We've received a few reports in the past week about construction work on the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge. DOT's press office says six bike ramps are being installed, and we hear from observers on the ground that construction is largely complete as of this morning: The bridge approach at Delancey and Clinton Street has three new curb cuts, as does the raised median at Suffolk Street. Now cyclists can get on and off the bike path without having to dismount or hop the curb.

The volunteers at Adopt-a-Bike-Lane have been pushing for a safer ride to the Willy-B since last fall. Together with Allen Street's ongoing livable streets makeover, this new, smoother approach is bound to whet appetites for a protected connection to points west.

Among the items on Community Board 8's October agenda is a resolution in support of protected bike lanes on the Upper East Side. As we heard from Transportation Alternatives yesterday, neighborhood involvement has propelled this once-unlikely measure to this point, and friendly voices will be needed to bring it home. The CB 8 meeting starts at 6:30 at the Ramaz School Auditorium, 125 E. 85th Street.

Tonight in Upper Manhattan, Inwood and Washington Heights Livable Streets will hold a regular meeting to discuss, along with other topics, the proposed Dyckman Street Greenway Connector. Thanks to the consistent work of its core members, this group is starting to get attention from local electeds. A good showing tonight can only help build momentum. Meeting details and other discussions can be found on the IWHLS Livable Streets Community page.

A bike trail in New Jersey, which canceled extra clean transport funds. Photo: NJManasquan.com

But some states had already obligated all of their available funding in certain transport programs, and so DOTs were given flexibility to cancel more than a proportional share of money for TE, CMAQ, and Recreational Trails, another federal outdoors program.

How many states took the opportunity to cancel a bigger slice of TE, CMAQ, and Trails money? The folks at advocacy group America Bikes have crunched the numbers, and here's what they found:

• 46 states, in addition to Washington D.C., canceled more than a proportional share of transportation enhancements money: AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, HI, ID, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, ME, MD, MI, MN, MS, MO, MT, NE, NV, NH, NJ, NM, NY, NC, ND, OH, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA, WV, WI, and WY.
• 34 states, in addition to Washington D.C., canceled more than a proportional share of CMAQ money: AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, GA, HI, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, ME, MD, MO, MN, MT, NH, NC, NM, OH, OK, OR, RI, SC, TN, TX, UT, WA, WV, WI, and WY.
• 31 states, in addition to Washington D.C., canceled more than a proportional share of Trails money: AZ, AR, CA, CO, DE, FL, GA, HI, IL, IN, IA, KY, ME, MA, MD, MI, MS, MO, MT, NY, NJ, OH, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, UT, VT, WV, and WI.
• 4 states opted to send less than a proportional amount of transportation enhancements money back to the U.S. DOT, making extra cuts elsewhere: AL, AK, MA, and UT.
• 14 states opted to send less than a proportional amount of CMAQ money back to the U.S. DOT, making extra cuts elsewhere: AL, FL, ID, MA, MI, MS, NE, ND, NV, PA, SD, VT, and VA.
• 16 states opted to send less than a proportional amount of Trails money back to the U.S. DOT, making extra cuts elsewhere: AL, AK, CT, ID, KS, MN, NE, NV, NM, NC, ND, TN, TX, VA, WA, and WY.

No matter how you slice it, however, the rescission took a serious toll on clean transportation funds as well as those for roads. Meanwhile, Congress has yet to come to decision on how to approach the Oct. 30 deadline for extending the 2005 infrastructure bill one more time.

Editor's note: The above data has been updated to reflect current reporting as of Tuesday, Oct. 20.

Tonight's debate will be broadcast on NY1.

To date, Thompson has uncorked a steady flow of escalating anti-bike lane statements, couched in a demand for greater "community input." The argument never squared with DOT's habit of seeking community board approval for bike projects, nor does it jibe with recent resolutions in favor of protected bike lanes passed by Manhattan Community Boards 7 and 8. So Hawkins' sources offer up a few other explanations for Thompson's stance:

George Arzt, a veteran Democratic political consultant, said Thompson appears to be making a grab for working class, outer borough votes with his calls to remove bike lanes and dump Sadik-Khan.

"It's a 718 issue, as we used to say," said Arzt. "He sees this as an advantage to do something for the car drivers, many of whom hate the bicycle lanes and are fearful of running over a cyclist."

Ross Sandler, a New York Law School professor who served as transportation commissioner under Mayor Ed Koch from 1986-1989, said that vast improvements in public safety over the past 20 years have increased competition for public space, which goes towards explaining Sadik-Khan’s controversial role in the political landscape, as well as the growing clamor for her removal.

"Everybody wants that space," Sandler said. "Parkers, truckers, drivers, cyclists, skateboarders. It is the most competitive space in the city."

One good thing about Thompson's hostile rhetoric toward real-world livable streets improvements: On TV tonight, we might actually get to watch New York's next mayor go on the record explaining how he believes this intensely contested space ought to be allocated.

Tell DOT you prefer the safer, saner Times Square. Photo: nickdigital/Flickr

If you're enjoying these new public spaces, and don't want to see Times Square return to the state pictured above, now's a good time to say so.

From the first (and only) town-hall meeting of the Manhattan Borough President’s Planning for Pedestrians Council in 1987, to Manhattan Community Board 8’s “Bicycle Forum” this week, I’ve sat through innumerable gatherings on cyclist-pedestrian conflicts.

Cycling and pedestrian advocates, with Charles Komanoff at left, gather on the UES in 2007. Photo: Jonathan Barkey

The CB 8 forum on Tuesday evening did have hopeful elements, however. Local residents wanting more bike and pedestrian infrastructure and fewer cars outnumbered those who wanted cyclists put in their place. None of the five elected officials in attendance played the anti-bike card; all seemed receptive to the livable streets agenda. And one or two attendees who professed to be terrified by bicycles even took pains to support bike lanes.

Some highlights:

• Deputy Borough President Rosemonde Pierre-Louis “commend[ing] City DOT and Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan for their visionary work to make New York City more walkable and bikeable.” (City Council Member Jessica Lappin had a more guarded version of the same message.)
• Council Member Daniel Garodnick deflecting criticism from a pro-congestion pricing audience member by insisting he had been a “strong, outspoken supporter” of Mayor Bloomberg’s toll plan and, by implication, could be counted on to champion traffic pricing in the future.
  
• A diverse collection of Upper East Siders — a 50-something male attorney who has cycled to work for decades, a young woman who recently took up bike-commuting, a female African-American community board member, and a husky pedestrian who pronounced himself too un-coordinated to ride a bike — passionately and eloquently speaking up for cycling and cycle facilities. Here are some of their remarks:

“Cycling makes me healthy.”
“After biking to work, I feel good all day.”
“Cycling is saving my life.”
“Broadway is really great, Second Avenue is awful.”
“Summer Streets was fabulous.”
“There’s been nothing to teach people how to use these new streets.”
“A message should be sent by the community board to the District Attorney and the NYPD that there needs to be a re-evaluation of our priorities to protect cyclists and pedestrians.”

Okay, it wasn’t all a lovefest. There were these complaints from several women of a certain age, CB 8 members all:

“Transit is a priority, cars are a priority, bikes are not a priority.”
“The thought of having double, triple, quadruple the number of cyclists terrifies me.”
“The bicyclists have become the darlings of the [Bloomberg] administration, even though the number of bicyclists is a rounding error compared to the number of fire engines, buses and taxis.”
“One day we woke up to find all these circles and lines on our streets.”
“You’re afraid to go outside … You can’t be sure you’re not going to be killed [by a bicyclist].”
“I’d like to see bicycles registered and bicyclists licensed.”

None of the electeds took up the call for registering bikes. NYS Assembly Member Jonathan Bing and NYS Senator Liz Krueger did call on Albany to stiffen penalties for restaurants whose delivery cyclists flout laws against riding on sidewalks. Lappin has a local law in the works to allow the city to penalize the owners of restaurants and other businesses whose delivery staff ride on sidewalks or violate one-way rules or red lights. A hearing on her Intro. 624 is set for 10 a.m. next Thursday.

Garodnick has a bill pending, Intro. 813, to require the NYPD to post delivery-bicycle violations on line “to help send a message and give restaurants a reason to improve their practices.” Garodnick is also drafting legislation to increase penalties for operating motorized bicycles, which in his view are becoming more common (I agree), on sidewalks.

My verdict on the forum? The pervasive tonedeafness toward bikes (e.g., transportation committee co-chair Jonathan Horn categorizing all cyclists as either recreational or delivery) would have dumbfounded a visitor from Portland or Copenhagen. Any practitioner of risk management or harm reduction would have been appalled by the electeds’ indifference to motorized mayhem. And it’s still possible that the make-the-bikes-go-away ladies will carry the day at the October 7 CB 8 Transportation Committee meeting, when issues raised at the forum get turned into resolutions.

There was also a disconnect between the officials’ insistence that “pedestrians’ grievances about bikes is one of our top complaints” (Garodnick) and the sparse turnout (around 50, many of whom were pro-bike). Still, I came away feeling that, unlike 22 years ago, the embattled minority isn’t cyclists but the anti-bikes. We may never get them to turn against autos, but we might, finally, be outnumbering and out-organizing them.

Site of James Langergaard's fatal August 14 crash

Tomorrow, TA will be holding a special Queens Boulevard Bike Pool ride in honor of James. The ride will pause at the site of James' crash to dedicate his ghost bike. The ride meets at the Queens foot of the Queensboro Bridge bike-pedestrian path (Queens Plaza North at Crescent Street in Long Island City), and ends in Forest Hills. Riders depart at 6:30 p.m.

I recently helped install James' ghost bike and saw for myself the intersection where my friend perished. Queens Boulevard is notoriously dangerous to cross, but this is a particularly forbidding stretch for anyone not encased in steel and glass.

James was riding south on 69th Street and had begun the perilous traverse of a 10-lane highway. After crossing three lanes of the "access" road, he came to the four-lane "express" portion of the Boulevard. Vehicles traveling down this corridor are given copious visual cues that they are on the urban equivalent of a limited-access freeway. They hurtle along a concrete, fenced-in channel that could be transplanted to any suburban no-man's land without alteration. The only things out of place would be a crosswalk and a 30-mph speed limit sign, which may be the highway department's idea of a joke given the inducements to exceed it.

As he approached the express lanes, James' view of traffic coming towards him from the left would have been partially obscured by a fence and signs placed in the median. He wouldn't have gotten a clear view of approaching traffic until he was only a few yards from the intersection. All he had to remind him that he was about to enter a zone of mortal danger was a distant "Don't Walk" signal at the other end of the intersection. That and a thoughtful sign placed on the median to his left warning any pedestrian foolish enough to venture across this deadly expanse to "Be Alert: Proceed With Caution."

According to witnesses, James was crossing against the light. But capital punishment should not be the likely penalty for an error in judgment. James was arguably as much the victim of an infrastructure designed exclusively for the convenience of motorists. All others who stray into the area are an afterthought, at best.

By coming on the ride or attending the dedication, you can help send a strong message to the community and the city that these casualties of the Boulevard will not be forgotten, and that such inhuman landscapes in the middle of a congested city must not be tolerated and must change.

WHERE: Ride meets at the Queens foot of the Queensboro Bridge  bike-pedestrian path (Queens Plaza North at Crescent Street in Long Island City); Ride ends in Forest Hills

WHEN: Friday, October 2; Riders depart at 6:30 p.m.

Monthly bike commuter pools on Queens Boulevard are led by TA's Queens Committee to provide cyclists with a safe ride home, and build support for protected space for cyclists on the borough's most iconic roadway.

CB 7's transportation committee will host DOT staffers to discuss future bike facilities on the Upper West Side -- specifically, potential locations for protected bike lanes. We're trying to confirm, but we have word that Manhattan Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione and bike coordinator Josh Benson will be there. [Update: Hayes Lord will be representing DOT.] Either way, this has the makings of an important opportunity to weigh in on UWS livable streets improvements. The DOT segment of tonight's meeting begins at around 8 p.m.

Across the park starting at 6:30, the CB 8 transpo committee will hold a "bike forum" that, based on its description, will focus mostly on cyclist behavior. Given CB 8's tendency to oppose bike infrastructure almost by default, Upper East Side cyclists may want to make their presence felt.

Update: The UWS Streets Renaissance Campaign has put together a white paper on the benefits of protected bike lanes for community board members. Here's the PDF.

Come out tonight and support the city's first two-way, on-street protected bike path.

DOT representatives will be presenting their plan to address traffic changes caused by the new one-way vehicular flow on Kent. The new design establishes the greenway footprint and re-establishes on-street parking and loading zones. No new truck routes have been created, though southbound truck traffic will travel differently than before. Plenty can be done to mitigate the truck traffic changes, but there's a lot of hearsay and misinformation floating around. You can be sure that some North Williamsburg residents living close to those designated truck routes will be there tonight, and they'll be loud. A show of support for safe cycling would give a big boost to this important link in the city's bike network.

The meeting gets started at 6:30 (sorry about the late notice) at 807 Manhattan Avenue -- the entrance is on Calyer Street.

Team Amsterdam's concept for a bike and bus boulevard down Broadway.

Team Amsterdam won running away at Saturday night's New Amsterdam Bike Slam design battle, the two-team competition to devise the best plan for boosting bicycle modeshare in New York City. But Team New York could go home with their heads high -- they presented a lot of ideas that would work wonders on New York City streets.

The team labels are a little misleading. This was not an exercise in intercity jingoism. Team Amsterdam included Dutch city planners and American designers, by and large, while Team New York featured American planners and Dutch designers. The contest, hosted by Transportation Alternatives and Velo Mondial, asked competitors to come up with an overall vision for increasing bicycling, designs for four specific types of infrastructure, and a plan to make biking culturally mainstream. Some of their ideas you could picture on the streets of New York tomorrow, given sufficient resources. Other concepts were a little more outlandish.

My impression of the evening is that the Amsterdam team won the hearts of the judges thanks to consistent branding, an excellent presentation, and a cohesive message: That biking must become the easy transportation choice for New Yorkers, not the hard choice. They threaded the word "bright" through all of their concepts -- a brilliant, simple, but not at all obvious choice to associate with the bicycle (it's also closely associated with a bike coating prototype that team member Michael Mandiberg is developing).

In terms of realistic and effective infrastructure plans, though, I personally give a slight edge to Team New York. With a tighter presentation, their ideas might have won out.

I'll keep it brief and break down some highlights in bullet point form.

From Team New York:

• "Safe Zones" around bridge approaches with high-visibility bike lanes saturating the grid, a 20 mph speed limit and heightened fines;
• Two-way, separated bike approaches to every bridge entrance;
• A bike boulevard down Broadway -- they presented this concept as a two-way separated path, with plantings, running down the middle of the street with one car lane on each side;
  
• Separated bike paths on Houston Street;
  
• Safe zones around every school and public housing development. In the East Village and Lower East Side, if you traffic calm streets and add protected bike infrastructure around these locations, you'd end up with a fairly well-connected grid. To my eyes, this looked like a brilliant strategy for rolling out safe streets infrastructure; 
• Different scales of bike parking for different needs, including on-street bike corrals;
  
• For major employment centers like the Municipal Building: automated secure underground bike parking, a la Japan, encased in an attention-grabbing transparent structure (pretty far out).

As imagined by Team New York, safe zones would guide cyclists to and from bridge approaches.

• Two-way separated bike approaches to bridge entrances. This team suggested a Williamsburg Bridge bike path stretching to Lafayette Street. I sense a pattern;
• A bike and bus boulevard down Broadway (shown up top, one of the most talked-about images of the night);
• Put most bike infrastructure on neighborhood streets, not traffic sewers like Houston --  a big difference between the two teams;
• A new neighborhood street layout: angled car parking, delivery zones, and bike corrals on one side -- bike lane with no car parking on the other side;
  
• A grade-separated bike "freeway" slipped underneath the FDR. Bold, but not something that seemed appealing to ride on or worth fantasizing about very much;
• A guarded bike parking hub at the Municipal Building with direct connections to the subway.
  

Team Amsterdam's concept for a neighborhood street. The parallel parking spot is for deliveries and the green parallelogram is for bike parking.

Both teams, I should mention, tied everything together with a robust bike-share network.

If there was anything more captivating than the re-imagination of street space on display Saturday night, it was the spectacle of Meatpacking hotspot Cielo crammed with sustainable transportation geeks, with just a smattering of regular club-goers looking totally perplexed and a little miffed.

An aside about the Meatpacking District: This was the first time I'd seen the Gansevoort area in full swing on a weekend night. You've got to see this traffic to believe it. Looking east from Ninth Avenue and 14th Street, the line of cabs, limos, livery cars, and assorted machines for preening stretched as far as I could see, way beyond Eighth Avenue. The notion that a few pedestrian extensions on Ninth Avenue exacerbate all this gridlock is totally preposterous. People on foot need that space or they'd be risking life and limb crossing the street in front of these impatient drivers.

Clarence sends these shots from Kent Avenue, where the striping and painting of the city's first two-way, on-street parking protected bike lane is currently in progress. This is the view looking north from the vicinity of Clymer Street. The project will be completed in two phases. According to DOT's project presentation [PDF], the current work, stretching from Clymer to Broadway, will be complete in mid-September; the second phase, from Broadway to North 14th Street, is slated to wrap up in about a month. Below is the view looking south toward Clymer.

The Sands Street path runs from Navy Street to the foot of the Manhattan Bridge at Jay Street.

This project is still ongoing. As we continue to implement the improvements, we will be certain to make any adjustments necessary to facilitate bikers getting to and from the bridge.

The question we sent was specifically about the traffic signal at Jay and Sands, and whether an exclusive phase for cyclists might be added. Seems like they're still evaluating the options.

An evening commuter enters the Sands Street bike path at Jay Street, after descending from the Manhattan Bridge.

Last month, the long-awaited Sands Street bike path officially opened, giving cyclists a much safer connection to the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge. From what I can tell so far, everyone loves the new protected space between Jay and Gold, which separates bike traffic from all the trucks and cars accelerating onto the BQE. If you bike over the bridge from Fort Greene or points east and south, it's a huge improvement. And once the Carlton Avenue Bridge reopens, this path should be an attractive approach to an even bigger swath of Brooklyn bike commuters.

We've received a few emails from readers who think the path would be safer with a few not-so-dramatic changes, and it will be interesting to see if DOT tweaks the Sands Street approach to address these concerns. One trouble spot: At the intersection where the Sands Street path meets the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge, cyclists have to cross against southbound traffic on Jay Street and eastbound traffic on Sands. Many are doing it in one fell swoop, making a diagonal movement that can be pretty dangerous.

Here's my attempt at a triptych showing what this looks like as a cyclist exits the bridge. The curb cut you see in the third frame is the entrance to the Sands Street protected path:

Some readers might get on the cyclist's case here for crossing against one of the lights, but I think this behavior is going to be pretty common as long as cyclists are asked to wait through two signal phases and make two separate crossings.

Here's a short video clip where you can see a few other ways people are handling this condition (apologies for the amateurish camera-work). 

One step that might encourage safer crossings would be to add an exclusive bike/pedestrian phase at this intersection. Another would be to cut a hole in that black fence on the bridge side of the street and install a direct crosswalk, giving cyclists a straight shot between the two paths. We have a query in with DOT to see if some tweaks might be on the table.

Another question is whether the block between Gold and Navy Street is adequately protected and delineated as space for bike traffic.

Photo: brooklynbybike/Flickr.

1st District Council candidates say safety measures like the Grand Street lane are out of step with their community. Photo: Ian Dutton

When it comes to giving their potential constituents some relief from the auto armada, the 1st District challengers have plenty of deserving targets to train their fire on. But forget the placard abuse, the free ride for car commuters who pour over the East River bridges, and the city's nonsensical truck toll system. Here's what challenger Arthur Gregory said when asked what he views as the district's most pressing transportation issue:

You can drive through Central Park at certain times. And certain times you can't. Have the bike paths the same way. When there's congestion because of cabs, people are going to work, they're doing business, or deliveries in the morning then you say, listen, you can't really use the bike paths now.

Okay, so Arthur doesn't get biking as transportation, or the fact that bikes take up much less space than cars. His views on cycling would have come across as backwards even during the dark ages of the Midtown bike ban, 22 years ago. (If only he'd thought this bike thing through as much as his well-reasoned position on delivery truck schedules -- read the whole interview, he says some good stuff.)

The thing is, the other candidates don't compare all that favorably. In fact, they practically trip over themselves to condemn one of the most important cycling safety measures in their district, the protected bike path on Grand Street.

Chin gave the following assessment of the Grand Street bike lane:

Grand Street cuts across many different neighborhoods. You have different needs and you have different usage, and no consultation. Just an item on the community board agenda... That bike lane (between Chrystie and Canal) is the stupidest thing, that's what people in the community say. It just created a lot of congestion. But the city says 'we think it's a good idea. We just think people will get used to it.' Wait a minute. You can't just impose that on a community.

This is a common refrain. It's easy for the candidates to profess support for safer streets in the abstract, but what about specific projects like Grand Street, or the seemingly unassailable addition of pedestrian refuges to hazardous crossings? Their standard response: Say it's no good and blame the community process that preceded these real-world improvements.

In the case of the Grand Street bike lane, that process involved a nearly unanimous CB2 vote in favor. The community board system has its flaws, but I think it's fair to ask: If approval from the local CB doesn't cut it for these council candidates, what sort of "community input" requirement would they like to see fulfilled before every attempt to make streets safer?

Signed consent from SoHo boss Sean Sweeney?

There's a fresh coat of asphalt on the Sands Street bike path, and guys on the construction crew say this long-awaited approach to the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge should officially open for riding next week. Still to come: pavement markings and fencing.

Streetsblog's offices are just a short walk away on Water Street, and I figure it's not often that you get to show a piece of heavy duty bike infrastructure round into form, so here are a few more pictures showing the progress since last week. To appreciate how much this project will improve commutes for cyclists, check out the "before" pictures from last September.

The crew works on the section between Navy Street and Gold Street.

This signal, at the intersection of Sands and Gold, is for cyclists.

This is the barrier separating the bike path from auto traffic. The silver markings are there to guide installation of a fence.

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.

Spurred by comments following yesterday's post on Greenway access in Washington Heights, a reader put together this map [download the full size version] of how to get from the Greenway to the George Washington Bridge. It's no straight shot by any means. If the arrows are a little hard to follow, here are the directions:

Stay on the path under the bridge, take the bridge over Amtrak, the tunnel under S-bound parkway, the path then switches back south then north to parallel the N-bound parkway, which it crosses at a ped bridge to Riverside Drive. Go right onto Riverside, then left on 181st up to Ft. Washington. Depending on preference and access, go to either of the bridge path entrances.

Picking up on the previous thread, for those who know this route, how would you rate it in terms of safety and convenience? For those who don't, how likely would you be to try it? What could be done to simplify this connection, or make it safer?

Last week DOT unveiled this conceptual plan for a better gateway to the Brooklyn Bridge [PDF]. For the thousands of pedestrians and cyclists who access the bridge on the Brooklyn side every day, it's a winner.

Presented at a public meeting in downtown Brooklyn, the new design features a more generous, boulevard-style bike-ped access ramp to the bridge, plus wider medians and sidewalks, curb extensions, and separated bike lanes on each of the three approaches to the ramp. If implemented, the proposal would greatly improve safety at one of the most complex, heavily-trafficked intersections in the city.

The project is still in its early stages. This plan, based on input from an earlier public workshop in January, will be refined again, with DOT aiming to bring a more finished proposal before Community Board 2 this fall. The multi-million dollar reconstruction of Tillary Street and Adams Street, which cross paths at the foot of the ramp, is slated to begin in 2012.

A reader who went to last week's workshop tells us the reception was generally positive. About 40 people attended, and after DOT's presentation, everyone marked up large copies of the plan with notes about what they liked and didn't like.

Some highlights from the concept plan:

• The entry ramp, currently a concrete barrier-lined chute where pedestrians and cyclists vie for space on a 10-foot wide path, would expand to a 14-foot wide path with plantings on each side. To make room, existing medians would be consolidated and service lanes on Adams Street would be eliminated or reduced in width.
  
• Two-way protected bike paths would extend at least one block in each direction from the foot of the ramp. On Adams Street, cyclists would have a straight shot to and from the ramp thanks to a center median two-way bike path.
• More pedestrian space -- including wider sidewalks, medians and curb extensions -- all along Tillary from Clinton Street to Flatbush Avenue. Similar treatment on Adams directly south of the access ramp.

The city is, in some ways, making up for lost time on this one. An earlier DOT regime passed up the chance to improve safety at the Tillary/Adams intersection when the Adams Street median was redesigned in 1998.

More graphics from DOT's concept plan after the jump.

The intersection of Adams and Tillary in DOT's concept plan. The foot of the Brooklyn Bridge access ramp is at the top of the picture. Proposed additions and enhancements to ped/bike areas are shaded lighter than existing sidewalk. For a look at the existing conditions and the full plan, see this PDF.

Proposed geometry for the bridge access ramp. Image: NYCDOT.

DOT contractors are putting down new bike lane markings on Park Slope's Fifth Avenue this afternoon. In addition to refurbishing the original bike lane laid down in 2004 and the sharrows installed in 2006, the crews are adding reinforcements, like the chevron markings through the intersections pictured below.

It would be entirely fitting if these improvements were DOT's response to the recent complaints from a small number of merchants and the idiotic editorial that ran in the Brooklyn Paper claiming that these pavement markings -- and the cyclists who use them -- are somehow interfering with deliveries and parking on the avenue. But this is probably just regularly scheduled maintenance. Winter snow plows really do a number on these bike lanes.

Not that it didn't deserve the attention, but last month's car-free Times Square debut overshadowed other major Broadway safety improvements like these to the north -- including pedestrian islands and separated bike lanes -- which are now well on their way to being implemented. These pics were taken last weekend just south of Columbus Circle between 57th and 55th Streets.

Photos: Brad Aaron