If you build it, they will come… in the case of bicyclists, this just might be the case. Check out this chart that Reuters posted last month:

This is a chart of the number of bike commuters in New York. It’s known as the NYC Commuter Cycling Indicator, and it comes from surveys taken ten times per year at predetermined points around the city. It doesn’t give a good count of the number of bike commuters in New York, but it gives an excellent idea of the trends: bike commuting has essentially quadrupled in the past decade, and has doubled over the past four years. Which just happen to be the four years during which Janette Sadik-Khan has run the Department of Transportation.

This is important because it shows just how effective strong leadership can be, when combined with a dedication to creating good infrastructure…

The lesson of this chart, then, is that if you build bike lanes, cyclists will appear to fill them. That’s fantastic news, since cities with lots of cyclists are always the most pleasant cities to live and work in — even for people who don’t bike themselves.

Read more…

Have a lane that you love? Send us a photo! You can post it to our Facebook page, shoot us an email at blog[at]ospreypacks[dot]com or upload to our Flickr group and we might just feature it here on our weekly photo feature, Lane Love.

PHOTO via

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After a tragic end over the handlebars when his front wheel met a pothole, the New York Times critic, Michael Kimmelman is back on the bike — experiencing NYC’s bike lanes from his global perspective and grateful to be back on the bike!  Happy Monday!

PHOTO via Tony Cenicola/The New York Times.

Have a lane that you love? Send us a photo! You can post it to our Facebook page, shoot us an email at blog[at]ospreypacks[dot]com or upload to our Flickr group and we might just feature it here on our weekly photo feature, Lane Love.

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We love this awesome “Xylophone Bridge” by Yeon Jae Won and Woo Jeong Heo, which interactively plays music and lights up when riders glide over it. The bike lane took top honors in last year’s Seoul Cycle Design Competition. Pretty cool.

PHOTO via Treehugger

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Colourful bike racks in downtown Vancouver

You learn new things all the time, and today was no exception. Did you know it was International Yarn Bombing Day a couple of weekends ago? This occasion was put to good use in Vancouver where the bike racks along one lane were beautified with yarn.

Have a lane that you love? Send us a photo! You can post it to our Facebook page, shoot us an email at blog[at]ospreypacks[dot]com or upload to our Flickr group and we might just feature it here on our weekly photo feature, Lane Love.

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In response to a comment that referred to New York City’s bike lanes as “homegrown terrorism,” Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson put out a memo that highlighted just how much good bike lanes are doing for the city, and how having a citywide policy that promotes bikes also promotes safety:

• Bike lanes improve safety. Though cycling in the city has more than doubled in the last four years, the number of fatal cycling crashes and serious injuries has declined due to the safer bike network.
• When protected bike lanes are installed, injury crashes for all road users (drivers, pedestrians, cyclists), typically drop by 40 percent and by more than 50 percent in some locations.
• From 2001 through 2005, four pedestrians were killed in bike-pedestrian accidents. From 2006 through 2010, while cycling in the city doubled, three pedestrians were killed in bike-pedestrian accidents.

Read the full memo here.

Every Wednesday on Ditch Your Car we’ll be bringing you just another reason to spend more time on two wheels. Be it a photo, a statistic or an inspirational video, we want to keep reminding you about why riding is great!

Image: Spencer T.

Ditch Your Car bike lanes