Soon, you won't have to ride in car traffic on the Sands Street approach to the Manhattan Bridge.

The long-awaited Sands Street bike path, a protected approach to the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge which took a few years longer than expected to go through New York City's construction bureaucracy, looks tantalizingly close to completion these days. It's not there yet, but you can start to picture how this critical addition to the city's bike network will appear when finished. The Department of Design and Construction tells us the whole thing should be paved by the end of the week, weather permitting, and the path should officially open to cyclists next week, after some fencing is added.

Above is the view looking toward the bridge entrance from the north side. Here's how it looked last September:

More pics after the jump.

Here's the view looking in the opposite direction -- toward the BQE overpass -- from the same spot. Fencing will be added along the concrete barrier.

The view from Gold Street looking toward the bridge. The path will carry two-way bike traffic from here to the bridge.

Between Gold Street and Navy Street, the path runs between Farragut Houses along both sides of a center median. The surface for bikes is raised above the surface for autos. To allow for free pedestrian movement across the street, there is no concrete barrier.

The 215th Step-Street: still broken. Photo: Brad Aaron

It was at Espaillat's June 25 "town hall" meeting, reports neighborhood blog Inwoodette, that the Department of Design and Construction broke the news -- to a chorus of boos -- that "pre-design" work will not be complete until October 2010. Said a second local blogger, Jewyorican: DDC personnel "made it sound like we wanted the city to build the 215th street space elevator to the moon."

It isn't the first time the city has promised to fix the steps only to later renege. As we reported last year, a previous commitment was made in 2005. For whatever it's worth, Streetsblog has messages in with DDC and Community Board 12 to determine the latest project time line.

Update: From Mark Levine, chair of CB 12's transportation committee:

A lot of us are livid about this delay. Originally construction was to begin this year (and even that was two years after the project was funded!). DDC says they are now negotiating with the consultant on the pre-design scope package for OMB review. Espaillat has contacted the mayor's office and DDC commissioner in an effort to expedite matters.

After a wait that lasted years longer than expected, construction crews are breaking ground on a slate of pedestrian safety improvements for Downtown Brooklyn's traffic-plagued streets.

Reader Todd Seidel sent in this photo of a sidewalk extension in mid-construction on Third Avenue and 11th Street, and DOT confirms that Phase I of the long-sought Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project is now underway. When complete, the project will extend sidewalks at dozens of intersections, narrowing crossing distances for pedestrians and sending visual cues for drivers to slow down.

Following the deaths of two young children on Third Avenue in 2004, then-DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall originally promised to build $4 million in pedestrian safety improvements for Downtown Brooklyn by 2006. A year after that deadline had come and gone, four-year-old James Rice was run over and killed by an SUV, prompting another pledge from DOT to accelerate the project. While the city's budget process again slowed implementation, signs of progress are at last apparent.

We have a request for more details in to the Department of Design and Construction, the city agency that builds DOT's capital projects. You can see a list of intersections targeted for sidewalk extensions in this PDF from DOT's website. Follow the jump for another picture from Todd.

A photosim of the East Houston Street plan; existing condition shown inset. Image: DCP.

Up-to-date plans of the new street geometry were not available as of this writing, but the design is based largely on the Department of City Planning's East Houston Street Pedestrian Project, finalized in 2006. A spokesman for the Department of Design and Construction said the project would incorporate many, but not all, of the recommendations in that report [PDF].

There's a lot to like in the 2006 plan, including two big pedestrian areas where Houston angles across the regular grid of Manhattan at Avenue A and Avenue D. Based on recent descriptions, the final project will incorporate those two plazas. Street space would also be reclaimed with wider medians, pedestrian refuges, and sidewalk neckdowns to shorten crossing distances. But will the new East Houston feel safe for cyclists?

Currently, 70 percent of drivers on East Houston Street speed, according to studies conducted by Transportation Alternatives. "It's hard to imagine that paint will offer the kind of protection mainstream New Yorkers will need to feel safe biking on this crucial, yet dangerous corridor," said TA's Wiley Norvell. "The city has innovative physically-protected designs on hand, and to not use them on Houston would be a huge missed opportunity."

In response, DOT emphasized the project's pedestrian improvements. DOT considers protected bike paths less-than-ideal for typical two-way streets, and the agency expects the removal of two traffic lanes to reduce vehicle speeds.

Even if traffic calms somewhat, the buffered lane will invite the same double-parking that plagues other Class 2 lanes. People choose to bike based on their perceptions of safety, and a buffer can only shift perceptions so far.

"Houston is by no means a typical two way street," said Norvell. "It is exactly the type of wide arterial roadway that calls for a physically separated lane. This city's bike network will continue to remain unusable for the average New Yorker until streets like Houston are provided with the protected lanes they require to be safe."

Construction of the Sands Street bike path was promised to begin in 2006...

The slow pace of safety improvements for downtown Brooklyn streets became tragically apparent earlier this month when eight-year-old Alexander Toulouse was killed by a postal truck on Livingston Street. A $5 million traffic calming project for the area, unveiled in 2007, is not the only livable streets initiative to suffer delays. The Sands Street bike path, a physically protected approach to the Manhattan Bridge, has languished behind schedule for years, held up in the city's construction bureaucracy. The project serves as a prime illustration that livable streets hinge not just on DOT, but on other, more obscure city agencies as well.

...here's how Sands Street looks today.

In April 2005, Noah Budnick of Transportation Alternatives was riding on Sands Street, after exiting the Manhattan Bridge, and crashed on a dangerous stretch where cyclists often have to contend with deeply pock-marked pavement and cars accelerating onto the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. He sustained severe head trauma, requiring hospitalization and a prolonged recovery.

Two years earlier, Budnick had joined other Brooklyn bike advocates in calling on the Department of Transportation to improve the safety of the very same bridge approach. Borough President Marty Markowitz and City Council member David Yassky pledged support (right). DOT, under the leadership of commissioner Iris Weinshall at the time, did announce plans for a protected bike path on Sands Street -- two months after Budnick's crash. Construction would start in 2006, the agency said.

This June marked the third anniversary of that announcement, and construction on the Sands Street bike path has still not begun. (A contractor is slated to begin work in October.) Last year, a new team took the reins at DOT and dramatically accelerated the pace of bike improvements. But getting this critical safety measure through the different stages of government approval has been slow as molasses. Why?

Capital projects like Sands Street are carried out by the city's Department of Design and Construction, which works with contractors to see DOT's designs through to completion.

The initial DOT design for Sands Street called for a two-way bike path, running along a raised median, protected from car traffic by a fence on both sides. Transportation Alternatives and Community Board 2 lobbied DOT to replace the fence with bollards. A continuous fence, they said, would have kept residents of nearby Farragut Houses from walking across the street midblock, in addition to posing a danger to cyclists by making it harder for them to exit the bike path in case of an emergency. A bike path design using bollards was adopted.

DOT and DDC attempted to fold the bike path project into an existing contract where work was already underway, the reconstruction of Flushing Avenue. DDC put out the $40 million Flushing Avenue bid in 2003. DOT and DDC initially stated that the contractor, Bronx-based firm Demicco Bros., would not agree to incorporate the bike path work into the project.

On Sands Street, cyclists contend with broken pavement and cars getting onto the BQE.

Frank Demicco of Demicco Bros. says his firm was never officially told to do the work. "It was something that was just talked about," he said. The city did not go so far as to issue a change order instructing Demicco to build the bike path. "There's no items in the contract for me to construct that, so it's really illegal for them to give me work without issuing a change order, and the change order might have been too expensive, or whatever they thought. That's probably why they went that route." The city is reluctant to push through such projects by issuing a change order, he added, when it can do the work cheaper through competitive bidding.

In the case of Sands Street, this meant forgoing the originally promised construction timetable and letting the project out to bid again. DDC sent Streetsblog a revised statement after Demicco's version of events was brought to their attention: "At the time this project was requested, the option of adding the path to the active reconstruction project was explored, but due to a number of issues including approvals, funding, and scheduling, it was decided a new procurement would need to take place. It was DDC's decision to proceed as noted above, not the contractor's."

That decision was reached through an internal process known as a change order estimate, wherein DDC projected a price tag for the bike path. When the agency arrived at a figure, work was not allowed to proceed because another city agency, the Office of Management and Budget, rejects change order estimates that exceed 10 percent of the total project cost.

The Sands Street path is now under a separate, $4.6 million contract with a firm called Trocom Construction. When it is finally completed, the path will serve as a critical link in the city's bike network. Just as bridge approaches become choke points for car traffic during peak hours, they also serve large numbers of cyclists, especially bike commuters. The increasing popularity of biking in New York is reflected in the number of cyclists crossing bridges. In 2005, an average of 829 cyclists crossed the Manhattan Bridge every day. In 2006, the last year for which data is available, daily crossings shot up to 1578, a 90 percent increase.

Bridge approaches handle some of the densest bike traffic in the city, and the volume is only going up.

The more people bike across the bridge, the greater the number of potential conflicts between drivers and cyclists. The hazards are amplified on Sands Street, where drivers access two on-ramps to the BQE.

"You're navigating through very high vehicle traffic," says Caroline Samponaro of T.A. "It's essential to have protected space set aside, and proper signage and lighting."

Thousands of cyclists have been put at risk because this project was delayed for two years.

Rendering: NYCDOT

Photos: Aaron Naparstek

"Streets to Live By" marshals data from several cities to make the case for investing in livable streets in New York.

Today Transportation Alternatives released "Streets to Live By" [PDF], the report previewed last week in the Observer. It seeks to define what makes a street livable and to synthesize a broad range of data, culled from numerous cities, on the effects of policies that put pedestrians first.

This doc is a big one, and we're still sifting through it. An early impression: The evidence gathered here related to economic development, health, and social wellbeing suggests that a number of city agencies should be shepherded into the livable streets fold. From the report's recommendations:

Improvements that support livable streets, whether through new construction, street rebuilding or zoning amendments, should be the standard. Coordination and creative problem solving between these agencies, including the Department of City Planning (DCP), Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Department of Design and Construction (DDC), Economic Development Corporation (EDC), Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and Department of Sanitation (DOS) would be best led by the DOT and the Mayor’s Office of Planning and Sustainability.

The report also names the Department of Health and the Department of Small Business Services as agencies that can forge stronger ties to a livable streets agenda, and calls for a livable streets training program aimed at the city's community boards. "We recognize that the jurisdiction of each agency only goes so far," says T.A.'s Shin-pei Tsay, "and we hope there can be greater collaboration between them."

The Manhattan approach to the Manhattan Bridge, where Chinatown and the Lower East Side come together in a jumble, has long presented one of the most confusing streetscapes in the city. Pedestrians, bicycles, cars and trucks compete for space in a chaotic rush of traffic that often feels dangerous and unnavigable.

Now the city's Dept. of Transportation is going to do something about it.

In a presentation given to the Community Board 3 transportation committee back in July (download PDF here), the DOT proposed several major improvements to the area, including sidewalk extensions, pedestrian refuge islands and decreased crossing distances for those on foot. Pedestrian safety improvements for two schools in the shadow of the bridge, IS 131 and PS 124, are a key part of the plan and have already been put in place.

The committee unanimously approved the proposal.

Perhaps the most dramatic element in the project is a "complete intersection" redesign for Canal St. at Forsyth St. This is where the bridge's newly reopened northside bike path currently ends, at a blind corner that practically guarantees conflict with pedestrians and cyclists riding the wrong way along the one block stretch of Canal St. leading to Christie St.

The DOT's plan will separate bike and pedestrian flows with a fence and provide a one block physically-separated bike path (with bicycle traffic signals) on Canal St. The DOT press office did not respond to questions about the project and would not say when it would be completed.

A DOT source says that it is difficult to say when the project will be completed now that it is in the hands of the sometimes slow-moving Dept. of Design and Construction (DDC). A similar fate has befallen the Sands Street bike safety improvements on the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge. Announced on June 14, 2005, the project appears to have stalled since being handed off from DOT to DDC.

Top photo: Geoff Zink. Plan and photographic rendering were pulled from DOT's presentation.