In Praise of Density

After a long stall, it seems new construction in the greater New York metropolitan region is finally picking up again, although not so much in areas outside the urban core, such as my current neighborhood, Riverdale.  Nevertheless, areas already quite dense, such as Brooklyn Heights, the Upper West and East Sides, and even Jersey City, are finally becoming denser.

Reading about some of this new development, I find far too much opposition by people who logic would dictate should be in favor.  Some of this is extremely personal NIMBYism, such as complaints about blocked views, but unless your new view will have almost no visible sky or natural light, or unless you are losing truly magnificent open views, I think even this is illogical.  Opposing development in areas that are already quite dense and lack sufficient transit is also rational, at least until new transit is completed (such as on the Upper East Side along the Second Avenue Subway). For those who own their apartments, it is quite possible they will lose significant potential capital gains on their purchase, and so opposition, while extremely selfish, is also rational.

Living Car-Light

Shortly after I started bike commuting, I also started following the blogs of other bike commuters.  Some of my favorites, such as Hum of the City, The Invisible Visible Man, and Brooklyn Spoke, also proudly espouse cycling for all types of trips, including dropping off kids at school and grocery shopping, and generally living “car-free.”  While I am deeply sympathetic to their choices, living in transit-mediocre Riverdale and having a newborn at home means that I can’t quite make the leap to car-free yet.  Nonetheless, my family and I have recently made the jump to living “car-light.”

Dollars and Sense: The Finances of Bike Commuting

I work in finance so, naturally, I am interested in the financial aspect of bike+ferry commuting.  The main reasons I took up cycling were non-pecuniary, such as the health benefits of cycling and the frustration of driving.  Nevertheless, it can be interesting and informative to go through a thorough analysis of all the financial costs of each mode of transport.  This post compares all the costs of commuting between Riverdale and Jersey City either by car or by bike and ferry.  Though originally published in May 2013, I’ve updated this post over time as I’ve learned more about bike commuting, even though I no longer live in Riverdale.

Utility Cycling

Prior to embarking on my greenway commuting adventures, I never thought of riding a bike as a useful method of transportation.  It was always just a tool to be used for pleasure, for joy rides on the weekends, essentially just a toy.  After commuting by bike for a while, I thought to myself, “where else can I go by bike more conveniently than by car, transit, or on foot?”

National Bike to Work Day

Last Friday, May 17, was National Bike to Work Day.  Transportation Alternatives set up “fueling stations” at various commuter entry points to Manhattan’s CBD, so naturally I stopped by on the Greenway at 72nd St.

It seems the biggest topic these days is Citi Bike.  Everyone wants to know how this system will work out.  Personally, I’m very excited for the launch, and quite curious to witness how this changes the city.  I’ve been following all the complaints about the bike share locations, but frankly it all seems like a bunch of typical NIMBYism.  I even had one guy approach me at work while I was changing into my cycling clothes in the locker room to give me his opinion.  Apparently the popular view is to say, “I’m all for bikes, bike lanes, and bike share, but I’m against the way they’re doing the station placement.”  Give me a break!  If there’s gonna be bike share, the stations need to go somewhere, and the public streets are just that, public property.  The city is moving away from driving more and more these days, and to replace a car parking spot with 6-8 bike share stations seems like an excellent trade-off to me.

Hello World

For nearly the past year, I’ve been commuting to work by bicycle.

Deborah by the beach with a helmet.

Me by the beach with a helmet.

I’ve always enjoyed cycling.  When my wife and I lived in Skokie, IL, we rented bicycles on one of our first trips to downtown Chicago.  We started riding along the lake shore greenway, enjoying the scenery, occasionally pausing to sit on the sandy beaches and enjoy the breeze coming in off the lake.

Victory! We made it home!

After a while, we got to the end of the bike path, near the northern edge of Chicago, and we realized, “you know what, we’re not that far from home.”  And so we continued riding the rest of the way home.

Eventually we bought bikes, and we did a fair amount of riding on weekends.  We did Chicago’s famous and very popular “Bike the Drive”, we explored the ample bike paths around Skokie and Evanston, we biked to the Chicago Botanical Garden (not actually located in Chicago), and one time we made it all the way up to Wisconsin, nearly all on off-street bike paths, though passing through a few unsavory neighborhoods.

While I did constantly think about commuting to work, I never quite got around to actually doing it.  In retrospect, this seems silly, since it is only 12 miles, mostly on off-street paths and almost completely flat, and I could easily have done it in under an hour.  But with no showers at work, cheap garage parking available at work, a driveway at home, and a largely “reverse” commute that rarely took more than a half hour, it seemed the disadvantages outweighed the advantages.

After we moved to NJ, all cycling pretty much stopped for a while.  I did try to venture out a few times, but with no off-street bike paths in the area I did not find the effort pleasant or worthwhile.  For various reasons, though, NJ was not for us, so we moved to NYC, specifically Riverdale in the Bronx.