I just spent several days in New York, and I can report back that while bike commuting isn't as popular there as it is in D.C., cycle density has certainly increased. That's good news, because as Streetsblog reports with the graph above, when more people bike, biking is safer. As our dearly departed Ezra Klein observes, this is partly intuitive -- motorists who are used to sharing the road with cyclists and pedestrians are safer, less aggressive drivers. But it's also a question of public policy. As I reported for the Prospect last November (way before that, ahem, that other article came out), Mayor Mike Bloomberg's transportation czar, Janette Sadik-Khan, is a bike commuter herself and has made cycling a major policy priority. She has built protected bike lanes, erected better-designed bike racks, and generally sought to encourage the practice and emphasize its safety.
Another point I'd make about how biking is different in New York than it is in other cities: The vibrant restaurant scene, and culture of ordering-in, means that a lot of the cyclists out on the street are food-delivery guys. They can be aggressive bikers, but their ever-increasing numbers account for a major percentage of bike traffic in New York, meaning we have them to thank, in part, for increased car-driver awareness of bikes.
--Dana Goldstein
