In advance of the arrival of NYC's bikeshare program, Bryan Walsh checks the stats:
More than twice as many New Yorkers commuted to work by bike in 2011 than in 2006 — to nearly 20,000 — while the number of New Yorkers who ride their bike daily increased by more than 13% over just the past two years. And much of that two-wheeled growth is due to the surprisingly bike friendly policies of Mayor Mike Bloomberg and his aggressive transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. More than 290 miles of new bike lanes have been built since Bloomberg took over in 2002 — altogether there are more than 700 miles — including new routes physically separated from the streets in main arteries like Manhattan's Ninth Avenue. "Between 2 and 2.5% of all vehicle miles traveled in the entire city of New York is by bike," says Charles Komanoff, a New York-based transport analyst. "That's five or six times what it was 30 years ago."
Will it make the city less safe?
The number of people who've been killed in traffic accidents in New York has declined over the past decade, and the number of bikers is growing faster than the number of bike accidents. And despite the public perceptions of out of control cyclists, bikers are rarely at fault for accidents — especially with cars. A study by Monash University in Australia that looked at driver-cyclist collisions found that nearly 90% of cyclists had been traveling in a safe and legal manner just before the crashes, while vehicle drivers were at fault for more than 80% of the collisions, with the remaining collisions classified as no-fault.
The Dish 