
NYC Bike Stats - thatcherclay
https://sirpthatch.github.io/post/NYC-General-Bike-Stats/
======
Tiktaalik
> Don’t bike on the sidewalk. Seriously.

A prevalence of biking on the sidewalk in an area is a signal to designers
that cyclists feel it is too dangerous to bike on the road amongst traffic. It
means that a protected bike lane needs to be built.

~~~
pavel_lishin
It might also signify a tourist area - near Central Park, I usually see people
who look like locals riding in the street, and people who look like tourists
riding on the sidewalk.

(Tourists tend to have bikes with bike-rental logos, or Citibikes; locals tend
to have their own bikes, or if on citibikes, are dressed more like locals.)

~~~
pc86
Out of curiosity how does one dress like a NYC local?

~~~
pavel_lishin
Tourists tend to overdress; they see that it'll be 45 in the morning, and
dress for the arctic circle, whereas locals will typically just toss on a
jacket, with maybe another layer underneath. Locals also tend to wear darker
colors; we joke that New York's official color is black.

A tourist will typically not have a messenger bag or a briefcase with them,
either - those are typically commuter items. Tourists are more likely to have
a bag from a "big" brand-name store like Macy's, although not as much on a
bike.

And obviously, an I<3NY t-shirt with a brand new Yankees hat is a pretty dead
tourist giveaway.

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ericmo
> Let me just start by saying that there is no good reason not to wear a
> helmet when riding a bike in NYC.

One common argument is that drivers have more respect for cyclists without
helmets, i.e. they're more afraid of hitting a cyclist without a helmet.

The discussion goes back a long time, this article for instance is 9.5 years
old: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-
true-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-helmets-
attract-cars-to-cyclists/)

I guess, most cyclists think it's more likely that they'll be hit by a car,
not a pedestrian.

It could also be that some cyclists don't have the money to buy a helmet - or
other types of safety gear.

~~~
CalRobert
There is also no good reason not to wear a helmet when driving a car. Head
trauma kills regardless.

~~~
Retric
> wear a helmet when driving a car.

Seat headrests and side impact air bags provide this function much more
effectively than loose helmets. Which are not safe for use in passenger cars
due to neck trauma. Further, your skull hitting the pavement is more rapid
acceleration than a survivable car crash.

That said, NASCAR drivers do use helmets and a five point harness instead of
air bags. But, very importantly they strap the helmet to the head rest, but
that only works because of the five point harness and several other safety
systems missing from consumer cars.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HANS_device](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HANS_device)

TLDR: The issue is neck trauma. Which NASCAR avoids, by strapping both the
driver and their helmet down.

~~~
CalRobert
Well, for what it's worth I do wear a helmet when I cycle. I have a suspicion
that one saved my life when I was 16 and flipped my bike, landing directly on
the crown of my head. The helmet smashed around it (an odd sensation), but I
managed to stay alert enough to roll out of the way of cars approaching at
~50mph.

Even so, it does seem like we could save a decent number of lives by using
helmets and HANS devices while motoring.

------
revelation
It's hilarious that you would interrupt a blog post on analyzing a data dump
for a sermon on helmets that is not remotely supported by the empirical data.

Cyclists die in traffic because they are hit by multi-ton motorized vehicles,
not any of the things enumerated here.

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stinos
Is it just me or are line charts with fills harder to interpret while not
adding any value over normal line charts? Instead they add ambiguity because
while the surface itself doesn't seem to mean anything (?), it does have two
bounding lines and depending on the graph only the upper or lower bound is the
line which contains actual data - the other one is the line with the data from
one of the other data sets. At least that what I make out of it but maybe I'm
completely wrong?

E.g. take the first graph: the red surface starts at 0 and the upper bound is
the actual 'overall ridership' for Second Avenue, right? (note to author: even
when the units seem obvious to you, they might not actually be obvious for
everyone). So the lower bound of the green surface (Lafayette Street) has the
same shape as the data for Second Avenue. Why? What does that mean? It's just
the upper bound of the green surface which is the actual data for Lafayette
street, no?

On topic: glad to see bicycle usage is rising, but would be interesting to see
if e.g. car usage is declining and how the total number of people on the road
is changing.

~~~
Ended
The surface is the data. E.g. the ridership for Lafayette Street is the upper
line of the green area, minus the lower line of the green area. This is called
an area chart and is used to show cumulative data and how each part
contributes to the whole. In this case it shows the total NYC ridership
increasing from ~7000 to ~18000 (units are unclear!), while e.g. the Central
Park West ridership has remained approximately constant.

~~~
Someone
My first thought when seeing that chart was _" How to lie with statistics"_.

Stacking those graphs in that way only is valid if there are no double-
countings in the data. New York is large, but I think/guess (I know little of
street layout in NY, but looking at coordinates, Layafette street at Astor
plaza and Second Avenue at 7th Street seem fairly close to each other) that is
unlikely.

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thesehands
Also interesting to see the breakdown of usage of the Citi bikes. Does
increased usage of Citi bikes lead more casual users who don't wear helmets?

~~~
stepanhruda
I'd expect so. If I had my own bike I'd wear s helmet, but can't be bothered
on Citi bike.

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bluenoteslur
Interesting analysis. After ten years, I wonder whether the authors' choice of
sampling intersections should be updated as new bike lanes make certain routes
more preferable. For example: There's a heavily-used bike lane on 9th Street
which is on the official NYC bike map; 7th street has no marked lane and
doesn't get as many riders in my experience.

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kingosticks
The article says they do the survey on a particular day each year whereas the
data set is less specific on that fact. Surely they do the survey over
multiple days...? If available, there must be a ton of citibike usage data one
could use to verify the citibike stats collected by this survey and generally
validate this data a bit.

~~~
aries1980
Why they not rather contact with Fitbit, Garmin, Under Armour, etc. to provide
data?

~~~
mertd
Perhaps because it would be biased? Cyclist population who wears fitness
trackers might look different than the population of all cyclists. So now you
have sampling bias to deal with.

~~~
kingosticks
Yes, this. But even so, I'd probably take that over basing my annual cycling
stats on sample taking on a single day.

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untilHellbanned
Nice analysis but Excel default color schemes are unbearable. I wonder how
many people their hideousness turns away before even contemplating the data.

