One thing the article mentions but the headline misses is the need for more and better bike lanes all over the city. De Blasio hasn't been emphasizing this nearly as strongly as Bloomberg did. But the numbers show that replacing one lane of traffic with a protected bike lane can actually ease congestion and increase average car speeds and total throughput (Lafayette St. in Soho is apparently an excellent example of this.)
It's also worth noting that the counting is done only at the river crossings, one park, and one crosstown street in Midtown. A lot of bike trips within Manhattan are missed by the count, as are any trips taken within an outer borough. I don't know that that affects the growth rate numbers but it certainly underestimates the total percentage of trips in the city that are made via bicycle.
I'm a SF resident who was visiting NYC last week, and saw those protected bike lanes for the first time (I lived in NJ a decade ago). Frankly, drivers' attitudes towards bicyclists will be slow to change, and thus the only reasonable course forward seems to be this kind of infrastructure improvement.
As infrastructure improves, more people will consider bicycles as a reasonable transportation alternative, and hopefully increased numbers of cyclists may help driver attitudes change as well.
Agree 100% with that sentiment, but I think the problem is actually lower in the political food chain. The Department of Transportation is very pro-active about adding bike lanes (in contrast to previous generations at the DOT), but they are often blocked by old stodgy community boards in the city. The minority of people that own cars are heavily involved in that level of government, and bikers/pedestrians are not coming out and supporting bike lanes. If people focus on those meetings, the DOT will get more done.
Community Boards are still problematic in some areas, but not all. And as bike folks are realizing how important they are, they are joining boards and lobbying them:
http://www.transalt.org/calendar/6441
Recent bike projects have mostly been backlogs from the Bloomberg era— today, the DOT hasn't been particularly bold in proposing new protected bike lanes. The proposed Spring Street lane is pretty meager:
http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/04/07/let-down-by-bike-lane-...
It's also worth noting that the counting is done only at the river crossings, one park, and one crosstown street in Midtown. A lot of bike trips within Manhattan are missed by the count, as are any trips taken within an outer borough. I don't know that that affects the growth rate numbers but it certainly underestimates the total percentage of trips in the city that are made via bicycle.