There has been a dramatic increase in the number of people who use bicycles to get around New York City. According to Gothamist, a report prepared through years of research shows that there was a 320 percent increase in the number of New Yorkers commuting by bicycle in recent years as compared with in 1990. While the rise in bicycle riding has taken place at a time when safety efforts are being made to protect cyclists, the improvements in safety are not enough to protect all these new riders. This is causing concern that the “city isn’t keeping up with [the] historic cyclist boom.”
Bicycle riders deserve safe streets and they deserve to have their rights respected by drivers who exercise reasonable care while on the roads. If there are unsafe roads or careless drivers and a bicycle rider gets hurt, the victim should consult with New York injury attorneys to determine if it could be possible to pursue a claim for monetary damages.
New Safety Efforts Are Not Enough to Keep Up With Cyclist Boom
The use of the bicycle as a method of commuting around New York City has increased dramatically just in the past several years. Between 2009 and 2014, there was close to a 50 percent increase in the number of people who ride a bike at least several times monthly. When asked about daily bicycle riding, there was a 68 percent increase between 2010 and now in the number of people who use their bikes every day.
In 1990, there were 100,000 commuters who rode bikes every day and now there are 420,000 daily commuters. The increase experienced by New York is out of the ordinary, considering bike riding has increased almost twice as much in NYC as compared with similar cities including Seattle, D.C., Boston, Chicago, Portland, and San Francisco.
Brooklyn, in particular has seen substantial increases in bike traffic. Between 2010 and 2015, Brooklyn saw the most substantial growth in its overall population- and experienced a 75 percent increase in people who bicycle daily on their commute. In Staten Island and the Bronx, on the other hand, there was nine percent and 19 percent growth in daily bike commuters respectively.
The dramatic increase in bicycle riding has prompted a need to increase safety, but the executive director at Transportation Alternatives has cautioned that the city must do more to protect all of these new riders. There are routinely tragedies in the news, including Gothamist’s reports of three cyclists killed by drivers within three weeks of the time it published its article on the need for better safety protections for bicycle riders.
Most safety advocates believe more money should be invested into creating an integrated network of protected bicycle lanes. There will be 15 miles of new protected bicycle lanes added to the network by the end of 2016. However, this is just the start and much more needs to be done. If there is a failure to provide a safe space for riders or if drivers don’t respect the rights of bicyclists, Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff attorneys can help riders who are hurt by negligence or carelessness. Call our office today if you have been injured.
