Cycling in New York City is different in a couple of main ways to that in Edinburgh. Frankly, it scared the crap out of me when I saw pretty much any cyclist traversing the roads in this past week. A couple of main points stand out as being noticeably different to anything I've seen in this country.
First, RLJing. If you think it's bad here, from what I could tell, everyone was doing it over there. Red lights don't appear to be relevant for cyclists, they just ride straight through them. I was staying in Brooklyn, opposite a T junction, and at one point, I saw a cyclist run straight through the red on the minor road, turning right on to the major road, directly in front of a car which had green, and what then happened amazed me; the car slowed down as if he expected the bike to do it, and didn't honk his horn. But this wasn't an isolated incident, bicycles just ignored red lights everywhere, I don't recall seeing a single bike waiting for the lights, and at no point did I see a car driver get annoyed with a cyclist. And these guys know how to honk their horns when they are even vaguely irritated.
Second, locks. There's a lock which actually has the city in its name (Kryptonite New York Fahgettaboudit Mini Lock), and although I didn't see any of these, the number of heavy link chains that cyclists were riding around with, wrapped around their bodies or their seat posts, was amazing. And when I say heavy link chain, I mean the kind of thing you'd use to lock up a motorbike. So large, I doubt a bolt cutter would be able to get through it, because the links were massive. I saw many of these, and I've never seen anything like that here. Indeed, the worst lock I saw was still about as good as my best lock. Needless to say, I didn't see any particularly expensive bikes, in any of the 5 boroughs, but that's I assume due to the likelihood of them getting nicked.
Don't recall seeing a single bike lane, though. I think there might have been something that supposedly doubled as one around Times Square, but it wasn't that obvious.
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