Streetsblog New York City

We've seen lots of new, innovative bikeway designs appear on New York City streets over the past few years. But there’s one very promising concept we haven't seen -- bicycle boulevards. Bicycle boulevard design uses a variety of techniques to create low-traffic, low-speed streets where cyclists mix comfortably with cars. They’re very popular in Portland and Berkeley, two cities with high bicycle mode-share. Here in New York, though, they don’t seem to be part of the playbook yet. In this Streetfilm we ask: Why not?

We spoke to Mia Birk, who helped introduce bicycle boulevards to Portland. She's also the co-author of a new guidebook to bike boulevard design. Here we explore some of the concepts in the guidebook and show how they might be applied to New York. Outside Manhattan, especially, important cycling routes could benefit from the bicycle boulevard treatment.

The street re-surfacing men and machinery were out in force in Soho last night. Houston Street Bike Safety Initiative Director Ian Dutton snapped this photo on Prince Street. Once the street is repaved, the Department of Transportation will stripe the hotly debated Prince and Bleecker Street bike lanes.

Lower Manhattan's newest east-west bike route is an alternative to the physically-separated bike lane that activists have long been pushing for on deadly Houston Street. In a presentation to Community Board 2 in March, DOT made the case that parallel bike lanes on either side of Houston Street is the better choice. DOT says its parallel route plan is based on successful projects in Berkeley, California and the Bergen/Dean Street bike lanes that run alongside busy Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. After extended debate, CB2 approved DOT's plan in April.

As a side benefit of the re-surfacing project, around 200 parking spaces will be eliminated to make way for the new bike lanes. Needless to say, the Soho Alliance will not be pleased.

Jan Gehl tried hard not to reveal any secrets during his Upper West Side Streets Renaissance presentation Tuesday night, but if you took a close look at his maps, it was apparent that Prince and Spring Streets have been part of his team's study area. What are the odds that Gehl will recommend that Mayor Bloomberg try out a car-free weekend pilot project for Soho next year? Pretty high, I'm guessing. If that moves ahead, how would a pedestrianized Prince Street fit with the new bike lane plan? Perhaps we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves here.

Dutton says there will be a ribbon-cutting for the new Lower Manhattan bike route at the end of the month.

Related:

• StreetFilms: Curbing Cars in Soho. 

This is the first of three videos StreetFilms will be posting in the coming week about innovative bike parking ideas in the California East Bay Area.

Dave Campbell of the Bicycle-Friendly Berkeley Coalition gives a quick tour of a Bikestation facility in Berkeley -- a bicycles actually have their own parking attendant. In a much denser, populated city like New York City, this kind of bike amenity could be implemented at key transit hubs like Penn Station, Grand Central, the Staten Island Ferry and Atlantic Avenue Terminal. 

Where else do Streetsblog readers suggest buildng a station like this?

See the world's first music video about shared-lane bike markings by Streetfilms Clarence Eckerson.

At times over the last two and a half years I have done quite a bit of organizing and advocacy work to help get new bicycle lanes and shared-lane markings installed on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, my neighborhood's main bike route. Though I was the community person leading the initiative and was often in close contact with the Department of Transportation staffers responsible for the project, I still found myself surprised when the bicycle stencils went down on the street a couple of weekends ago. The markings were different than what I had expected.

The main goal of the shared-lane markings, as I understood them based on my conversations with DOT, are to help motorists and cyclists know that bikes have a right to ride in the travel lane along the narrower stretch of the Avenue. As such, I expected that the stencils would be painted smack in the middle of the travel lane, similar to Berkeley, California's Bike Boulevard markings. Instead, the Fifth Avenue stencils, modeled after San Francisco's "Sharrows," were placed along one side of the travel lane, just outside the range of parked cars' doors.

Sharrows have been studied and tested and are supposed to provide real benefits to cyclists. Yet, to my eye, stencils along one side of the travel lane don't send the message that bikes have a right to the middle of the road. Rather, they seem to send the message that cyclists should be riding in the margins, squeezing between parked cars and moving traffic. I imagine a number of motorists will read them the same way and feel justified in blasting their horns at cyclists riding in front of them. This, I thought, was contrary to DOT and the community's goal for the shared-lane markings.

I don't bring this up to complain about the new markings or bash DOT. Overall, I think the stencils are a step forward and, though there was friction at times, I think the collaboration with DOT was constructive. I probably should have asked to see the design before the stencils went down. I bring up this issue to highlight the broader question of community involvement in designing and building New York City's growing bicycle network.

As thoughtful, involved (and occasionally cranky) cyclists debate bike lane design here on Streetsblog and as New York City's Department of Transportation embarks on its effort to produce 200+ miles of new bike lanes over the next three years, one of the big, outstanding questions is, simply: What is the most constructive way for cycling advocates and city government to work together and interact? How can we best put our heads together and use our resources to make New York a better biking city?

In trying to answer this question, it is worth taking another look at London' England's new Cycling Design Standards.

Yesterday I showed some photos of the "Share the Road" Bike Route signs that were recently installed on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn and that sparked an interesting discussion on different possible ways to design and build on-street bike paths. This summer I was in Berkeley, California for a friend's wedding. NYCSR filmmaker Clarence Eckerson was also in Berkeley recently and we both snapped a bunch of photos of that city's extensive "Bicycle Boulevard" network. For some more ideas of what might be possible in New York City, take a look:

You see these purple Bicycle Boulevard signs all over town. Driving, you are constantly reminded that bicycles are present. Cycling, you really get the sense that the city has a well-connected network of bike routes. In addition to the numerous purple street signs, the stencils are absolutely huge.

Berkeley also has extensive traffic-calming measures in place. Motor vehicular through-traffic is discouraged from using quiet, residential streets and Bicycle Boulevards as short-cuts with these heavy planters like these. Cars and trucks are forced to stay on the major thoroughfares. This often made driving in Berkeley slow and painful. But it's great if your priority is high quality of life, safe bicycling and the ability to play touch football on a neighborhood street.

On the main shopping strips there is tons of bicycle parking.

The BART stations also have excellent indoor bicycle parking. I took this photo in San Francicso, however, not Berkeley:

Keep in mind we're talking about a city with an on-street recycling program and a well-developed, 35-year-old environmental consciousness. This ain't New York. Though, I see no reason why we couldn't be doing these things as well.

Check out this un-signalized midblock crosswalk. I was actually a little bit scared to use it. "You mean, cars are going to stop for me without a traffic signal to tell them to do so?!? I think I'll let these guys cross first..." I could see something like this being useful on, 17th Street in Manhattan to connect the northern side of Union Square to the entrance of the Barnes & Noble store. Maybe we'd need a traffic signal in New York, though.

While Berkeley has all of this great bike infrastructure my main observation was this: New York City is still a far superior bicycling town. Parts of Berkeley are extremely hilly and, in general, it still felt like a car-dominated town. It's California, afterall. I see far more cyclists on the streets of New York than I saw in Berkeley. You've got to think that if New York City built bike infrastructure as good as Berkeley's, cycling might really explode here. I think that New York City is naturally, inherently a much more bikeable city. A little bit of encouragement  and good design would go a long way.