A few months ago I was in New York, the city truly fantastic and full of contradictions as well as being widely multicultural. Perhaps due to professional deformation, I couldn't help but notice how New Yorkers move around the Big Apple.
What immediately struck me caught my eye and heavy vehicular traffic; I have always been in Manhattan and I have noticed that the streets are almost all one-way. The Avenues, wide avenues, handle very intense vehicular traffic and despite being quite wide they are very often saturated with vehicles.
And’ It is due to this intense traffic that New Yorkers mostly move around. on foot, by public transport and by bike!
The highly efficient public transport service, and in particular the subway, allows New Yorkers to move easily from one part of the city to another. The very few private cars I saw parked in Manhattan lead me to think that the vast majority of the island's inhabitants do not have a private car and mostly travel around the city. in a sustainable way. Yellow taxis are king and I have often seen them used in a shared manner; a piece of advice: if you are about to cross the road at a pedestrian crossing and you see a taxi arriving on the horizon, pay attention to see if it is slowing down, in New York taxis often don't stop at red lights!
Despite the heavy vehicular traffic, for me New York is the Amsterdam from overseas!There are many bikes circulating on the streets of New York, intermodality bike-public transport is widely used, even in the almost always packed subway. The bike sharing service is also very exploited. The bikes can only be taken if you have a credit card (in the USA even sweets can be purchased with a credit card, perhaps this is also why they have very low tax evasion rates. Meditate Italy!) to be included in the registration totems, each bike has a GPS and is theft proof. The first half hour is for free, you can go wherever you want and leave your bike in the designated stalls. From the second half hour onwards you will pay heavy penalties, as is the case. rightly so! After all, bike sharing is not "I take the bike and take it around for as long as I want" but it's a mode alternative transportation to buses, trams, subways, etc…
New York breaks down all the stereotypes that prevent people from using bikes on a daily basis. Of course it is; It's true that they have a very well-developed and, above all, 100% functional public transport service, but they too had to start some time ago to achieve what they have now in terms of services and culture.
If in Italy we ever seriously start to deal with certain issues, we will never have the possibility to move more calm, healthy and pleasant; we will continue to arrive at the office, school or other places, stressed, nervous, cursing our system and the way we move and blessing cities from beyond the Alps, or from overseas as in this case, where you can easily avoid the stress of a traffic jam!