It’s bone stupid, is what. Unless you think cars going really effing fast fast is the holy goddamn grail. Ladies and gentlemen, American traffic engineering!

Likewise, if congestion reduces average overall speed to the speed limit, should it be allowed to be used to justify widening the highway? Bottlenecks are bad because they produce more pollution, but they shouldn’t be allowed to drive expansions.

the Pulaski bridge carries 37,200 motor vehicles per day. The rule of thumb for urban roads is peak hour volume is usually somewhere near 11% of total daily volume, or ~4100 vehicles per hour. During free flow, each lane can carry 1900 vehicles per hour. A traffic signal cuts this to half that or less.

It would have to flair out again at each end for the intersections, but you could easily give up a lanes or even two on the bridge without too much trouble, unless there is a real heavy directional commuter flow, like I684 in Westchester.

I never really had any problems, but it was pretty scary. I’m not sure I’d do it again at this point. I definitely wouldn’t want to do it on the Pulaski. But I would like to see part of the roadway set aside for cyclists.

Someone told me that it would be hard to do on the Pulaski because it’s a drawbridge, but I don’t buy that. There’s got to be something that can be done with flexible bollards or something.

I wish I had taken photos of the smashed fire plug guards that used to stand on the Queens side across the intersection from the bridge. Cemented iron bollards smashed flat like folded cardboard tubes. Now there is a Feders style apt building there, let’s see how often that thing gets hit.

So, yes, it’s a 60mph road, even though that’s double the posted limit. It is a kind of sarcasm I suppose.

There totally should be a Vernon/Manhattan bridge; it should carry one car-plus-bicycles lane in either direction, and have wings on either side for pedestrians.

The Queens-Midtown tunnel plaza would make this difficult.

I once sold an orange PacDesigns messenger bag to a dude off craigslist, and then saw him weeks later, on the Pulaski traffic lanes in a goddamn cargo bike, like some cycling superhero. It is then that I truly knew what it was to be hardcore.

Frankly, considering how often I’ve been angrily blown by driving over the bridge doing 35-40 mph, a little part of me thought the speed limit there might really be 60…

Which makes no sense, considering that the Pulaski bridge takes approximately .2 seconds to drive over and connects two equally dense urban neighborhoods – it’s really just a quick hop over Newtown Creek. I could understand having a major speed limit change if it were on par with the Triboro or Verazzano Narrows, but it’s not. Who decides this stuff?

Approaches are two lanes on both sides of the bridge. They’re also 30-40mph. The bridge is a 60mph road, and _that_ is why it’s got an extra lane. Cars need the 1/3 more space to go that extra 20mph over the 35mph reaction time threshold.

This is the logic of pavement.

By this logic, McGuinness also needs two extra lanes, so everyone can remain at their 60mph bridge speed through Greenpoint. And so on. Soon enough the BQE has spurs and everyone’s living under concrete canopies.

Does DOT control the bridge?

The path across the bridge is extremely narrow, made narrower by occasional structural protrusions that don’t provide enough space for more than a single cyclist, or two pedestrians brushing shoulders.

My approach to using this narrow greenway was to relax, enjoy the view, and cycle at a “walking speed” across the bridge. When I do this, peds and other cyclists alike seem to understand and appreciate the gesture, and often stop to usher me by. There’s not enough traffic on this bridge to warrant an “issue” if people just took the time to be neighborly.

The flip side is that any “issues” will force NYPD to enforce the “please dismount” sign at the base of the bridge, which won’t do anyone a lick of good. :/

I attest from personal experience that cycling the long downhill into Brooklyn is much more pleasant at 28 mph on the roadway than it is at 12 mph on the footpath.