New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced last week that the controversial Bike Share program that was scheduled to start this summer will not begin until next spring. The mayor cited software problems as the reason for the delay. Bike enthusiasts and others are divided as to whether the Bike Share program is a good idea.
The program, known as Citi Bike, was originally scheduled to launch this summer with a partial rollout of bikes. Eventually, 10,000 bikes with 600 stations were expected to be up and running by the summer of 2013. The revised plan has 7,000 bikes at 420 stations starting in March of 2013, with the goal of having 10,000 bikes and 600 stations by the end of the year. According to the program’s website:
“Citi Bike is a self-service system that provides members with easy access to a network of thousands of bicycles. Pick up a bike close to home or work, ride, then return it to any of the hundreds of stations to be located throughout the city.”
“New York’s public bike-share program will not only be the largest bike-share system in the Western Hemisphere, it will also be the city’s first, brand-new, full-scale form of public transit since the subway’s debut more than 100 years ago” said Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a group in favor of the Citi Bike program.
Not everyone is as excited about the bike share program. Some critics and bike enthusiasts are concerned that adding thousands of bikes to already congested traffic in the Big Apple will lead to additional accidents, injuries and even fatalities. According to the New York Police Department, there were more than 7,000 injury accidents involving bicyclists and pedestrians in the first half of 2012 alone. During the same six- month period, 79 people lost their lives in bicycle or pedestrian accidents in New York City. Many advocacy groups have accused the NYPD of not properly investigating pedestrian and cycling accidents in the past , so you can see why not everyone is eagerly awaiting the addition of 10,000 bicycles to the New York landscape.
Of course, the idea behind the program is to reduce the number of motor vehicles on city streets by giving residents and tourists the option of riding bicycles for short trips. The hope is that fewer motor vehicles will mean fewer accidents and less congestion. In addition, the environmental impact of replacing motor vehicles with bicycles could be significant.
Bicycle Accidents in New York City
As the statistics show, bicycle accidents happen far too often in New York City. Many of those accidents are caused by someone’s negligence and could have been prevented. According to the New York City Department of Transportation:
Bicyclists have all the rights and are subject to all the duties applicable to drivers of motor vehicles. This includes obeying all traffic signals, regulating signs and pavement markings. Bicycle riding is permitted on arterial and local streets throughout the City even though no designated route exists. Bicycle riding is prohibited on the roadways of certain bridges, expressways and highways. Often a separate path exists on these facilities for bicycles.
While this means that bicycles must obey the same rules of the road that vehicular traffic obeys, it also means that operators of cars and trucks must be on the lookout for bicycles and treat them the same way they would other vehicles. A motor vehicle driver who fails to do this and causes an accident can be held responsible for any ensuing injuries.
Contact a New York/New Jersey Accident Lawyer
If you have been injured in a New York City bicycling accident, you may be entitled to compensation. Contact the New York/New Jersey bicycle accident attorneys at Ginarte Gonzalez & Winograd to find out what legal options you may have. With six offices conveniently located in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area, we have an office near you. For your free consultation, contact the firm today by calling 888-446-2783 or filling out our online contact form.