TEASER: Chaos in the Bike Lane with Aaron Gordon
The War on Cars
The War on Cars, LLC
4.9 • 937 Ratings
🗓️ 8 August 2023
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The rising problem of mopeds and motorcycles in New York City bike lanes is impossible to ignore but the solutions are anything but simple.
Recently, journalist and friend of the podcast Aaron Gordon wrote an essay for his newsletter titled "Biking in New York City Has Gotten Worse," in which he laments the change that's happened in recent years of larger and faster motorized vehicles using the city's bike lanes. We're not talking pedal-assist e-bikes and cargo bikes or even the Arrow e-bikes that have long been preferred by New York's delivery workers. We're talking full-on mopeds and motorcycles—electric and gas-powered alike—many of which are unlicensed and, even if they did have the proper registration, generally do not belong in bike lanes.
In this coversation, we talk about how and why this problem has grown, largely due to the major food-delivery app companies which wash their hands of any responsibility for providing their workers, all of whom are categorized not as employees but as contractors, with fair wages, benefits, and even street-legal vehicles.
Can government force the app companies to step up? What should people who advocate for safe streets and bike infrastructure do? It's complicated.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Okay, so Aaron Gordon, the reason you're here is because you recently wrote something for your newsletter. |
| 0:05.0 | They really got the three of us talking and you and I actually spoke about it before you published it. |
| 0:11.0 | It's a piece titled, Biking in New York City has gotten worse. I wonder if you |
| 0:16.0 | could just start by explaining the premise of this pretty provocative titled piece. |
| 0:21.2 | Yeah so I was reflecting on my 10 year anniversary of being like an |
| 0:26.9 | urban cyclist like as a means of commuting and whatnot. Nine of those years have |
| 0:31.0 | been in New York City and I was specifically reflecting on how a lot of people I know for that entire nine years have wanted to get into biking but have been afraid of doing it and when I first moved |
| 0:44.9 | here the fear was very much about getting hit by a car about mingling with car |
| 0:50.8 | traffic constantly. |
| 0:52.8 | But in the last few years I noticed a change, |
| 0:54.7 | which is a lot of people were trying cycling, |
| 0:57.3 | either via city bike or during the pandemic, |
| 0:59.4 | they got their own bike, |
| 1:01.3 | and they found that they couldn't get comfortable riding in bike lanes |
| 1:06.0 | for various reasons but the most prominent one being the mingling with two-wheeled motored vehicles |
| 1:12.0 | of all kinds and a lot of people weren't |
| 1:14.9 | getting into or staying into biking for this reason and I was reflecting on that |
| 1:18.7 | with my own experience which has been similar now I still am a cyclist I still ride around a lot but I found that a lot of the places I enjoyed riding most when I first moved here like some of the city's best protected bike lanes, |
| 1:32.7 | or the bridges which have their own, |
| 1:34.6 | you know, the bridges that have their own dedicated bike paths. |
| 1:38.1 | Those were some of the places I enjoyed riding most |
| 1:40.0 | when I first moved here. |
... |
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