A Visit from George Bliss · 2007-07-08 17:49
We here at New York Bike-Share HQ were just visited by pedicab pioneer and bike advocate George Bliss who was able to share with us a few of his thoughts on the current state of biking in the city.
In Bliss’ opinion, the greatest obstacle to New York’s adoption of any of the programs currently popular in Europe isn’t so much infrastructure or scale, as most commonly believed, but the prevalent cultural attitude towards biking in general.
Many residents of the city ascribe a great social significance to owning and driving a car. The same social status is not provided by a bicycle and until the prevalent image of the bike commuter becomes members of the upper class, and away from so-called “laborers” like messengers and deliverymen, the average person will not leave their car keys at home and hop on two wheels.
Simply providing bicycles to the public (the “build it and they will come” method) will not enact change. The sheer number of bikes put on the streets (and we offer 40,000 as just a start for a city based on its current population) is also not enough to ensure the safety of those who venture to ride them. The common recreational rider does not realize that they are three times as likely to get in an accident if they ride on the left side of the road rather than the right. Chances of being involved in an accident also decrease if one avoids large crosstown arteries and sticks to one-way streets.
There are undoubtedly many issues involved with successfully launching a bike-share program here, but just because there are challenges does not mean an inquiry isn’t worthwhile. Come by the Storefront tomorrow night at 6 pm to hear how ClearChannel Adshel approached their programs in Barcelona, Stockholm, and Oslo.
(In addition to founding Pedicabs of New York, Bliss also operates a bicycle parking company in the West Village which, for a monthly fee, rents and houses bicycles for riders who can’t keep them in their own apartments. He has been a proponent for bicycle-friendly legislation and rider education for decades.)
— New York Bike Share
