NYC Bike Datapoint of the Day

Joshua Benson, the bicycle program coordinator for the New York City Department of Transportation, mentions a startling statistic without even seeming to realise how startling it is:

As the number of cyclists in New York City has grown (75 percent increase in the last seven years), so has the demand for more parking.

Clearly, the growth in cyclists is much, much faster than NYC’s population growth, and I have no idea why that might be. The past seven years have seen a few new bike lanes, but nothing very much until the past year. Most people I meet still say – with good reason – that they’d never bike in NYC, it’s far too dangerous. And I don’t think that public transport has got a great deal worse. So what’s caused the huge rise in cyclists?

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