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New York MTA is battling COVID-19 with UV lights and infrared sensors:
New York City may be opening back up for business, but that doesn't mean everybody's ready to hop aboard its trains and buses yet. While daily ridership on subways and buses is up 380,000 compared with the period before the June 8 reopening date, that's still a fraction of the millions of riders who commuted in the pre-pandemic days.
[...] Last month, the MTA began shutting down the subway system between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m.daily -- the first time it's ever done so -- to disinfect the cars. Foye made the point that it wasn't simply a cleaning, but actually disinfecting the cars, and noted it happens twice a day.
At the same time, the agency launched a $1 million pilot program to use ultraviolet light to sterilize its cars. The MTA plans to deploy 150 mobile devices at stations and rail yards to test the effectiveness of UV, and Foye said that the early research conducted by Columbia University has been promising.
Meanwhile, cycling naturally enforces distance, is faster, and costs nothing.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by stretch611 on Saturday June 20 2020, @07:01AM (14 children)
Have you ever been to Manhattan? (Admittedly it has been a few years since I last visited there...)
Like pretty much every huge city, if your route starts, ends, and never leaves a bike path, you are fine. If you ever have to leave bike lanes and share the road with traffic your life is in danger. And IMHO, the danger is so high that I would rather be stuck on a subway car with the chance of Covid-19.
Roughly, I spent the first half of my life in NJ, essentially in areas that were suburbs of NYC. (Realistically, they where urban areas all their own due to population density, but that is a different story.)
The second half (roughly) I spent in the Atlanta Metro area.
I thought about riding my bike to work here in GA... But that thought was very fleeting. The reason is that many people drive like shit. While there are a bunch of reasonable drivers, the multitude of people that really should not be behind a wheel makes safety all but impossible unless you can avoid sharing the same streets with them completely. Even places with a bike lane on the side are not necessarily safe due to how horrific people drive their cars.
Also, the using a bike during normal commute times is even worse than any other part of the day. Add a little traffic into the mix and a bunch of people will become impatient and that invariably leads to some cutting off bikers in bike lanes. (Not to mention the idiots you see driving in oncoming lanes to shave 50 feet off the traffic when making a left turn) And if you think that people notice you on a bike in the road, you are just waiting to be hit.
Add a few drops of water, or some fog, or even a bright sunrise/sunset and you amplify the issues of drivers not noticing bikers or swerving into bike lanes.
Thinking about biking to work in NYC or Atlanta amounts to the same thing... nothing more than suicide.
I did spend one year of my life up in the Portland, ME area... One of my friends there commutes on his bike regularly in the summer. However, the "traffic" in Maine is nothing like Atlanta, or NYC (not even close; and it is difficult to even make any comparison;) and even he has had a few close calls up there. You might be able to use your bike safely in low population areas... but not in big cities.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @10:10AM (10 children)
And I'm a long time bicyclist.
There is NO WHERE in the USA, even places like San Francisco or Los Angeles, where bicycling on the order of subway loads worth of people is feasible from an infrastructure point of view. There aren't enough bicycle racks, there isn't enough footspace, there aren't enough bicycle lanes, and there aren't enough bicycle paths. I am not saying we can't see an increase in bicycle ridership, but it would not be a societal benefit during the (hopefully!) wind down of the covid pandemic. Moving forward perhaps we can see bicycling move to the forefront with more building permits and county/city requirements to ensure the infrastructure is in place to do it, but as I sit right now in CALIFORNIA, I can tell you that most places in the past 10-15 years have been TAKING OUT bicycle racks, leaving you no place to park except if you want to risk someone running off with your bicycle because you chained through the wheel without anchoring it to a frame or pole near the building (poles supporting the front fascias of mini-malls is another thing missing on newer buildings in California and I assume new build structures in most other parts of the country as well! Without either of them bicycling is like having a lifted pickup truck with the catalytic converter hanging right out in plain sight. Some methed up junkie is going to roll by and steal it because they can.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:59AM
Also a long time bicyclist, but not a hardcore roadie. For short trips I've had some success with small wheel folding bikes, take them inside with you, never lock the bike up outdoors. There are a lot of crappy folders, but there are a few that can be fun to ride (at low speeds).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Saturday June 20 2020, @03:18PM (2 children)
Is it? I have lived and biked in NYC for 20+ years. it is the fastest, easiest, cheapest way to get around the city. I live in brooklyn and have commuted to manhattan, downtown, midtown, and uptown. I regularly ride all the way up into westchester and out to long island, sometimes to far rockaway, queens. all those routes mix onstreet, shared lanes, and protected bike paths. I prefer protected paths, but shared lanes aren't the horror you think they are.
Also, given your attitude about cycling infrastructure capacity it seems you don't have much experience as a bike commuter, because when youare commuting the more cyclists are around you, the safer you are. as far as bike parking goes, many of the cyclists in NYC use foldable bikes they can pop into a bike bag and park at their cubicle. I have a full-sized folding mountain bike from Dahon that fits into a bike bag I can sling over my shoulder. I worked in high security buildings and it's never been a problem.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @03:51PM (1 child)
So at what point did you move north of NYC to that small town?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday June 21 2020, @06:05PM
North of NYC Is westchester county, which has high property taxes we don't feel like paying. we have never lived anywhere north of NYC. Brooklyn only.
are you mentally impaired that you continue to insist I live where I don't live?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @03:55PM
The media will try to milk it until the election at least. After pushing the Floyd story, the resulting riots got out of control, so you can see them beating the Covid drum again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @04:52PM (4 children)
Bicycles work best in flat places where there's not much traffic. You have to have so many bicyclists that you can justify having their own dedicated signals that reduce the number of times that cars need to cross cyclists as they ride. There's ways of doing it, but by and large it's not economical. You'd be better off just building proper mass transit and then encouraging people to cycle the last little bit.
The fact that there's a substantial number of cyclists that blatantly ignore traffic laws just makes matters worse. I've seen all sorts of craziness from cyclists riding the wrong way down dedicated bike lanes to them riding on the wrong side of the street so that they can turn at a higher speed. For optimal safety on the streets, there needs to be a substantial agreement about what kinds of behaviors are and aren't reasonable to expect from other road users and there's enough ill-behaved cyclists that it makes it very difficult to share the road with any of them.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Sunday June 21 2020, @12:07AM (1 child)
Bad drivers are a danger to cyclists. Arrogant cyclists, not uncommon, are a danger to everyone on the road. Try following a cyclist on a 40 mph posted road, going 7 mph for a quarter mile and blocking the cars behind him; he thinks it's O.K. because he's going to turn left some day soon.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday June 21 2020, @04:38AM
Is it any better if the cyclist is sustaining 12 to 18 mph (19 to 29 km/h), depending on hill and wind conditions, and keeping to the right* half of the right through lane until hand-signaling a left lane change about a block in advance of a left turn?
* Assumes USA and other countries that drive on the right.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday June 21 2020, @06:10PM
That's not so. I previously lived in kyushu and only got around by bike. there not only was no bike infrastructure, but most times there weren't even shoulders to the roads, and sidewalks were inaccessible because of pedestrian fencing. Yet biking there was fine.
I will confess that I prefer dedicated bike infrastructure, such as beijing has, but it's not a prerequisite.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday June 21 2020, @06:16PM
I disagree. you don't need flat places to bike. NYC is hillier than most people realize, and it's not a problem to bike here. also, I biked in japan a lot, and it's quite hilly. now, if you live in a very hilly place like san francisco or pittsburgh, you'd probably have to work up to it, but I'll leave it to those who live there to comment.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday June 20 2020, @03:28PM
See my response downthread, but I have lived and biked in NYC for 20+ years. it did get easier when bloomberg put in more protected bike lanes, but if you're commuting there's safety in numbers even on the street. also, it's good exercise. when I started commuting to harlem from brooklyn I lost 25 lbs, so I cancelled my gym membership.
So, far from suicde, it's been a boon to my health and pocket book.
but my experience has been in new york. I was down in atlanta last winter and it looked pretty bike friendly to my eye (those Bird e-scooters were everywhere on them), but I concede that southern drivers are more reckless in vehicles that are generally larger with more blind spots.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:14PM
Yes. In fact I was *born* in Manhattan. I grew up in Manhattan, and while I've lived in every borough except
StagnantStaten Island, I've lived in Manhattan for more than 40 years (including the last 25 years or so).I have ridden my bicycle around NYC for parts of six decades, and while you certainly need to pay attention to your surroundings while riding a bicycle, that's true of any other conveyance.
Bicycling in NYC, as long as I've been alive (> 1/2 century) has *always* been an efficient method of getting around the city.
What's more, great strides have been made to make bicycling safer in NYC.
What's more, given the much-reduced traffic around the city during the pandemic, bicycling is safer and better than ever.
You aren't from around here, so I understand why you would be ignorant of the situation. But since you are ignorant of the facts, why are you claiming to know the real story?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @11:59PM
Louis Rossmann disagrees [youtube.com]