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Comment by Eric_WVGG | Hacker News Reader

NYC is honestly great for cycling. Say what you will about Bloomberg (or, allow me: scum), but his transportation secretary Janette Sadik-Khan did so much to turn this into a cycling city. If De Blasio and Adams had followed that lead, our cycling infrastructure would be second only to Amsterdam by now.

(and yeah I lived in Portland too)

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I tend to agree with you (on both the infrastructure and your opinion of Bloomberg) -- the city is, overwhelmingly, a far better place to cycle than when I was a kid.

At the same time, it's been my impression that there's been a backslide over the last few years: cyclist deaths are way up (and continue to rise), and I see way more obviously illegal cars (missing plates, defaced plates, etc.) and driving behavior (rolling through reds, turning on reds, etc.) on the streets than I used to. The city badly needs enforcement of these behaviors, both as a matter of public safety and a form of incentive and fine alignment.

There's a lot of speculation that the worst offenders for quality of life and road safety violations are NYPD themselves or connected (see the squadrons of NYPD personal vehicles parked on the sidewalks and in the bike lanes for an block around their precincts).

That speculation aligns closely with my personal experience.

We had a similar political issue in the UK. Boris Johnson was a polarising figure, yet many people had to admit that what he and his active transport advisor Andrew Gilligan promised to do for cycling and active transport infrastructure and livable neighbourhoods was game changing.

Unfortunately it never completed, because when he went then so did the good work, the funding, and now it's back to being a culture war 'war on drivers' issue.

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