Streetsblog New York City

At the end of its second meeting on a DOT proposal to improve bike safety on the Manhattan approaches to the Queensboro Bridge, the transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 6 reached a conclusion. The committee needed more time to make up its mind.

The highlight of the plan is a two-way protected bike lane on First Avenue beneath the Queensboro Bridge. Image: DOT

“We will have a decision by June,” chair Fred Arcaro said.

North of 59th Street, Community Board 8′s transportation committee decided last week that two meetings was enough, and voted to support the plan with modifications. It’s scheduled to go before the full board on May 22.

Last night, Robert Cohen, who is not an appointed board member but sits on the CB 6 committee, said that DOT’s presentation, with diagrams, maps, and photo simulations, wasn’t enough. He needed a walk-through with DOT to fully comprehend the proposal. Other committee members said that they had already done a walk-through, but Arcaro went ahead and asked DOT to do a site visit with committee members.

DOT had tweaked the proposal [PDF] since it first presented the plan last month. It now includes a traffic signal for southbound cyclists using the proposed two-way protected bike lane between 59th and 60th Streets. In addition, signal timings at the intersection of 59th Street and First Avenue have been changed so that pedestrians and cyclists will cross the intersection at different times than drivers turning from First Avenue to 59th Street on their way to the Queensboro Bridge.

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First Avenue at 88th Street. Concrete pedestrian islands and tree pits have already been installed, and the bike lane has been striped.

Our most recent progress report on the protected bike lanes for East Harlem and the Upper East Side came last October, when crews installed the bike lane and pedestrian refuges on Second Avenue between 100th Street and 125th Street. Last year also saw the construction of a protected bike lane on First Avenue between the Queensboro Bridge and 72nd Street. Now, long-time reader Jacob sends in photos of the latest extension on First Avenue, which will stretch up to 125th Street.

This is a major safety upgrade that East Harlem residents and Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito fought hard for the past few years. When complete, crossing distances will be shorter for people walking across the avenue, and biking will feel much safer than it did with the old buffered lane, which was frequently obstructed by double-parkers.

Elsewhere, adjustments to pedestrian and bike space on Broadway between Times Square and Herald Square are underway. When this stretch was first redesigned about five years ago, a protected bike lane was sandwiched between the sidewalk and a floating plaza space, which wasn’t the smoothest arrangement for either pedestrians or cyclists. The design tweaks, which got a thumbs up by Community Board 5 last fall, narrow Broadway from two general travel lanes to one, while replacing the plaza-adjacent protected bike lane with a buffered bike lane on the other side of the street. It also widens the plaza space to 20 feet and connects it to the sidewalk. While cyclists now ride between parked cars and motor vehicles, traffic is light and tends not to move at high speeds.

Broadway at 36th Street. The bike lane has been moved to the west side of the street to reduce conflicts between pedestrians and cyclists

A protected bike lane on the Pulaski Bridge — calming traffic heading to McGuinness Boulevard and providing much more breathing room than the bridge’s narrow bike/ped path alone — has cleared a significant planning hurdle. In a letter to Assembly Member Joe Lentol [PDF], DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said that the proposal meets traffic analysis requirements, and that an engineering study and recommendations will be made by the end of the year:

DOT says an engineering study is underway for a protected bike lane on the Pulaski Bridge, and the agency will make recommendations by the end of the year. Photo: *Bitch Cakes*/Flickr

Since December, we have analyzed traffic data and we are confident that one Brooklyn-bound lane can be removed from the Pulaski Bridge without an adverse effect on traffic flow… However, there are some engineering questions remaining about how to properly design and install such a bicycle path on the bridge. To resolve these questions, we are initiating an engineering study with a structural engineering consultant.

The most likely engineering concerns are related to the bridge’s wide joint gaps, which could ensnare narrow bike tires, and how to maintain an adequate physical barrier between bicycles and motor vehicles on the drawbridge section of the span. DOT expects to wrap up the study and recommendations later this year, according to Sadik-Khan’s letter.

While this update puts the study schedule behind the March deadline that Lentol had cited at the beginning of the year, it’s a good sign of progress.

In the meantime, advocates continue to build support for the bike lane. The Transportation Alternatives Queens volunteer committee, which has a petition supporting the lane with 300 signatures, will be gathering more signatures on the Queens side of the bridge path on Saturday, May 11, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m.

The bridge path would complement a separate proposal to bring bike lanes to 11th Street in Long Island City, connecting north to Queens Plaza and the Queensboro Bridge. ”DOT and CB 2 have already agreed to this,” TA volunteer Steve Scofield told Streetsblog via e-mail. “We’re expecting their exact proposal and an implementation date in a matter of weeks.”

Dave "Paco" Abraham, a volunteer with Transportation Alternatives' Brooklyn committee, hands the signed photograph to 78th Precinct commanding officer Michael Ameri. Photo: Wayne Bailey

Bergen Street near Flatbush Avenue used to be a trouble spot for cyclists going from Prospect Heights to Park Slope, with one segment of the bike lane frequently obstructed by police vehicles. Last summer, a guerrilla protected lane appeared, buffered by orange cones, then disappeared, then reappeared, incredibly, in the form of metal crowd control barriers from the NYPD’s 78th Precinct. The barriers have stood in place for over five months. Now, cyclists are thanking the precinct for taking action.

A few weeks ago, the Transportation Alternatives Brooklyn volunteer committee organized a group photo to show their thanks. The photo, snapped by Dmitry Gudkov, was presented to Deputy Inspector Michael Ameri, the 78th Precinct’s commanding officer, at last night’s community council meeting. Streetsblog has reached out to Deputy Inspector Ameri via e-mail and phone for comment. We’ll let you know if we hear anything back.

While a few precincts have taken small steps forward on safer streets, the department as a whole, despite improved crash investigation procedures and endorsing speed cameras, has not made traffic safety a top priority. In that context, these gestures from the 78th Precinct are a welcome breath of fresh air.

Photo: South Slope News

Christine Bush, editor of the neighborhood blog South Slope News, writes in with this question about when painted bike lanes and alternate side parking collide:

We just had our snazzy new bike lanes pop up on 14th and 15th Streets in South Park Slope last weekend, but when I left to take my son to school this morning, I discovered most of the lane blocked by double-parked cars.

Is this an issue on other bike lane streets?

Other residential streets with un-protected bike lanes do have this problem on alt-side parking days. The problem has been overcome, sort of, on at least one of these streets.

On Maple Street in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, the alt-side double parkers stay out of the bike lane. Neighborhood blog Hawthorne Street attributed this behavior to some effective enforcement by the 71st Precinct in 2007.

Photo: Sholom Brody/Hawthorne Street

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For now, this is as good as it's going to get for cyclists who approach the Manhattan Bridge via Jay Street. Image: DOT

To make biking between Brooklyn and Manhattan safer and more appealing, one thing that needs to be addressed is access to the Manhattan Bridge from downtown Brooklyn. With the high volume of traffic between the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, and local streets, the area can be both dangerous and confusing, especially if you haven’t biked these streets before.

A new proposal from DOT [PDF] to improve bike access along Jay Street and connecting streets will offer minor improvements. The incremental steps received a unanimous 7-0 vote, with one abstention, from Brooklyn Community Board 2′s transportation committee last Tuesday evening.

Tillary Street, on the block between Adams and Jay Streets, saw 15 severe injuries (eight of which were pedestrians or cyclists), as well as one pedestrian fatality, from 2006 to 2010 — a higher injury rate than 90 percent of Brooklyn streets. That earned it a ”high crash corridor” designation from DOT.

Although the long-term plan [PDF] for this block involves a two-way protected bike path on the north side of the street, similar to the existing configuration on Adams Street between the Brooklyn Bridge entrance and Cadman Plaza West, the proposal that received a supportive vote on Tuesday is less ambitious. It would stripe a five-foot wide bike lane on eastbound Tillary Street to complement the existing westbound striped lane. General travel lanes would be narrowed, but the eastbound side of the street would retain three moving lanes plus a left-turn lane.

On Jay Street itself, the existing southbound striped bike lane would be joined by a northbound counterpart, matching the configuration on Jay Street south of Tillary. This section of Jay Street currently has a lot of double-parking, and some bike advocates are concerned that the new bike lane would simply be occupied with parked cars. According to reader Ian Dutton, at Tuesday’s meeting committee chair Hemalee Patel noted that many of the cars parked on Jay Street use government placards, and that the existing parking set-up was not serving community needs. DOT staff said they would examine the curb regulations on Jay Street.

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DOT is proposing a two-way protected bike lane for a block of First Avenue beneath the Queensboro Bridge. Image: DOT

At a meeting of the Community Board 6 transportation committee last night, NYC DOT presented a plan to add some protection for cyclists heading to and from the Queensboro Bridge in Manhattan [PDF]. The proposal would add a protected bike lane on First Avenue between 59th Street and 61st Street, including a two-way segment on one block that will divert southbound bike traffic away from a hectic block of Second Avenue. The project could be implemented as early as this summer.

Cyclists exiting the Queensboro Bridge reach ground level at 60th Street and First Avenue. Presently, southbound cyclists are supposed to travel north on First Avenue, west on 61st Street, then south on Second Avenue, where they must navigate busy bridge entrances between 59th and 60th Streets.

Under DOT’s proposal, southbound cyclists would instead use a jersey barrier-protected two-way bike lane on First Avenue between 60th and 59th Streets, connecting to a shared lane on 59th Street. Before reaching Second Avenue, all westbound car traffic on 59th Street diverts to a Queensboro Bridge ramp, after which the bike route would continue as a contra-flow buffered lane with flexible barriers to protect cyclists from oncoming eastbound traffic.

Currently, cyclists access Second Avenue via 61st Street, and cross a busy entrance to the Queensboro Bridge. DOT is proposing to route cyclists via First Avenue and 59th Street instead. Image: DOT

The plan would also add a one-way protected bike lane on First between 60th and 61st, linking the bridge path entrance to the existing northbound protected bike lane on First Avenue.

The proposal would not close the gaps in protected bike lanes on the East Side. Instead it calls for shared lane markings on Second Avenue from 59th Street to 58th Street, and on First Avenue from 56th Street to 59th Street. The shared lanes on First would direct cyclists to the third lane from the left, since there are double left turn lanes there now. This is different than existing shared lane markings on Second Avenue at 36th Street, for example, where left-turning traffic going to the Queens-Midtown Tunnel shares a lane with cyclists continuing straight on Second Avenue.

At last night’s meeting, some in attendance raised concerns about cycling in a shared lane removed from the edge of the street on both 59th Street and First Avenue. Committee members requested that DOT consider installing flexible barriers to separate bikes and left-turning vehicles from through lanes, according to Steve Vaccaro. A similar set-up exists at the entrance to the Holland Tunnel on Varick Street.

The committee is next scheduled to meet on Monday, May 6. DOT staff said last night that the plan could be implemented in the summer or fall, if the agency receives a supportive vote from the community board next month.

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Brownsville is set to have extra asphalt converted to bike lanes after Community Board 16's supportive vote last night. Photosim: NYC DOT

Good news out of Brooklyn last night: After a community-driven process that started in 2011, Community Board 16 voted to support painted bike lanes and sharrows on 15 miles of Brownsville streets.

The proposal calls for bike lanes on New Lots Avenue, Pitkin Avenue, Mother Gaston Boulevard, and a north/south pair on Hendrix Street and Schenck Avenue. DOT is also in the process of installing more than 600 bike racks in the neighborhood and community partners are hosting bike rides and helmet fittings.

The effort to bring bike lanes to Brownsville was started by Bettie Kollock-Wallace, who now serves as CB 16′s chair. Kollock-Wallace began working with the Brownsville Partnership and the Brooklyn District Public Health Office, which reached out to community members, Transportation Alternatives, and DOT to formulate a plan for bike lanes.

Community Board 5, covering East New York, is expected to vote on the plan soon. Its transportation committee supported an earlier, less comprehensive version of the plan in November. The lanes are slated for installation this spring, according to the Brownsville Partnership.

The two-way protected bike lane on Tillary Street in Downtown Brooklyn is blocked. Photo: Trammell Hudson on Flickr

Tillary Street between Adams Street and Cadman Plaza East is a critical connection for cyclists from Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill and Red Hook to the Brooklyn Bridge, with a protected bike lane separating them from drivers on the extra-wide street.

While the two-way lane has long been a favorite of illegal parkers, for the past week or two it’s been blocked by construction barriers, according to reader Trammell Hudson, who sent in this photo. As a result, cyclists are shunted into a lane of general traffic, and the sudden closure forces some cyclists to ride against traffic approaching the dangerous intersection with Adams Street.

A section of the street collapsed in recent weeks, and while DOT has done some work on the site, more work is needed, according to Gene Corcoran of the U.S. District Court, which is located on this block of Tillary Street. Streetsblog has an inquiry in with DOT to learn more. We’ll let you know if we hear anything.

Update: According to DOT, as of this morning there’s now a bike detour here that separates cyclists from car traffic. The detour will be in effect until DOT and DEP fix the depression in the road.

Thanks to reader Peter Frishauf for passing on this 1973 constituent letter he received from Ed Koch, who represented New York’s 18th Congressional District at the time. Forty years ago, Koch was putting out a more progressive message on bike policy than what we heard in 2011 from another U.S. Representative who had his eye on Gracie Mansion.

Koch, who died last night at the age of 88, introduced some innovative changes to prioritize surface transit and bicycling in the first half of his three-term mayoralty, though not all of them lasted. Many of the bus lanes on Midtown Manhattan avenues were created under his watch, beginning in 1981 with the implementation of the Madison Avenue bus lanes. Tens of thousands of bus riders benefit from these exclusive lanes to this day.

The previous year Koch’s administration had put down the city’s first on-street protected bike lanes on 5th Avenue, 6th Avenue, 7th Avenue, and Broadway between Central Park and Washington Square. The protected lanes turned out to be a short-lived experiment: On a Manhattan limo ride with President Carter, Governor Hugh Carey mocked Koch for building the lanes, and the mayor had them torn out just a month after they were installed. Twenty-seven years passed before the city got around to building another protected lane.

In Koch’s third term, his administration did a complete 180 on support for bicycling, attempting to implement a bike ban on Midtown avenues in 1987. The ensuing revolt against the bike ban, which was delayed by a court ruling and never fully implemented thanks to a rising tide of opposition, was actually the least of the woes plaguing the end of his tenure. Koch’s DOT was rocked by scandal when it was revealed, among other things, that the agency had become a nest of corruption under commissioner Anthony Ameruso, a patronage appointment doled out at the behest of Democratic Party bosses.

In terms of a long-term transportation legacy, the most significant act of Koch’s mayoralty was to team up with Carey and Albany to fund the MTA’s first five-year capital program in the early 1980s, at the insistence of then-MTA chair Richard Ravitch. The investment in transit reversed the decline of what had become a decrepit, unreliable system, turning it into the engine of the city’s recovery. Koch and Carey’s successors have let transit funding deteriorate since then: Direct city and state support for the MTA’s capital program has shrunk to almost nothing.