Bicycle Messengers Bicyclists in the City

Bicycle Intervention

Bicycle Messengers in New York City: Interventions for Greater Safety and Success

With over eight-million inhabitants, nearly one million separate businesses, and a geographic spread of over three-hundred square miles, New York City is the largest and one of the densest urban areas in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). The streets are heavily trafficked, the business needs are intense and hurried, and the growth of the city in terms of both its population and its economy will continue to make the city more densely packed and more quickly paced over the coming decade (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). Spatially, physically, and economically, New York City is both constrained and explosive, tightly bound into its geographic borders, street patterns, etc. But also still growing at a rapid pace, and as such it provides a highly interesting and complex context within which to situate this research. It is also a city that is defined by change and ongoing development in its structure and its practices, within the physical constraints of the city as constructed, and thus New York City is an also a highly dynamic context, which will add to the meaningfulness of the intervention and research.

The density and the growth of the city also makes it an ideal location for the study particular issues and interventions that will defined below, namely easing the work and increasing the safety of bicycle messengers and providing better economic incorporation and support of bike messengers. Severe traffic problems at certain times and in certain locations can make it very difficult for automobile traffic, including couriers, to make time-sensitive deliveries with any level of assurance, and at times traffic simply prohibits speedy transport by car, period (Gothamist, 2009). Bicycle couriers and messengers provide a solution to problems of traffic density and reduced speed for automobile deliveries, with the ability to avoid or weave between lanes of slow-moving and standstill traffic increasing their speed, while also of course increasing the personal risk the bicycle messengers experience (Kidder, 2011; Stewart; 2004). This, combined with the emblematic and symbolic nature of New York City (which will contribute to the meaningfulness and the perceived relevance and scope of the findings), makes for an excellent context for this intervention and accompanying research.

Despite the fact that New York City provides a highly appropriate context for this intervention and research, there are some distinct disadvantages to this setting. Expenses in the New York City area are higher than in many other metropolitan areas, which from a purely resource-based point-of-view will place greater constraints on the implementing and the carrying out of this research, and some of the vary problems that make New York City such an excellent and appropriate context for this intervention also present direct practical difficulties for the intervention, such as increased congestion with any road adjustments made (Cowan, 2012; Gothamist, 2009). The advantages of using the city are largely enumerated above -- the prominence of the city and the strong need for examination and intervention -- and are believed to outweigh the disadvantages.

Intervention

The proposed intervention would be a fully structural intervention, involving the addition of more dedicated bicycle lanes to accommodate and encourage a greater use of bicycles and to provide greater safety for bicycle messengers and all bicycle riders in the city. Such plans are not new, either to New York City or to other areas, and there has been a fair amount of success in increasing bicycle use and reliance for personal transportation and for business and commerce purposes (Herman, 1993; Kidder, 2009; Fincham, 2004). The addition of dedicated bicycle lanes on some streets in London, parts of which are far more dense during the business day than New York City, was shown to be at least somewhat effective in reducing mortalities for bicycle riders, in a program implemented specifically in response to the death of a bicycle messenger (Fincham, 2004). Studies from a number of cities around the world have also shown that the dangers of cycling and working as a bicycle messenger in urban areas is largely due to shared lanes and risky behaviors that bicycle messengers are especially prone to engaging in, meaning that an increase in the number of dedicate bike lanes should serve to alleviate the problems noted (Gehring, 2009; Wehr, n.d.).

This intervention is especially well suited to the context not only for the purely contextual reasons cited above, but also due to the specific elements of the intervention itself. As an already-densely packed city with little room for street widening or taking over traffic lanes to dedicate to bicycle lanes, New York City is the perfect place to implement this intervention by designing a specific network of bicycle lanes on limited arterial streets, attempting to alleviate traffic issues and increase the use of bicycles as transportation and in courier services through selective and limited bicycle lane use. Current debates about the geographies of space and the cultural significance of movement in urban areas and modern culture also add to the relevance of this intervention for the specific context identified, with few cities in the world offering the same level of rapid and dense movement or the experience of urban culture as strikingly as New York City (Spinney, 2009; Neckerman et al., 2009). Implementing this intervention, or even simply encouraging this intervention through talks with city officials, could yield valuable information.