Further to yesterday’s post about the electric bicycles, not too long ago I noticed the following tweet:
As it happened, it wasn’t very cold at all that day, so it seemed a little premature to start congratulating people for cycling through the winter:
Trust me, when it’s really cold nobody’s riding except the delivery people.
What is quite handy about this tweet though is that it’s a great core sample of two-wheeled traffic in Manhattan, and therefore it’s a great opportunity to take a look at who’s riding what. So let’s crunch some numbers!
By my count, which was admittedly hasty, I observed 22 total riders, which breaks down as follows:
- E-delivery bikes: 7
- E-Citi bikes: 5
- Standard Citi bikes: 4
- Sport/road bikes: 1
- Stand-up e-scooters: 2
- Folding bikes: 1
- Upright/hybrid bikes: 1
- Private e-cargo bikes: 1
Again, that’s a rough count, and I may not be right about everything. For example, people with reflective vests and voluminous homemade hand covers are usually delivery people, but you never know:
Also, when I see a bike with a child’s seat I just assume it’s a private cargo bike, but who knows, maybe he’s a delivery person who took advantage of that REI “exclusive discount:”
In any case, with that caveat, let’s VISUALIZE using hastily produced graphs. Based entirely on this sample, here’s how much of the bike lane traffic in New York City is electric:
Here’s how much of it is commercial:
Here’s how much of it is stand-up scooters:
And here’s how much of it is Fredly:
Sorry, Fred:
Oh, and I think I saw maybe two women:
So much for closing that gender gap.
Of course, not only am I counting hastily, but this is a very small sample at a very specific time and in a very specific place. There’s lots of stuff you see in New York City all the time that you don’t see here: motor scooters, other types of electrical contraptions (e-skateboards, Onewheels and the like), and of course people on fixies with downhill bars wider than their bikes are long. Still, when you’re considering whether or not e-bikes are in fact more dangerous, it’s useful to know what bike (or bike-adjacent) traffic actually looks like, and I’d wager this sample is fairly accurate. So if 68% of “bike” traffic in New York is e-bikes, and 75% of “bike” deaths involve e-bikes, then that’s fairly proportional.
Or not, what the hell do I know?