Take away the 11-foot space of one uptown lane. Add about three feet to the sidewalks on each side, and add four feet to the planted median.

Nobody dares to talk about widening sidewalks or what?

Delancey is such a major traffic route for cars, I’m not sure how they would add bike lanes to it. Houston should have a lane at least east of bowery, plenty of real estate there.

Why is there so much resistance to contraflow lanes? I feel like we go about the whole bike infrastructure thing the exact opposite of how true world-class cycling cities do so. In our European counterpart cities, it is possible to ride a bicycle in both directions on 99% of the thoroughfares, and automobiles are only allowed to use a subset of the infrastructure. Here, we seem to take the position of making sure all of the infrastructure caters to autos, but only a subset of it can cater to bicycles.

I guess this wraps back around to the whole Delancey St issue. In a true world-class cycling city, streets like Stanton and Rivington would not have auto traffic at all, and safe accommodations for bikes and autos would be made on Delancey. Not here. Delancey does not accommodate bikes at all, and Rivington and Stanton try to accommodate both side-by-side.

What the hell happened to this country? We used to be the most innovative people in the world! Now we just half-ass good ideas from other countries from thirty years ago!

Stacy, Bleecker Street eastbound ends at Bowery. There is good signage pointing eastbound cyclists to dogleg a half-block north on Bowery and continue east on East 2nd St. At Second Avenue, there is a bike lane on the right side of the street as well as the left side, so that downtown-turning cyclists don’t have to cross Second Avenue.

At the intersection of Second Avenue and Houston, cyclists in that right-hand lane can continue straight across onto Chrystie Street. From there, they can go downtown to Canal Street for the Manhattan Bridge or to Grand Street for the Williamsburg Bridge. With this new plan, they will be able to make a left turn onto Stanton as well, then follow to Suffolk and onto the bridge approach.

Originating at the Willy-B, going west, take Clinton to Rivington. Then there’s a half-block northbound on Bowery with no lane to Prince Street (with lane). Prince Street gets you to the uptown lane on Lafayette St (which goes as far as 13th St) or to the uptown lane on Hudson St (which runs into the Eighth Avenue lane, and goes either to Christopher Street’s westbound bike lane to the Greenway, or all the way to West 57th St.

Sure Suffolk Street could be a terrific way to approach the bridge if it connected to something like a Houston Street bike lane.

That said, a protected bike route that runs the length of Delancey would seem to be the most obvious choice; not only for people who don’t live in the area but for residents who might want to do some of the same things that draws so many others to Delancey Street. Better yet, extend this route along Kenmare, to Lafayette Street where it can hook up with the Lafayette Street Bike Lane and it begins to look like a genuine bicycle network.

That said, they totally need, as others have said, an Allen Street style bike lane for Delancy from the WMB to Lafayette. They just dump all these bikers into the middle of a 10 lane highway.

My commute takes me so that I can either cross Delancey, or go a few blocks out of the way, and go under the WMB. I almost always go the extra blocks so as to avoid crossing Delancy and going under the WMB because that $hit is dangerous as f-ck. I pray for you guys who have to take the WMB and ride on Delancy every day. Good luck with that.

What I’d Like to see is a bike lane in the center medium of Delancy but I understand that would not work so well with all the turning of cars.

Yes, Grand to Clinton is a very viable alternative as well. It’s a little dicey crossing Chrystie but otherwise OK.

one of the crossing guards at delancey is cool too – she always stops traffic for me. love you girl!

coming back it’s Grand street bike lane for sure.

I’ve been thinking that Grand Street to Clinton, and then north on Clinton to Delancey might be a safe alternative. I’ve noticed cyclists approaching the Willy B from the south but I haven’t actually tried this route.

Stacy: Try 2nd Ave to Chrystie to Stanton (through S.R. Park). I did it the other day and it was super smooth and low traffic.

The turn from Bowery to Prince isn’t so terrible as long as you do it on a red light for Bowery traffic.