As a regular bike commuter, I have to weigh in on your "the average person would never bike" arguments. A big reason people don't think of biking around New York is that cycling is marginalized, unsafe, and not perceived as a viable means of transportation, not because of the weather. I avoid rain and snow and still ride to work (from Harlem to Wall Street) 3-4 days a week. And except for February, the last six months have been pretty nice riding weather. Even if you have people riding only on nice days, but not in their cars, NYC would be a MUCH more pleasant city.

The street space is valuable - too valuable to be used solely for automobiles, which have obviously proven to be an ineffective mode of transportation in dense urban areas. Taking two lanes out of each major avenue and one out of each cross-town artery for BRT and bikes would be a much more effective use for such valuable space, even if the bike lanes are underutilized. Build it and the cars will come...restrict it and they will leave. And when people see such lanes and recognize that cycling is safer, more accepted, and more common, then we will have more riders.

Sure, you may get tired of us StreetsBlog whackos going on and on about how cycling is an urban panacea, but it's hard to completely deny the benefits of having a commuter on a bike rather than in a car or even on the subway. More people on bikes means improved travel times (both because cycling is usually faster than either the subway or driving and fewer cars mean less traffic) and increased transit capacity (fewer subway riders mean faster rides).

Glenn, improved bike infrastructure has to be on your list.

But hey, don't let reality intrude on the reverie.

Oh, and to topic, anything the city does to make driving in NYC more difficult, the better.

And those trains of thought folks are definitely on to something with their regional rail ideas, and I especially like the idea of a single unified fare system. Actually unifying all the systems will be a much bigger challenge, and require either re-electifying some of the lines, or running dual mode trains. Another huge obstacle is ridiculous FRA collision-strength regulations which make it practically impossible to build a normal MU train. Systems like LIRR and Metro North, should have an exemption, on account of their cab signal systems, which can be very effective in preventing collisions in the first place, and thus greatly reducing the importance of having very heavy but indestructible trains.

Tremendous efficiency gains to NYC's commuter rail systems could be realized by connecting Penn Station to Grand Central.

See these smart PDFs for more:
http://www.trainsofthought.com/onecity.pdf

http://www.trainsofthought.com/connect.pdf

Also, something has to be done about bike parking in order to truly make bicycles a viable, major transport mode. New office buildings should have bike parking; major transit hub rehabs like Fulton St, Moynihan Stn, etc should have underground bike parking garages. Basel, Switzerland has an incredible bike parking facility underneath its central train station. Bikes are securely locked; a guard keeps watch from a booth; there are showers and lockers to store changes of clothing; there is a bike shop and repair facilities; there is enough capacity for 1,000+ bikes.

Regarding this point, and several of the environmental points, EVERY sub-group included congestion pricing and a new emphasis on support for bicycling. Repeated frequently were light rail/streetcars, BRT, integrated regional rail, pedestrian and cycling boulevards, and free/very inexpensive public transit options.

While these people were downtowners, so perhaps less apt to be car-centric, these weren't really people who eat-and-sleep-StreetsBlog. The ideas that we rant about here ARE filtering down to the general public, and that public is looking for change.

That message is going into the Mayor's Office - it remains to be seen what comes out. But don't be worried about sounding like you're "out there" when advocating for any of these suggestions.

if the bicycle is treated not like an oddity but like a valid and practical form of transportation, people will respond by using it. the result will be cleaner air, a healthier population, and less crowded subways.

What about land use and development policy to create more jobs, residents and shopping around existing mass transit hubs?

I think one major problem that NYC has is that everyone wants to arrive in midtown or downtown between 8-9am.

1. I LOUDLY second RLB's call for a 125th St. subway!! When I lived in Astoria, I used to fantasize about this. Imagine this Moses-scale, anti-Moses project: a 125th St. crosstown train that connected in Harlem to the 1, A, B, C, D, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; then stopped on Randall's Island (or not); then on into Astoria to connect with the N and W, then on into under-served Northern Queens, where it could make one more connection, to the 7 train, and then finally terminate all the way out at neglected Bayside, or curl up to Whitestone, and connect with the LIRR. Don't the people in those neighborhoods and Corona and Jackson Heights deserve a subway?

2. **Crosstown** rapid transit!! (bus, trolley, or anything)! This timid approach of just trying BRT on two Manhattan avenues is pitifully too little, very late. And the slow speed of crosstown buses and the paucity of crosstown subway lines are even bigger embarrassments that do great, real harm to the City in a number of ways.

And off topic, for the heck of it:

How about a bike/ped-only bridge between Williamsburg and the E. Village/LES? Good one, I know.

For the average person (which probably rules out anyone reading this site), the climate in NYC simply is not conducive to bicycling for most of the year. Cold, snow, rain, darkness, wind, heat waves...people aren't going to do it. It might be effective in good weather for younger people with short commutes (who would in many cases have to be willing to pack their work clothes along for the ride). But for most of the year those bike lanes would sit virtually unused taking up valuable street space that might be more effectively utilized for trolleys, bus routes, etc.

I also agree that subway capacity needs to be increased substantially. The antiquated (and flammable) switching system just has to go...I don't care if this might affect some union jobs. We need to be able to run more trains more frequently, and from what I understand the minimum allowed distance between moving trains is laughable by most modern standards.