Less cars equates to a safer city, a quieter city, a cleaner city, a healthier city. These are things we all want and the cost for those things is the lost convenience of an entitled minority.

Fuck them.