Are there any? Thanks !

Quee

Wrote this to post elsewhere but thought y’all might appreciate it.

“Why would anyone choose a car in NYC? “

Cars are slower than all other modes of transport, more expensive than all others, and your day can be entirely fucked on a whim if there’s an accident or something. With so many other options like riding a bike, scootin a scooter, rollin’ on roller blades, whippin’ a skateboard, or riding the bus/train, I can’t understand why ANYONE would WANT to regularly drive a car in the city.

Based on my personal experiences, all of the aforementioned modes of transport are faster than a car. I’ve tested it myself multiple times. (Rollerblades depend on time of day, but I can make it from bushwick to little Italy in 30ish minutes on blades[train is generally the same as car,but oftentimes a little faster]). I can’t tell you how many times my fiance has grabbed an Uber to go home while I ride my bike (don’t wanna pay for XL Uber) and I beat them by 10-20 minutes, every time. Every. Single. Time.

It’s also insanely expensive to have a car in NYC. First you have insurance which I can only imagine how much it costs, then you gotta add on non-interval maintenance (road damage) which is definitely expensive as the streets here some of the worst I’ve seen. Occasionally you can even witness cars go airborne. You also have all those inevitable parking tickets because you can never find a good spot. And then tack on all the other tickets like school zones, speeding, and red lights; because it seems like every car in this state has those. AND THEN you’ve got the tolls. Whole lotta tolls. It’s a lot of $$$ just to drive the shittiest car possible, god forbid it’s a nice car that needs good spots etc.

On top of being monetarily expensive, it’s also expensive in time. Time is money in this world. Traffic doesn’t help that at all, out of nowhere your 45 minute drive to Long Island can turn into 4+ hours. No notice. That’s insane. Not to mention just the general traffic of the city that can pop off at any time. Another time cost is always having to find a spot to park, which may be 5 blocks away. That’s 5-10 minutes to find a spot and 10 minutes to walk to your destination. Then hope you remember where u parked.

Door to door, I personally spend 40 minutes commuting every day, my fiance spends roughly 2 hours. We goto the same place. On a rough estimate, that’s FIFTEEN days of time I have in a year that my fiance does not. FIFTEEN DAYS!!! 365 days, 1 hour a day is 365hours/24=15.2 days! DAYS! And that’s if my fiance experiences 0 delays the whole year. It’s actually a few days more, I even cut 20 minutes off the time for simplicity! That’s half a month MINIMUM!

And then top that all off with the stress of trying to drive in a major metro area. Specifically NYC where I’m from. It’s not fun or relaxing. At all. You’re constantly on alert. I’d much rather be on a train reading a book or something than be on alert for crazy drivers, narrow roads, pedestrians, random bikers, etc.

Even as the slowest “personal” transport, trains are still generally faster! I can kind of understand not wanting to take the train cause ur entire day can get fucked at no fault of ur own, however the same is true for cars! Even better is if the trains get screwed you can hop off at the next station and keep it pushing! You can’t abandon your car on the highway! And even if you could, where ya goin? It’s gridlocked, ain’t no taxi getting ya!

In summary, I don’t get it. My mother always said everything can be done with either Time or Money. Why spend more of both for less convenience? In most situations there’s a correlation between money and time. If you spend more money then you spend less time, and if you spend more time you spend less money. That works for just about everything. Not this though. Spend more money on a car just to be stuck in traffic and waste time, while spending even more money.

I just don’t see how the convenience could outweigh the negatives unless you’re uber rich. There’s a million negatives and the only positive is that ur protected from the elements and not with anyone else. That’s it. Those are the only benefits. Loneliness and warmth. I can’t think of any others. Anywho- that’s my rant. I’d love to hear some reasons from people who drive in/into the city on a regular basis! Genuinely curious what other benefits there could possibly be.

https://www.brooklynpaper.com/cyclist-killed-fdny-pickup-park-slope/

24 year old, father of a 1 year old, RIP.

Seriously I live by Central Park and have had my third case this week of someone running a red light you are aware that traffic lights are yours to follow? Same with people going to wrong direction. I stg 9/10 times I bike home there’s someone biking the wrong way. I get that the cars are scary, but I’m more worried about the person not paying attention and causing me immediate concern.

I thought the parents on family tandem bikes in Bed Stuy or delivery food drivers were inconsiderate, but man the people who bike up, down, and thru Central Park are something else. You know you can bike only in very specific spots right? You’re no better than Uber drivers running reds. Especially when you’re going 20-25 MPH.

https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/trickorstreets.shtml

Just wanted to show my appreciation to DOT, which were extremely quick to respond to my 311 request for new flexi-posts that had been missing for over a year.

Sometimes it's good to ask and report even the small things. I think this might encourage me to report when bike lanes are missing flexi posts or the paint is incomplete, or the traffic calming "bumps" have been destroyed. I think the more we report these the better our infrastructure will be. It may also force the DOT to use more permanent materials so that they aren't stuck constantly replacing the cheap stuff.

Every now and then I'll stumble upon a Facebook group that is anti-bike, pro-car, etc. I recently found one called "Queens Streets for All Group" which claims "We support rail, public transit, and we ride and like bikes. We support a greener future, citywide bike infrastructure, but also municipal parking, public street parking, and more enforcement for all vehicles."

And unsurprisingly, there is virtually no support for any of that. It's yet another pro-car group. The latest complaint is about how the 31st Ave changes hurt the disabled. There are also posts against basically every bike lane that was recently added to the city.

These are the kind of people that we have to deal with. They know virtually nothing about urban planning and street design. And they're mostly older folks who just complain and offer no solutions. They claim that "no one wants this" and ignore the statistics, or call it fake news. They suddenly care about emissions only when it slows them down.

The NYCDOT Facebook page is full of the same BS from drivers too.

I am not certain if this is the right forum but I think it's aligned.

I ride the free "Downtown" bus by City Hall. There are just tons of f*cken cars with City placards parked in the bus stops. All the time.

How do stop the City from doing this? Makes me think we need to privatize ticketing and towing of vehicles.