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Guests: John Surico; Paul Swift
My guests today are NYC’s Professor John Surico and the bike fitter’s bike fitter, Paul Swift.
John is one of my favorite repeat guests as those of you who are regular listeners know. When I want to know what is happening in the Big Apple about sustainability, bike crashes, open streets, and anything else that has to do with urban life, Professor John Surico is my guy. His substack blog “Streetbeat” is one of my favorite reads each month.
And go figure, this conversation was recorded exactly one day before the President put the kabosh on congestion pricing in NYC.
John and I had spoken last May about the project and how it was on again and off again and how he was looking forward to what it might do for NYC. The cameras went online in January and the immediate effects were pretty amazing.
Early in January, the long-awaited program to help ease traffic in NYC went into effect. The cameras went on and lo and behold – traffic eased, Broadway saw a 20% increase in ticket sales, and crashes were down a whopping 30% – and that was in just two winter months.
But along with many other programs, the president decided he didn’t like congestion pricing and in the stroke of his marker, had the cameras turned off. The legal wrangling that is going on is yet to be decided, but the day I spoke with John, things were looking pretty rosy.
Follow his substack journal, Streetbeat. It publishes at the beginning of every month and is always an interesting and wide-ranging look at the urban world.
My second guest is Paul Swift – the bike fitter’s fitter and developer of many 
cycling related products that facilitate a better experience on the bike – whether on the ground or in the gym.
Paul’s philosophy stems from observation, as well it should in my opinion. He recognizes that sizing is not fitting, and that it takes many years and thousands of fits to see what you are actually looking at and before making the changes necessary to accomplish a comfortable and efficient position with great results.
Paul Swift has been developing his fitting techniques for decades. He also sees things IN those fits that have led to a plethora of products from the wedges fitters might use under your cycling cleats to his line of saddles.
As he mentioned, you can find him on social media @askthefitter. Check out his line of saddles at 90K.com or go to his website thecyclepoint.com and watch how he does what he does.