Manhattan Bridge cyclists won't have to brave the Bowery as of March 5. Image: NYC DOT

The Manhattan Bridge bicycle path will return to its usual place on the north side of the bridge on March 5, according to a Department of Transportation spokesperson.

Since July, construction has forced cyclists and pedestrians to swap sides on the bridge. Bike riders heading into Manhattan have had to navigate a dangerous detour onto the Bowery. Though DOT painted a temporary bike route along Bowery for the duration of the construction, NYPD enforcement was almost non-existent and the lane was often unusable.

Flipping the bicycle and pedestrian paths on the bridge also led to some heightened conflict, not so much along the path itself but in the minds of the Daily News editorial board. The newspaper wrote a series of scathing editorials depicting cyclists as “illiterate, blind, or merely — this is our guess — oblivious to all man-made law,” one of the low points of last year’s media bikelash.

More than 1,400 people signed a petition to extend the Lafayette Avenue bike lane east, though a compromise might only connect it to Carlton Avenue.

A Brooklyn bike lane scuttled during last winter’s anti-bike frenzy is back on the agenda thanks to some intrepid citizen activism. More than 1,400 people have signed a petition to paint a bike lane on Lafayette Avenue, reports the New York Times’ The Local blog, and the local community board will be revisiting the issue this coming Tuesday.

Right now, there isn’t a great eastbound bike route through the area. A bike lane runs on Lafayette for a few blocks from Flatbush Avenue to Fulton Street, while another eastbound route runs on Willoughby Avenue, five blocks north of Lafayette. The Lafayette lane would serve as a matched pair to the existing westbound lane on DeKalb Avenue. Another benefit of the bike lane would be traffic calming; the proposed design would remove one of two motor vehicle lanes.

Supporters are hoping to extend the Lafayette lane a full 2.7 miles to Broadway, but The Local reports that a compromise might extend the lane only five blocks in order to connect riders crossing Flatbush to the northbound Carlton Avenue lane, where they could zigzag up to Willoughby.

Despite the show of public support for the lane, the debate Tuesday evening is sure to be contentious, given the project’s history. While Community Board 2 never formally voted the bike lane down, the Department of Transportation withdrew its plans to stripe the lane in the face of opposition last March.

Those interested in speaking on the issue should attend the meeting of CB 2′s transportation committee Tuesday night at 6:00 p.m, held at St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street.

This map of bike-share trips in D.C. reveals plenty about cycling patterns in the city, but New York City's data will be far more robust, including exact routes for each trip. Image: CommuterPageBlog via GGW.

Here’s one more reason to get excited about the launch of bike-share later this year: the reams of data generated by the GPS units located in every public bicycle. The Department of Transportation will use that data to inform their bike lane planning, commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan revealed last night.

“It’s going to be amazing to have GPS generated data for all these trips,” said Sadik-Khan. “For planning purposes, it’ll be huge.”

Right now, data on individual bike trips are very scarce. While bike-share trips aren’t representative of the larger set of bike trips, the ability to track exactly where a large set of riders bike and at what speeds could be quite valuable for bike planning. DOT has used taxi GPS data to measure traffic speeds in Manhattan and evaluate initiatives like the pedestrianization of parts of Broadway, and there’s far more that can still be done with that kind of rich data set. Bike-sharing could start to build a similar toolkit for bikes.

The GPS data, which will be owned by the city and made publicly available to the extent possible, will provide even more information than exists in other cities with bike-share. In D.C., for example, there’s excitement about a new data set that only shows which stations Capital Bikeshare riders are traveling between, not their exact routes.

What would you do with bike-share GPS data? Let us know in the comments.

The city's older painted bike lanes, like the Fort Washington Avenue lane shown here, lead more people to ride bikes, not to more crashes. Photo: Department of City Planning

New York City’s tabloid media simply can’t stop seeing the city’s bike boom as a mortal threat to pedestrians. Even research showing a decline in the number of bike-ped crashes was somehow spun to say the opposite, that more cyclists were hitting pedestrians than ever. Now, new peer-reviewed research confirms once again that bike lanes don’t endanger pedestrians and don’t cause more crashes. If anything, researchers say, they make streets safer.

Even though they attract more cyclists onto the street, New York City’s painted bike lanes don’t lead to any increase in the number of traffic crashes, according to a new study in the American Journal of Public Health. The study’s authors expect that if they could adequately control for increased bike traffic, the numbers would show that crash rates went down due to the installation of bike lanes.

The researchers attempted to mimic the structure of a true experiment by pairing each street with a bike lane to a street without a bike lane that was otherwise as similar as possible. They attempted to control not only for design features like the number and direction of the lanes and the presence of stop signs or traffic signals, but also contextual factors like population and retail density. That enabled them to factor out the significant increase in traffic safety that has taken place across all of New York City.

“The difference between the treatment group and the comparison group in terms of a reduction is just not significant,” author Cynthia Chen, a transportation engineer at the University of Washington, told Streetsblog. The change in the number of crashes was statistically insignificant not only for total crashes, but for vehicle crashes, bike crashes, pedestrian crashes, and crashes that caused death or serious injury.

The study only looked at painted bike lanes installed in New York City between 1996 and 2006. Protected bike lanes, all of which were installed after that period, have had impressive safety results. A protected lane installed on Manhattan’s Eighth Avenue, for example, reduced injuries for all street users by 35 percent, according to DOT.

DOT’s landmark pedestrian safety study, which similarly attempted to control for confounding factors, also found that on streets with bike lanes, serious crashes were 40 percent less likely to kill victims.

Chen argued that her team would likely have found significant results if they had better data about bicycle volumes, which they believe increase after bike lanes are installed. “We think that if we were able to control the increase in bicycle volume, we would probably have found a significant reduction in crashes for the treatment group.” In other words, bike lanes might improve safety per person even if the total number of crashes holds steady.

The researchers also saw far greater numbers of bicycle crashes at intersections than on straight road segments. To improve safety, they recommended extending bike markings across intersections and installing more bike boxes.

The study, set to be released in an upcoming issue of the peer-reviewed journal, was conducted by a team of five academics and one city DOT official. DOT also funded the study.

To deniers like Jimmy Vacca, these folks don't count. Photo copyright Dmitry Gudkov

This week Transportation Alternatives released the results of a telephone survey of 603 likely New York City voters, conducted by the firm Penn Schoen Berland. Along with support for preserving transit and stepping up traffic enforcement, pollsters found that 60 of respondents support bike lanes.

As the Penn Schoen Berland findings are in line with that of recent polls by Quinnipiac and Marist, the chair of the City Council transportation committee could reasonably be expected to make a statement of some sort lauding the city’s progress in making streets safer for cyclists and pedestrians. But here’s Vacca, as quoted by City & State:

“I would think that many people who speak in favor of bike lanes may reserve judgment based on where the bike lane would be, and on whether it was affecting their community, their business strip or their small businesses,” said City Councilman Jimmy Vacca, who chairs the Transportation Committee. “On a case-by-case basis, while people are in favor of bike lanes, they may say, ‘Wait a minute, on this street it may not work.’ ”

On first read you might interpret Vacca’s remarks as a series of unsubstantiated assumptions strung together by weasel words — and you’d be right. But look closely. Not only does Vacca dismiss poll data with his bike lane-bashing straw man, he repeats the canard that bike lanes, and the traffic-calming effect that comes with them, are bad for business. And he again implies that residents have no say in where lanes will or won’t go in their neighborhoods, when in reality projects are subject to an extensive public review process. (Since the council has codified much of what DOT has been doing all along, it will be interesting to see what criticisms Vacca and company think up now that they’ve vanquished the transparency bogeyman.)

More poll respondents said they wanted to add bike lanes (43 percent) than maintain the status quo (33 percent) or decrease the number of lanes (17 percent). Rather than align with council members like Mark Weprin and Melissa Mark-Viverito, who have responded in thoughtful and productive ways to support for lanes in their districts, Vacca is tacking toward the NIMBY fringe. The only other critic of the TA survey cited by City & State was tried and true hater Sean Sweeney, who declared that “the people of New York have had enough of bike lanes.” With allies like Sweeney, Vacca is looking like less like a leader than a reactionary who refuses to be convinced on the merits of cyclist and pedestrian safety.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton wants to install 55 miles of bike lanes in the city in just two years. Photo: Skyscraperpage.com

Last month, this mid-sized Southern city fought back challenges by business owners to install a bike lane on one of its main major commercial thoroughfares, Madison Avenue. That street was just the latest in Mayor A C Wharton’s ambitious plan to add 55 miles of bike lanes in just two years.

Business owners along Madison were firmly against it; some 65 signed a petition opposing the change and a small group even held a news conference to air their concerns. But Wharton held firm after a engineering study of the 1.5-mile thoroughfare said the road diet would only add a few seconds to car travel times.

While indicating that he was sensitive to the business-owners’ concerns, Wharton said, “As we’ve seen throughout Memphis and all over the country, bike lanes are encouraging people to be healthier, more environmentally friendly, and more supportive of locally owned small businesses.”

Memphis’ progressive campaign for bike-friendliness began with Wharton’s election in 2009. Sustainability issues had been a focus of Wharton’s in his previous role as the first African American chief executive of Shelby County, which includes Memphis. Upon throwing his hat into the mayoral race, Wharton made bike-friendliness a key platform of his campaign, according to the city’s Bike and Pedestrian Coordinator Kyle Wagenschutz.

Wagenschutz says his nomination for the job by Wharton was a sign of just how serious Wharton was about bicycling. After all, prior to joining city staff, the 20-something Wagenschutz had been the director of Revolutions Community Bicycle Shop, a charity organization that provides affordable and reliable bicycles to city residents.

“He plucked me out of the picket yards and into City Hall,” said Wagenschutz.

Wharton issued his 55-mile challenge in the summer of 2010, saying the plan “is critical to the livability and health of our city.” Since that time, the city has been making laudable strides toward that goal. According to its bike planner, the city now has 30 miles of bike lanes, 70 miles of shared roadways and 40 miles of multi-use paths.

Chad Terry of Bike World bike shop in suburban Collierville applauded the mayor’s efforts, saying, “It’s definitely making people a lot more aware of biking and cyclists.”

The Greater Memphis Greenline, a multi-use path, has been a particularly attractive to new cyclists, said Terry.

“We’ve seen people who have fixed up old bikes or bought new bikes to ride it,” he said. “Memphis has definitely come a long way in the number of cyclists on the roads.”

Think twice before blocking that bike lane.

Arturas Zuokas, the Mercedes-crushing mayor of the Lithuanian city of Vilnius, has launched a new campaign to curb illegal parking. Here is Zuokas, as quoted from a press release:

“Every single day, we go about our work and try to be good citizens. And we run into obstacles that make us want to scream because we encounter problems that we are seemingly powerless to overcome. I used a tank, but perhaps a tank is not readily available for rent in your particular town. So, here‘s an alternative for those who don‘t have a tank handy — a sticker that anyone, anywhere in the world can place on an illegally parked car that intrudes on your space. The sticker is easy to apply and it simply says: ‘Don‘t make me get the tank.’ You just need to STICK it onto a car — Mercedes or any other — and your message will be heard.”

Stickers are available free of charge in Vilnius, and if seeing is believing, Zuokas has expanded his crusade to the streets of New York.

Has the mayor of a foreign capital really gone guerrilla with an enforcement tactic soon to be abandoned by our own City Council? As you watch the video (hat tip to Animal) and judge for yourself, keep in mind this cryptic Zuokas comment: “If the sticker doesn’t work, I do have the tank on standby and am willing to travel.”

Upgrading the Hudson Avenue bike lane would extend the protected lanes on both Eighth and Ninth Avenues.

The transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 2 voted unanimously on Tuesday to endorse a community-generated plan to upgrade the Hudson Street bike lane to a parking-protected lane.

Right now, Hudson Street has a buffered bike lane. It’s one of the oldest in the city according to Ian Dutton, a former vice chair of the transportation committee, who proposed the upgrade along with community board member Maury Schott and Mike Epstein, who works in the area. But the lane has become inadequate for safe travel. The paint on the street has been totally worn away and the lane is constantly blocked by double-parked vehicles.

Since it is already buffered, however, upgrading to a parking-protected lane is easy. “All we’re doing is flipping it,” said Dutton. “It has no impact on moving lanes — they stay right where they are.” The only trade-off for the safety upgrade is a few parking spaces that would need to be removed for new mixing zones and pedestrian refuge islands.

“All the statistics point to the fact that parking protected zones reduce both pedestrian, bike and vehicle passenger injuries,” said Schott. On Eighth Avenue, total street injuries fell between 18 and 35 percent after the upgrade. On Second Avenue, injuries fell 11 percent while the number of weekday cyclists using the lane more than tripled.

Hudson Street effectively runs in two segments. Above Abingdon Square, Hudson runs southbound, connecting Ninth Avenue to Bleecker Street. Below the square, Hudson runs north until it becomes Eighth Avenue. If installed alongside existing DOT plans for bike lanes in Midtown, therefore, the upgrade would create continuous protected lanes on Eighth Avenue from 59th Street to Canal Street and on Ninth Avenue from 59th to Bleecker.

Nearly every member of the public who spoke at the meeting voiced support for the proposal; a straw poll of attendees showed seven in favor and one opposed. Testimony submitted by e-mail weighed overwhelmingly in favor of the lane.

Safety — for both cyclists and pedestrians — was the top issue. CB 2  member Denise Collins,  said she worried for parents and children cycling to Hudson Street’s P.S. 3. “There are people who don’t even know that we have a bike lane on Hudson, it’s just totally washed away,” she said. “I hold my heart in my hands sometimes when I see these people on bikes.”

Ellen Peterson-Lewis, a public member of CB 2′s environment committee, noted that the neighborhood has a growing senior population, a group she included herself in. “To have that flip and to have that pedestrian island there,” she said, “I do think this is an excellent idea.”

The double parking and worn out markings that plague the Hudson Street bike lane are visible here.

Ellen Baer, the president of the Hudson Square Connection, a local BID, expressed opposition to the proposal. Though the BID has supported a number of important improvements to local streets, Baer asked the committee to put off a decision on the bike lane until she could forge some consensus among her members. Dutton later reported that he had heard some BID members were thrilled about the proposed upgrade while others were vehemently opposed.

The transportation committee debated delaying the issue or endorsing a bike lane upgrade only above Houston Street, north of the BID’s jurisdiction, but decided to move forward with the entire thing. “It’s going to be January or February before DOT even comes back to us,” argued Dutton, which would provide plenty of time for negotiations between the BID, DOT and the community board. The committee also requested that DOT revise parking regulations in the area to reduce double parking.

The full board of CB 2 will vote on the proposal on November 17.

Last month, the Brownsville Partnership and the local office of the Department of Health took DOT on a group ride of Brownsville to observe cycling conditions. Image: Community Solutions via Facebook

Brownsville wants safer streets for biking.

Currently there isn’t a single bike lane inside this eastern Brooklyn neighborhood, though two bike lanes run along the edges of Brownsville on East New York Avenue and Rockaway Parkway. Neighborhood activists, including the business community, senior citizens and public health advocates, are now organizing to convince the city to install both north-south and east-west routes through the area.

The push for bike lanes originated from Bettie Kollock-Wallace, the first vice president of Brooklyn Community Board 16. “My philosophy is the more active you are the younger you get,” she told Streetsblog.

Last summer, the 72-year-old Kollock-Wallace was leading Brownsville seniors on group rides in Prospect Park. Without a strong network of bike lanes, however, she found it difficult to get there, especially with inexperienced cyclists trailing behind her. “If we had the bike lane you could easily follow the route,” said Kollock-Wallace. “You could be safe.” She identified Mother Gaston Boulevard as the preferable location for a lane connecting to the existing bike network.

Three weeks ago, the Department of Transportation came out to Brownsville for a group ride co-hosted by the Brownsville Partnership, an initiative of the non-profit Community Solutions, and the Brooklyn District Public Health Office, a local arm of the NYC Department of Health. Scouting an eight-mile loop of the area, they discussed street conditions and obstacles to safe cycling. A spokesperson for DOT said the department is in the process of identifying bike routes that could be implemented in the future.

Neighborhood activists are pushing for a north-south bike lane on Mother Gaston Boulevard or Osborn Street and an east-west lane on Pitkin Avenue. Image: Google Maps

Community leaders are pushing for bike lanes on a few streets in particular, including Mother Gaston. Corinne LeTourneau, the director of special projects for Community Solutions and a leader in the Brownsville Partnership, said that with two traffic lanes and a parking lane in each direction, there’s lots of room on Mother Gaston for a bike lane. The street also bisects two NYCHA superblocks. With no retail facing the street on either side, the street tends to have much lower foot traffic than surrounding blocks. LeTourneau hopes that a bike lane could put some more eyes on the street.

LeTourneau also wonders whether it would be possible to allow bikes to ride along the paths that used to be part of Osborn Street before the street was interrupted by a series of superblocks. The Brownsville Partnership is interested in restoring the street grid through the neighborhood. In the short term, allowing bikes on the path might make it more street-like, or at least make it easier to get around. Right now, the Brownsville Partnership has used banners and chalk to mark Osborn as a continuous north-south path.

Daniel Murphy, the executive director of the Pitkin Avenue business improvement district, is also organizing to get a bike lane through the neighborhood. Pitkin begins where Eastern Parkway hooks north and its greenway ends. Murphy imagines a painted bike lane continuing eastward from there. “Pitkin is just an ideal place for a bike lane,” he said.

He says history is on his side. “Zion Triangle, which is going to be turned into a public plaza, was in its original scoping document going back to 1896 identified as an ideal place for bicyclists to rest on their way from Brooklyn to Queens,” said Murphy. He plans to work with local bike shops to build an East Brooklyn Bike Club and from there, head to the community board.

The demand for bike lanes among Brownsville residents is clear. Alphonso Stewart, a stunt rider who’s set his sights on competing in the X Games, also helps lead bike rides for Brownsville residents. “Biking is one of the best ways to keep your body healthy,” he said. “It should be the number one exercise for anybody and everybody.”

Local residents identified Mother Gaston Boulevard, a wide street with low foot traffic, as their top choice for a bike lane. Photo: Noah Kazis

Though he feels comfortable enough to bike to neighborhood parks, where he practices his tricks, Stewart said that the unsafe streets hold a lot of people back. “If you ride on the sidewalk, you get a ticket and could hurt somebody or a child,” said Stewart. “If you ride in the street, you could get hit by a car.” Faced with that choice, said Stewart, many choose the sidewalk, feeling that the cost of a ticket is still preferable to being hit by a car.

Grandmother Karrie Scarboro went on her first group ride three weeks ago. Though she hadn’t been on a bike since she was 13 years old, she said it was great and would go back out with her grandchildren. “We need bike lanes, definitely bike lanes,” when asked what she observed on her ride. “We have a lot of young teens riding, young kids. A lot of cars weren’t so friendly.”

A fourth-grader named Dynasty has joined each of the weekly rides. “It’s fun. We go to lot of places,” he said. He feels completely safe in the large group but wouldn’t ride on his own. “It would be a lot of cars,” he said, “and they won’t know to stay far away.”

Little-known fact: Lew Fidler's bill also requires the city to notify community boards before a bike lane is removed. Photo of Bedford Avenue bike lane erasure: Elizabeth Press

“Our legislation will ensure the Department of Transportation works with community boards and fully considers feedback from neighborhood residents on where, and how, bicycle lanes are installed,” Quinn said in a statement.

This is kind of like bragging about legislation that ensures the Department of Sanitation will pick up the trash. The city already brings bike lane proposals to community boards. The past few years have produced a long record of community board votes in favor of safer streets, as well as a few that went in favor of the status quo. With or without this bill, the bike lanes are going in where the community boards sign off on them.

Defending the need for the legislation, Vacca told NY1, “I don’t think it’s anti-bike to make sure that local neighborhoods have input as to where bike lanes go.”

Can’t argue there. Having a public process for bike lane installation is not anti-bike. What’s anti-bike is to imply that the recent expansion of bike lanes has somehow lacked sufficient public input, which is the message that comes across from the coverage of this bill.

It’s also strange that the City Council thinks it’s necessary to mandate notification for all bike lanes, but not for all changes to motor vehicle lanes. If the city wants to carve out some left-turn bays from a pedestrian median, for instance, there’s no law requiring a public hearing.

So yeah, it’s anti-bike to grandstand about the imaginary problem of community input on bike lanes when the council could be focusing on real transportation problems like the MTA debt bomb, obscenely wasteful subsidies for stadium parking, or NYPD’s refusal to disclose information on traffic crashes.

In any case, Quinn, Vacca, and Fidler missed their chance to boast about the real innovation in this bill. It requires the city to inform community boards before any bike lane is removed:

…at least ninety days before the construction or the removal of a bicycle lane is to begin, the department shall notify each affected council member and community board via electronic mail of the proposed plans for the bicycle lane within the affected community district and shall offer to make a presentation at a public hearing held by such affected community board.

From now on, City Hall can’t make political bargains to rip out bike lanes without telling the affected community board and council member first. Whether the local CB and council member act on that information to notify the broader public seems to be up to them. So the bill isn’t quite a failsafe against future surprises like Bedford Avenue and Father Capodanno Boulevard, but it is a step forward.

NYC DOT has not opposed the bill, and the mayor is expected to sign it into law.

In City Council Member Mark Weprin's district, 61 percent of those surveyed said they like the city's bike lane program. Image: City Council

Several surveys this year by top polling organizations have found citywide support for bike lanes. And in Park Slope and the Upper West Side, questionnaires put out by local elected officials have shown consistent neighborhood-level approval for new bike infrastructure. Now, another member of the City Council has found widespread enthusiasm for the city’s bike lane program among his constituents — and he doesn’t represent the heart of the NYC bike belt.

In fact, the district in question upends the assumption, held by certain members of the tabloid media, that “ordinary New Yorkers” aren’t interested in safer streets for cycling. It’s the turf of Council Member Mark Weprin, whose Queens district hugs the Nassau County line. A recent survey found that 61 percent of Weprin’s constituents support the city’s installation of bike lanes.

“I was somewhat surprised at the results,” said Weprin (not to be confused with his brother, Assembly Member David Weprin, who recently lost the race for Anthony Weiner’s seat in Congress and fought hard against congestion pricing when he sat in the City Council). “You tend to hear from the naysayers. When you go out to civic meetings, a lot of people complain about bike lanes, but obviously that’s not the majority.”

The survey went out by e-mail to a list of thousands of Weprin’s constituents, asking: “Do you support the network of bicycle lanes that the New York City Department of Transportation has installed on city streets?” About 400 people responded. While the methodology wasn’t scientific, Weprin guessed that if anything, it probably oversampled the high-intensity opinions of the bike lane opponents. “People seem to like them,” said Weprin, “including myself.” In the latest Q-poll, which uses random sampling and other scientific statistical techniques, 53 percent of Queens residents said they supported the expansion of the bike lane network.

Weprin's pro-bike lane district sits at the easternmost edge of Queens. Image: NYCityMap.

“It always helps to know that your constituents are behind you when you support an issue,” Weprin said when asked how the survey would affect his actions moving forward. While he cautioned that there might be problems with the location of any given bike lane, Weprin said it’s important “to realize that we have too many cars in this city and it would be more environmental and healthier to have more people ride bikes.”

He also praised the city’s upcoming bike-share program, again reserving the right to critique the particulars of its implementation, should issues arise. “In theory, it’s a great idea to have bike-sharing and have people have an alternative to taking taxi cabs and even subways and buses, because those too are overcrowded on occasion,” said Weprin.

After a series of polls showing big majorities of New Yorkers favor expanding the city’s bike lane network, the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute has turned its attention to a wider range of bike issues. It turns out that with 58 percent support, bike lanes aren’t even the most popular bike program the city is undertaking. That would be bike-share, which has a staggering 72 percent approval rating (23 percent are opposed).

Literally every demographic surveyed by Quinnipiac expressed majority support for bike-share. Staten Islanders were the most skeptical, but even in the city’s smallest borough, a slight majority of 52 percent of respondents said they support the program. A full 79 percent of Hispanics, and 87 percent of New Yorkers between the ages of 18 and 34, support the program.

Enthusiasm was slightly lower for the prospect of putting a bike-share station in people’s own neighborhood; 59 percent of people said they’d like to see bike-share near their home, compared to 34 percent who don’t want one.

Interestingly, far more people said they support the bike-share proposal than plan to use it. Only 45 percent of New Yorkers say they’d use bike-share to get around for short trips. Of course, if 45 percent of the city’s 8.4 million residents actually started riding bike-share, the program would probably be too popular to function.

The number of New Yorkers who support the expanded bike lane network remained essentially constant, with 58 percent in support and 37 percent opposed (a Marist poll, using different wording, found 66 percent support for bike lanes). The Q poll results display the classic NIMBY dynamic, however. When asked whether they want to see more bike lanes in their neighborhood, 46 percent of respondents were in favor and 48 percent opposed. Hispanics, Manhattanites and young people were the groups that showed majority support for bike lanes in their backyards.

Most New Yorkers spend a lot of time walking, so pedestrian infrastructure is bound to be popular. Image: Municipal Art Society

The Municipal Art Society’s second annual survey on livability, released today, provides still more opinion data showing that New Yorkers want to see more bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. They’re more conflicted, however, when it comes to new, large-scale development.

The MAS poll, a survey of 1,000 residents performed by the Marist Institute, found that a preponderance of New Yorkers think that both bike lanes and pedestrianized streets make their neighborhoods better places to live. Bike lanes proved more popular, with 56 percent saying they improved livability and only 17 percent opposing them. Even the bold proposal of closing streets entirely to traffic had a citywide approval rating of 42 percent to 29 percent. Previous polls have shown similarly sizable levels of support for bike lanes.

MAS found more conflicted feelings toward new, dense development. While 62 percent of those surveyed believed that “large real estate development” is a good idea, an equal number said that development should “maintain the character of the neighborhood.” Bronx residents were much more willing to embrace development while Staten Islanders and Manhattanites were the least.

As MAS found last year, New York City’s staggering levels of inequality are reflected in New Yorkers’ opinions towards their neighborhoods. “We continue to see some underlying discontent, especially among people living outside Manhattan and those with lower incomes,” said MAS president Vin Cipolla. “It’s clear that citywide organizations like MAS need to step up our individual and collective efforts and presence in neighborhoods and forge new partnerships with community-based organizations to address these issues.”

Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca. Image: CBS 2

The City Council Transportation Committee held hearings on three bills today, each of which would add more requirements to the Department of Transportation’s review process for street redesigns, especially bike lanes.

For the most part, the bills codify what DOT already does: present bike projects to community boards, coordinate with other agencies before implementation, and report back on the results.

Intro 412, sponsored by Lew Fidler, would require community board hearings on all bike lanes at least 90 days before construction. (An existing law already mandates CB hearings prior to the installation of most bike lanes.) Intros 626 and 671, both sponsored by committee chair James Vacca, would require DOT to consult with other city agencies before undertaking a major transportation project and mandate the release of safety and traffic speed data for those projects. Each of the three bills would amend Local Law 90, which the council passed at the end of 2009, requiring DOT to go to community boards for all projects that add or remove a travel or parking lane for more than four blocks.

DOT only opposed one of the bills. “We agree with the idea behind Intro 671,” said Deputy Commissioner for External Affairs David Woloch, “but we also believe that since each project DOT conducts is unique, it requires a customized data collection plan.” Woloch said that Gale Brewer’s Local Law 23 of 2008, which created the agency’s Sustainable Streets Index, was preferable in that it maintained the needed flexibility of measurement. During the hearing, Vacca did not spend significant time discussing this bill or pushing back on DOT; he focused on the other two pieces of legislation instead.

The other two bills merely codify existing department practices, Woloch said, adding that DOT already goes to community boards for all bike lane projects, as Fidler’s bill would require. “This process has been successful in gaining community understanding and support for bicycle lane projects,” he said. DOT also already consults with NYPD and FDNY on all street redesigns and works with the Department of Small Business Services and Mayor’s Office for People With Disabilities on more general policy issues. While Woloch said that DOT would need to see some minor changes to the bills’ language — changing the wording to clarify that community boards would hold hearings over bike lanes, not DOT itself, for example — the department was on board with the basic concepts.

That made for a conciliatory hearing while DOT’s reps were testifying. “I’m thrilled that the commissioner is behind it, because I think she gets it,” said Fidler of his bill. He also said that he could tell DOT’s public outreach had significantly improved. “There’s been a notable difference in DOT’s outreach, at least in my community, in the last few years.” While he carped about “bike lanes dropped from the sky,” Fidler also said that he expected his bill to constrain future administrations more than this one, which was already complying with its rules.

Transportation Alternatives came out strongly against Fidler’s bill, saying that it would add unnecessary red tape to nuts-and-bolts safety improvements. With Local Law 90 on the books, the Fidler bill would only cover the smallest bike projects, which shouldn’t require additional oversight unless community boards or the DOT want it, he said. Currently, the law already requires DOT to get community board input on projects that take away or add a travel lane or parking lane for four blocks or more.

“We’re talking about the most minor, the most routine bike lanes that DOT paints,” said TA general counsel Juan Martinez. “When we’re talking about these routine improvements, the months of delay that happen when you have to go through the community board means New Yorkers’ safety is delayed.”

When Vacca responded, he didn’t acknowledge that Martinez had suggested community boards retain the option to comment on a project, if they want to. “You disagree with their right to have input?” Vacca shot back. “Maybe you consider it mundane, but maybe people in that community consider it important. That’s patronizing and unacceptable.”

Martinez also pointed out that only bike lanes were covered under the Fidler bill. “This bill doesn’t ask for more community input over crosswalks or to add more parking.”

Fidler seemed to acknowledge that public review could grow excessively burdensome. If you went to the community board for every transportation project, he responded, “government would be paralyzed.” But he insisted that even the smallest bike projects — even sharrows — need this level of scrutiny because they’re extremely controversial. Fidler also reiterated his ostensible commitment to building bike lanes — “we need to have safe and complete streets,” he said — and suggested that while he’d opposed proposed lanes in his district, bike infrastructure that brought people to the subway or to parks would be a better fit.

Whether Fidler’s singling out of bike lanes was meant to throw a wrench into efforts to build more bike infrastructure or not, anti-bike activists showed up to support the bill. Jack Brown, the founder of the Coalition Against Rogue Riding, never once mentioned community boards or public planning in his statement in support of Intro 412. He did, however, refer to “bike bedlam,” “a public safety crisis,” and — not once, but twice — compared cyclists to terrorists.

Representatives from community boards who attended the hearing each testified that DOT’s public outreach process is not only adequate but commendable. “My experience is that DOT adheres to the letter and spirit of the law” requiring community input, said Ian Dutton, the former vice-chair of Manhattan Community Board 2′s transportation committee. “I can say categorically that DOT has not installed a single bicycle infrastructure project without the input of CB 2.”

Wally Rubin, the district manager for Manhattan Community Board 5, said he’d seen a lot of DOT as they installed bike lanes and pedestrian plazas through Midtown. “With each of these efforts, they have reached out to us, the BIDs, and the larger community,” he said. “They have listened to us and more than once gone back to the drawing board.” Projects that began as extremely controversial, like the redesign of traffic around Union Square, were explained and revised until the community got on board; they ended up as major successes once complete, said Rubin. “We only wish that other city agencies would be as responsive and interested in our input as DOT.”

Considering that streets and sidewalks make up 80 percent of New York City’s public space, the pedestrian plazas, car-free spaces, neighborhood bike networks and world-class bicycle lanes you have created are vital to the public health of our city. In piloting Safe Routes to School and Safe Streets for Seniors programs, reducing car hours in our largest parks and producing events like neighborhood play streets and Summer Streets, you are pioneering the redistribution of our public space for health’s sake.

While one can imagine a tsunami of ink engulfing the city if over a hundred doctors and other providers had joined up to condemn bike lanes and public plazas, with media types refusing to print a positive word about measures that are making streets safer, it will be quite a feat if this ringing endorsement pierces the news cycle.

Read the text of the letter after the jump; see the original with signatures here.

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

We, the undersigned medical professionals, write to acknowledge and encourage your efforts to calm traffic and make New York City streets safer for bicyclists and pedestrians. As a result of your efforts, from re-envisioning Times Square to building the first protected bicycle lanes in the U.S., more New Yorkers are biking and walking than ever before. Mayor Bloomberg, we urge you to continue to set ambitious goals for how our streets and public spaces can help make all of New York City more healthy and safe.

Considering that streets and sidewalks make up 80 percent of New York City’s public space, the pedestrian plazas, car-free spaces, neighborhood bike networks and world-class bicycle lanes you have created are vital to the public health of our city. In piloting Safe Routes to School and Safe Streets for Seniors programs, reducing car hours in our largest parks and producing events like neighborhood play streets and Summer Streets, you are pioneering the redistribution of our public space for health’s sake.

These changes help pave the way for a city that breathes cleaner air and is in better physical condition. Commuting to work by bicycle or increasing the distance of daily walks has been shown to promote weight loss better than any exercise program or medication we could prescribe. Vital to fighting the epidemics of asthma and obesity is the opportunity for children to have safe places to play and clean air to breathe. The traffic calming infrastructure you have built is as valuable as a playground toward encouraging active youth and instilling healthy habits that will last a lifetime.

Thanks to your leadership, bicycling is the fastest growing mode of transportation in New York City and pedestrian safety is at an all-time high. Mayor Bloomberg, we enthusiastically support your efforts to improve bicycling and walking in New York City. As you shape your legacy, please continue to make safe, complete streets part of the prescription for a healthy New York City.

Last November, Council Member Melissa Mark Viverito, backed by State Senator Jose Serrano and Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh, helped deliver 2,500 handwritten letters to City Hall asking for protected bike lanes up to 125th Street. Photo: Noah Kazis

Presentations will be made on Tuesday the 6th and Wednesday the 7th to the transportation committees of Community Boards 11 and 8, respectively. If you walk or bike on the East Side, these will be can’t-miss meetings. Votes in favor of the project next week would lead to construction next year.

Between 1998 and 2008, nearly 4,900 pedestrians and cyclists were injured or killed on First and Second between Houston and 125th, according to the New York State Department of Transportation. Almost three-fourths of the incidents occurred between 34th and 125th streets.

Some background: In 2010 the city unveiled a comprehensive plan for improved bus, pedestrian and cyclist facilities on First and Second from Houston to 125th Street, including protected bike lanes on Second between 100th and 125th, and on First between 34th and 49th and between 57th and 125th, with a buffered lane in the gap. CB 6, CB 8, and CB 11 all voted for redesigns including protected bike lanes that spring.

Residents and officials — particularly in East Harlem, with its high cyclist count and hazardous conditions for walking and biking — were incensed when they later learned that work north of 34th Street would be delayed indefinitely. This April, progress was accompanied by further uncertainty when DOT announced plans to extend bike lanes on First and Second up to 57th Street in 2011.

Now that it looks like the rest of the project is moving forward, it’s crucial that supporters make their voices heard — particularly in District 8, where the concept of reallocating street space can always be contentious. Times and locations for the meetings are here and here. We’ll have more next week.

Image: NYC DOT

On Wednesday, DOT outlined a proposal for new Class II bike lanes in Chelsea between Eighth and Ninth Avenues and the Hudson River Greenway. While safe streets advocates welcomed the news, there is concern that their planned location, on W. 29th and W. 30th Streets, may not be ideal for unprotected lanes.

According to DOT’s presentation to the Community Board 4 transportation committee (PDF), W. 30th ranks in the 89th percentile in fatalities and serious injuries. Lincoln Tunnel traffic and trucks en route to and from a USPS facility are ever-present. Marilyn Dershowitz was struck and killed by the driver of a postal truck earlier this summer while cycling on 29th between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. All things considered, committee members worried that unprotected lanes won’t make the two streets safe enough.

“To encourage bicyclists on these streets is a little like leading sheep to a herd of wolves,” said Bret Firfer, as quoted in a DNAinfo report on the meeting.

DOT emphasized that 29th and 30th are the only streets between 23rd and 34th that would allow for an eventual uninterrupted river-to-river route for crosstown cycling. But members of the committee offered 25th and 26th Streets as an alternative, while acknowledging that 25th would mean a couple of turns to reach the Greenway, and in the future would require riding around Madison Square on the East Side.

DOT reps believe 29th and 30th would be no more dangerous than other area streets, and said they don’t believe cyclists would take a detour to find a safer route.

“We are also very concerned about this block, but the fact of the matter is that there are cyclists that exist on this road,” said DOT’s Josh Benson. “We’re very limited in what routes work at all for cyclists. I don’t know if there are better choices out there.” At this point, DOT plans to stripe lanes on the south side of 29th and 30th, along with other traffic lane alterations, in the fall.

“I am not sure there is a right or wrong answer,” transportation committee member Christine Berthet told Streetsblog. “We are just trying to find which pair the cyclists would use most.”

Celeste Katz, center, and Alex Nazaryan, right, work their keyboards for today's online chat about bike lanes. Photo: anjalimullany/yfrog

Earlier today I participated in a live chat debate on the topic of bike lanes, hosted and moderated by Celeste Katz. The chief sparring partner for supporters of bike lanes was Alex Nazaryan, who sits on the paper’s editorial board and joined a group of cyclists for an uneventful ride across the Manhattan Bridge the previous morning.

Number one takeaway: If you have something to say about street safety issues and you want the Daily News opinion team to notice, write a letter to the Daily News. Based on what transpired in the chat room today, the editorial board puts more stock in those letters than other public opinion data or facts about street engineering and transportation policy.

Here’s a compilation of Alex’s points from the debate. In some places I’ve interspersed commentary from other participants and comments that I typed in but did not get posted by the moderator. (You can check out the full transcript, including a lot of discussion about behavior and enforcement that I’m not including here.) This is the caliber of thought that goes into the opinions on bike policy written by the Daily News…

Alex Nazaryan:

Well, at this point, New Yorkers don’t really seem to want bike lanes. So enforcement might just be the thing to get people over on the side of bikers. You don’t want them to been as mavericks.

Participants then referred Alex to the recent public opinion polling by Quinnipiac, which found 59 percent support for adding bike lanes, and Marist, which found 66 percent support for bike lanes among NYC adults.

Alex Nazaryan:

The vast majority of the letters we get from ordinary New Yorkers seem to indicate otherwise. Not really sure if Marist poll is indicative.

I tried to post this response, but it wasn’t published: “Alex, both the Marist poll and the Quinnipiac polls that found tremendous support for bike lanes were conducted using statistically rigorous methodology. Letters to the Daily News do not constitute a rigorous survey of NYC opinion.”

But the moderators did run this from reader JBK:

NYDN believes it’s letters section is more reliable than Marist?

Alex Nazaryan (separate comments):

Our letter-writers are ordinary New Yorkers who live and work here, especially in the outer borough. You discount their opinions at your own peril.

There is another issue: the people who have, as a rule, wanted bike lanes are wealthier residents of Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn. I just don’t know of that much demand in, say, East Elmhurst.

Mike Epstein:

Alex: Perhaps you’ve not noticed the HUGE groundswell of demand (and support) for bike lanes in East Harlem? Stereotypes are easy, but often false.

Station44025:

Alex, that’s also not true. Last Marist poll showed over 70% approval for bike lanes among hispanic and poor.

Streetsblog:

Alex, they’ve been enthusiastically building out the bike network in the South Bronx for years. Low income New Yorkers tend not to own cars and adding safe cycling facilities helps get around, in addition to a robust transit network.

Alex Nazaryan:

Look, the truth it, Manhattan cannot ever be Madison or Austin, so I think there’s just a little dissonance here. As much as it’s great that people are biking, I do ultimately feel that the city can only take so much.

Streetsblog:

Alex, Manhattan and most of the rest of NYC is a much more conducive environment for cycling than Madison or Austin. The destinations are much more closely together, so we’re making shorter trips. The more trips we make by bike instead of by car, the more space will open up on the roads.

Alex Nazaryan:

I just think a lot of people come to this city and want to remake it in their own image. And the truth is, it’s a city where millions upon millions of people come on a daily basis to make a living. It’s hard to fit bikes into the scenario

Naomi:

I am pedestrian, transit-rider and cyclist. The narrative that has been framed by the Daily seems awfully narrow-minded and seems to be missing a much larger issue: Equity. As most of our urban core’s working-class residents are not motorists – consideration, space and funding for other infrastructure is needed.

Naparstek:

Wow, Alexander: That’s just a crazy statement. First off, NYC is constantly being remade into the image of new immigrants. That is *the story* of NYC. That’s what this ciy is all about. The Lower East Side morphs from Jewish to Italian to Chinese… Etc Etc in every neighborhood. When NYC stops transforming, it stops being NYC.

Alex Nazaryan:

Napartsek: I take an issue with both your tone and your facts. I think there’s a sense of entitlement among the “creative classes” that was not present in, say, immigrants from Poland or wherever else. You can’t just move here and expect that all of Brooklyn is going to become a greenway.

Streetsblog (comment did not get published):

Alex, you continue to pound the theme that only transplants, Manhattanites, and the “creative class” support bike infrastructure, in the face of recent public opinion data showing strong support among low income New Yorkers and voters in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn.

mst:

what do bike lanes have to do with “creative classes”? Bike lanes are used by people of all walks of life

Alex Nazaryan:

Not in my experience

megadonn1

…Drivers have to pay insurance, registration fees, etc. why don’t we do the same for cyclist. Make them register their bikes. Compel them to carry insurance. License them to operate their bikes on city streets…

JBK:

@megadonn1 – there is no reason to compel cyclist insurance because the cost to the cyclist of such insurance would be almost zero – no insurance company would be able to make a profit doing so. This is because cyclists cannot cause the massive damage cars can.

Alex Nazaryan:

Um, bikes can kill people too.

Kristina Rodriguez-Fowle:

all cyclists dont wear spandex and have 100 dollar shoes just for cycling. I wear my pj’s, my helmet and some regular shoes and go do some grocery shopping…i obey laws, i am cautious, i am a wife and mother..my family bikes with me. we are regular people who are too broke to have a car or take taxi’s. We are aware of all that can go wrong…I know we are not the only ones..do we not deserve a way to get to the market safely and quickly?

While the whole “Good or Evil” subtitle to today’s debate is sure to raise hackles (not to mention nydailynews.com pageviews), just think of this as an opportunity to reach out beyond the community here at Streetsblog. The facts about bike lanes are on our side, and so is public opinion. The live chat is open to everyone, so if you want to join in and marshal the arguments for bike lanes, come on over. Let’s keep it cool, calm, and collected, and avoid playing into the expectation for conflict that seems to accompany most media coverage of street safety issues.

The Daily Politics is accepting questions and comments already, as well as pictures and videos via the Twitter hashtag #nybikelanes. I’m sure Streetsblog readers can rustle up a lot of photos showing New Yorkers making the most of our bike network. This seems like a good place to start.