Here’s the text of an email message I received from DOT yesterday:

NYCycles – The Official Newsletter of NYC DOT’s Bike Program

Reopening of Manhattan Bridge North Bikeway

The north bikeway of the Manhattan Bridge will reopen on Monday, August 6. The north
bikeway has been closed since October 2006 to complete various construction tasks
in association with the rehabilitation of the lower roadway of the bridge as well
as to ensure and maintain public safety during the rehabilitation. Once the bikeway
reopens the south walkway will revert to pedestrian use only.

More information about the Manhattan Bridge rehabilitation project is available
on the DOT Web site at http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/motorist/eastriverbgs.html

This is the NYC.gov News You Requested for:

Bicycle Updates
Transportation Updates

Also, for what it’s worth, I don’t think I told the reporter that cycle tracks were “the solution” for the double parking problem. I believe I mentioned it in passing, more like, “one good possible way to address that problem…”

London has a really nice set of guidelines to help determine when and where cycle tracks are most appropriate:

http://www.streetsblog.org/2006/11/13/londons-cycling-design-standards-a-model-for-nyc/

Generally, cars won’t double park if they’re going to cause a major impediment to traffic — it only takes about fifteen seconds to get enough horns together to get somebody to move.

Loading zone is still a good idea, yes, but it doesn’t preclude having separated bike spaces. And a handcart cutting across the path is *much* easier to deal with than a truck blocking mixed traffic.

I appreciate your response. I totally agree that cycle tracks could be something to encourage bicycling by a wider range of people, and I think it’s great that Transportation Alternatives is pushing to have them installed in appropriate places.

I think it’s important however, that they not become the recommended solution for every problem. The root problem here is there was not an available legal place for the truck to park. By suggesting a cycle track as a solution, you somewhat solve the problem for bicyclists who choose to use the cycle track, but you haven’t addressed the root of the issue. You still have a truck that is forced to double park, blocking at least part of a travel lane, and which motorists and vehicular cyclists in the general travel lane would still have to navigate around.

They already have loading zones and taxi stands on 9th Street in front of the shops and car service place. And as part of the 9th St. Road Diet redesign DOT said it was going to expand and improve them.

The street is very wide. Even if you narrowed the street by five feet on either side for a pair of cycle tracks, the street would still be wide enough for two lanes of traffic and a a full, 9-foot median — plenty of space to get around a double-parker.

Yes, physically separated bike lanes or “cycle tracks” would have bus riders, delivery guys and pedestrians walking across them at various points and times. “Vehicular cyclists” who don’t want or like the cycle tracks could still ride in the street if they wanted to avoid those kinds of conflicts (and deal with the cars and trucks instead).

I think 9th St. is an ideal spot to experiment with cycle tracks because the blocks are 1/8th of a mile long — nice long stretches without an intersection. It is an important, mixed-use neighborhood “Main Street” and a key access point to Prospect Park. I could see 9th St. being a very popular route for parents riding with kids, the elderly, and more vulnerable bike riders who would likely be encouraged by cycle tracks.

The other day a Streetsblog tipster said he saw a Dad teaching his kid to ride a bike in the 9th Street bike lane. That’s an activity that never would have taken place on that street just a few weeks ago. It’s nice to see new users and new uses on what was once a dangerous, dysfunctional street. I’d like to see more of that. I think cycle tracks could help and are very much worth an experiment or two in NYC.

I have only double parked once in my life. Pressed for time and on my way to somewhere else, I double parked for one minute on the very block in question, as I ran in to use a cash machine. I was ticketed when I returned.

This was three years ago. This has absolutely, positively, with 100 percent certainty nothing to do with the bike path. That location is a tickeing happy hunting ground and has always been.

“Community activist Aaron Naparstek thinks the solution is to install bike lanes between parked cars and the sidewalk, as it is sometimes done in Paris and Copenhagen.”

So the trucks would then double park in a narrowed street, blocking the general travel lane completely, and then they would haul their goods across the bike lane? I don’t see how this is a solution at all. Wouldn’t it be better to just add a loading zone along the existing curb so the truck can pull in completely?