Serge Schmemann Quotes

In Copenhagen, we all ride bicycles everywhere, partly because it is impossible to park a car, but also because you can cross the city in 20 minutes on a bike.

I'd ban all automobiles from the central part of the city. You see, the automobile was just a passing fad. It's got to go. It's got to go a long way from here.

From what I've heard, Paris did a little bit more prep work as far as making bike lanes and all of that stuff. They really did it properly, which New York is getting to little by little.

Every city has to deal with the problem of cars and public transport.

In Copenhagen, there's a long-term commitment to creating a well-functioning pedestrian city where all forms of movement - pedestrian, bicycles, cars, public transportation - are accommodated with equal priority.

The overwhelming success of San Antonio B-Cycle has proven that San Antonio is a model city for bike-sharing, and as we work toward creating a fitter city, the bike-share program encourages a more active and healthy lifestyle.

I don't think all the cycle lanes in London have been designed as well as they should have been.

The war on driving includes calls for carbon and gas taxes, tens of billions of gas tax money diverted to inefficient and little-used mass transit projects, and opposition to building new roads and highways.

In March 2005, I was appointed to the board of the Santa Barbara metro transit district. I was incredibly optimistic about how public transportation can be the solution to help people live in the city and not need a car.

It makes no sense to make people drive cars.

London was not designed for cars. Come to that, it wasn't designed for people. It just sort of happened. This created problems, and the solutions that were implemented became the next problems, five or ten or a hundred years down the line.

I don't think people are going to switch over to bikes because it's good for them or because it's politically correct. They're going to do it because it gets them from A to B faster.

Bike lanes are clearly controversial. And one of the problems with bike lanes - and I'm generally a supporter of bike lanes - but one of the problems with bike lanes has been not the concept of them, which I support, but the way the Department of Transportation has implemented them without consultation with communities and community boards.

Copenhagen has done a remarkable job creating streets that are focused on bicycles and pedestrians.

Portland, Oregon won't build a mile of road without a mile of bike path. You can commute there, even with that weather, all the time.

The whole point of bike-sharing is to give New Yorkers another way to commute. A lot of folks in Bay Ridge work in downtown Brooklyn or other parts of the borough. For them, it would make more sense to hop on a Citi Bike than to wait for a train or a bus.

How we fund transportation in this country is broken. You all pay a gasoline tax, right? Well, cars go farther, we get electric cars, and so on. And then we do more with the money than just build roads. We do bike lanes and mass transit.

When people switch to car-sharing from car ownership, they reduce their vehicle miles traveled by 44 percent, and thus their greenhouse gas emissions go down by, like, 40 percent.

Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends.

The auto industry must acknowledge that a rational transportation policy should seek a balance between individual convenience, the efficient use of limited resources, and urban-living values that protect spaciousness, natural beauty, and human-scale mobility.

Whether you live in a city or a small town, and whether you drive a car, take the bus or ride a train, at some point in the day, everyone is a pedestrian.

In Brussels, you are able to have a lot of appointments in a day. In Paris, you can have one, two, maybe three, but you spend all your time on the road, in the car or in the suburbs. In Brussels, everything is easy. It's not a very big city, and the people are very quiet and warm.

We could live in a much better society if there was less personal car ownership.

I can't support bike lanes.

Cycling is not only a personal passion for me, but it is something that simply makes sense to expand transportation options for Americans. It is good for the health of our nation, the environment, the development of our communities, and is one of the keys to addressing the ongoing challenges that come with urban congestion.