Our city has an epidemic and the disease is selfishness. Everyone has a place to go and they want to get there as fast as possible. Cars are bigger, faster and more removed from the outside world than they ever have been before. Drivers are more concerned with not missing text messages, facebook notifications or shaving a few seconds off their trip by staring at Waze's every suggestion than they are with what's going on around them. Cyclists can sometimes be to blame as well, so we must take some credit for the problem. If I see one more e-bike riding on the sidewalk or another messenger weaving through a busy intersection of pedestrians I am going to scream.

Our city has changed. Neighborhoods that were once purely commercial are now filled with new residential housing. Business districts have popped up in areas that were once abandoned. Cyclists are now choosing to ride on streets where cars are not used to sharing the road. As housing and business districts change, the infrastructure that feeds them needs to change as well.

I choose to ride a bike because I care about the environment, because it's the most reliable way to get to work on time, because it's the most affordable way to travel, because I like getting exercise and because it's my legal right to do so. In the last few weeks, I've been more and more reluctant to bike to work, even though the entirety of my bike ride from home to work is in a bike lane. I've been lucky, I've had two close calls in the last few weeks while riding in the bike lane and have thankfully come out of it unscathed because I ride like every single damn car is trying to kill me. I came close to getting doored by a woman carelessly opening a door to an Uber as she exited, "I didn't see you" she said apathetically, "That's the problem!" was my response. All she had to do was look. In my other close call, I was riding in the bike lane around Grand Army Plaza when a man in a SUV decided that he couldn't wait in traffic like the rest of the cars and he pulled into the bike lane almost hitting my head on as well as two other cyclists. I had a few choice words for him, he didn't seem to think he was doing anything wrong.