Streetsblog New York City

Now for something completely different: Clarence Eckerson snapped these photos of a double bike lane on both sides of Second Avenue between 1st and 2nd Streets. The new street design also includes a rather massive bike box.

Has New York City ever had a street with bike lanes running along both sides? This seems to be a new one.

This new buffered bike lane begins at Petrosino Square at Lafayette Street and Spring Street and heads southbound all the way down to Duane Street on the way to the Brooklyn Bridge. Along the way you'll find quite a few bike boxes and sharrows, new bike safety tools in the Department of Transportation street design tool box. (As Project for Public Spaces has pointed out, Petrosino Square could easily be enlarged and transformed into one of Lower Manhattan's finest little public squares).

Heading towards City Hall.

In case you are wondering why there are no cars on the road, these photos were snapped early Sunday morning while all the motorists where still sleeping. 

Instead of ending abruptly, the bike lane morphs into sharrows at Reade Street.

The new sharrows lead cyclists right down the center of the busy intersection at Chambers Street and on to the bridge to Brooklyn.

Photos: Jason Varone

Ian Dutton of the Houston Street bike safety initiative snapped these photographs of yet another never-before-seen street design feature here in New York City. This is what's called a "Bike Box" at the  intersection of W. 9th St. and Sixth Ave. Bike boxes allow cyclists approaching the intersection with a red signal to position themselves at the front of the line of vehicles. This makes bike travel faster and the right turn onto northbound Sixth Avenue safer.

New bike boxes are also being striped in on Carlton Avenue at Bergen Street and on DeKalb and Flushing Avenues in Brooklyn. Technically, these aren't New York City's first-ever bike boxes. There have been previous attempts to install them in various spots but the design of these new ones seem to be much bigger, clearer, cleaner and closer to what you see in bike-friendly cities elsewhere.

One city that appreciates its bike boxes is London. Traveling on a German Marshall Fellowship in March I met with John Dinunzio, a Project Coordinator with the London Cycle Network (or LCN+), working to build out that city's bike infrastructure. John and his team are big proponents of bike boxes. I saw a lot of them throughout London. London motorists mostly seem to respect the bike boxes. Let's see if New York City drivers do the same.