Move America Beyond Oil

Happy Bike Month, Switchboard readers!

Today starts Bike Month in NYC.  So, for the next few weeks, I will be writing about biking issues every few days. 

How come?

First of all, biking is part of how I got involved and interested in urban environmental issues.  I’ve been biking in Manhattan since 1985, and am a periodic bike commuter (let’s face it:  many days, NRDC lawyers have to wear suits to meetings, and most of the year, business suits and bicycles don’t add up to a sweat-free entrance to a meeting or hearing in New York City).

Biking to work in Manhattan is a key part of the story about how I got interested in cleaning up the City’s diesel pollution in the first place.  Back in the early 1990s, I used to commute through Central Park on a bike lane, and then enter the clogged, soot-filled corridor of Fifth Avenue at 60th Street, for my ride down to NRDC.  By the time I got to our office on 20th Street, whatever joy that I got from cycling in Central Park was replaced by the stress of surfing between cabs, buses, and everything else.

But it was the buses that finally got me.  In those days, there was no ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel; there were no effective particulate filters; and the City’s buses were old, noisy, and awful to bike around.

So, during the summer of 1993, I joined Renee Skelton, a former NRDC colleague, to draft and release “End of the Line for Dirty Diesels,” which kicked off our Dump Dirty Diesels Campaign and ultimately led to the state-of-the-art Clean-Fuel Bus program that we have in NYC (as I’ve written elsewhere, today’s NYC Transit bus fleet emits 97 percent less particulate soot pollution than it did in the mid-1990s, reducing street-level pollution throughout the City).

Bottom line: biking is intertwined in the story of how the Dump Dirty Diesels Campaign began.

Second, biking can a key part of how we reduce congestion in New York, and how we reduce the carbon footprint of the City’s transportation system.

After all, New York City is mostly flat, the climate is pretty good for riding most of the year (although I rarely commute in the winter, thanks to our 5 pm darkness), and there are so many other bikers that one is rarely alone on a bike.  And, thanks to Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030, the City plans to facilitate biking by creating an 1,800 mile bike network.  Indeed, bike lanes seem to be popping up everywhere. During my 7-mile commute to the office, I am on a dedicated bike path or bike lane for almost all of it, except for one single block.

Sure, bike commuting isn’t for everyone, and it isn’t for every day for most people.  But for me, it’s a great way to see the City as I come to work, it’s a great way to get some exercise when I’m too busy to get to the gym.  And yes, it’s carbon-free.

Oh, and it’s fun. 

Over the next month, I’ll cover a whole range of urban biking issues, so I hope you’ll stay tuned.

In the meantime, see you on the Hudson River Park bikeway.