Streetsblog New York City

The Hudson River Greenway is the busiest bike route in the city, with around 5,000 cyclists riding it during the peak 12-hour period each day. This June, the Parks Department abruptly put up dismount signs at the 72nd Street entrance to Riverside Park, interrupting a popular access route to a major corridor within Manhattan’s green transportation network.

Cyclists, pedestrians, and dog walkers all use the 72nd Street entrance heavily, and while no resolution has yet been reached, many now see adding bike lanes at other greenway access points as the best way to reduce conflict. But even if those plans are pursued, cyclists won’t be able to ride this critical link without fear of getting fined unless the Parks Department changes the dismount policy.

At a meeting of the Manhattan Community Board 7 Parks Committee last night, CB members, the city, and local activists seemed to coalesce around a plan to improve bike access to the greenway at 79th Street, taking some pressure off 72nd and thereby mitigating the rationale for dismount signs. Both committee co-chairs saw the 79th Street plan as a partial solution worth pursuing and steered the conversation toward the more controversial question of what to do on the 72nd Street path.

Parks Department Greenway Coordinator John Mattera explained the 79th Street idea using an electricity analogy. “Bicycles follow the path of least resistance,” he said. If you want to reduce conflict on the 72nd Street path, he added, “the way to do that is to make a lightning rod out of 79th Street.” With fewer cyclists at 72nd, he said, the dismount policy could be swapped for something a little less heavy-handed. Mattera said that he’d spoken with the NYC DOT and that “as sure as anything can be at City DOT,” striping a new bike lane along 79th and leading into the park was part of their plan for 2011.

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Above 34th Street, the East Side of Manhattan is unforgiving for cyclists, without any real provision to ride safely and quickly. The one dedicated path for bicycling, the East River Greenway, is barely usable for practical trips — the gap between 38th Street and 63rd Street being the most prominent of several flaws. On a ride organized by Transportation Alternatives this Sunday, Michael Auerbach of neighborhood group Upper Green Side led a group of about 20 cyclists, including City Council Member Dan Garodnick, on a tour of the greenway path to take in its pinch points, shoddy surfaces, and other shortcomings. Here’s a short photo tour of the trip from 6th Street to 63rd Street, with an assist from TA’s Kim Martineau.

The city has begun exploring a plan that would plug the greenway gap using funds secured through a land swap with the United Nations. If, after looking at these pictures, you’re wondering about what you can do to support a better greenway, it may helpful to keep in mind Garodnick’s parting message from the Sunday tour: “Communicate to your elected officials.”

The pathway narrows and cyclists must dismount in front of the Crow’s Nest, sandwiched between the FDR Drive and the East River, before riding through the restaurant’s parking lot.

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A vital link in the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway is open, as a path through Brooklyn Bridge Park for pedestrians and cyclists nears completion. Though the park is still far from complete, the path cuts straight through the construction, connecting Pier 1, just below the Brooklyn Bridge itself, and Pier 6, at Atlantic Avenue. 

One thing you should know about the path: It's covered with a thin layer of gravel. It isn't deep or loose, but it will definitely add a new element to your ride. "I don't know if it's the ideal surface for every biker, but we've been open for a week now and haven't had any complaints," said Ellen Ryan of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation, noting that plenty of cyclists have already ridden the path. This type of surface, known as "chip seal," is planned for the entire park and was chosen for its durability, cost-effectiveness, and aesthetic qualities, she explained. 

Toward the south end of the park, the path turns into a short, two-way on-street bikeway on Furman Street, separated from traffic by jersey barriers. For cyclists heading to the Brooklyn or Manhattan Bridge, the gravelly path through the park probably won't be as attractive as continuing straight on Furman, with its smoother surface and shorter route. As things stand, however, that would take them into the path of oncoming traffic:

More pictures after the jump: 

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We've got a few different bikeway-related reader submissions that have come over the wire recently. First up, Dave "Paco" Abraham sends this picture of a two-way barrier-separated bikeway going in on Furman Street by the downtown Brooklyn waterfront. Furman is on the route of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway, and with Brooklyn Bridge Park opening piece by piece, it's already pretty common to see people biking in both directions on this three-lane speedway underneath the BQE cantilever.

Paco says it looks like the new bikeway is only going in between Joralemon Street and the entrance to the yet-to-open Brooklyn Bridge Park bike path, about a block away. We have a request in with DOT about the scope of this treatment. Extending it along the full length of Furman would plug one of the last major greenway route sections that feels unsafe to bike on between Greenpoint and the Columbia waterfront district.

Remember this from last week? It's where the East River Greenway caved in at 72nd Street. The Parks Department told us they would have it fixed this week, and here it is, all patched up. Parks didn't tell us, though, whether there's any attempt underway to determine whether all the other sinkholes on the greenway are symptoms of a larger problem.

The final update comes to us from Ed Ravin. Actually it's more like an epic saga with a happy ending. I'll let Ed tell the story:

For years, the East River bridges have been the stepchild of emergency phone coverage. Up until the mid 1990s, the Brooklyn Bridge had four emergency phones hooked up to two regular telephone lines.  If one of the lines failed, all the phones on that side of the bridge would go down with it.

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Residents of Northern Manhattan and the west Bronx have been waiting more than three years for the re-opening of the bike-ped path on the lower deck of the Henry Hudson Bridge. When the moment finally came earlier this summer, however, cyclists got a nasty surprise: MTA Bridges and Tunnels still won't allow biking on the bridge.

The Henry Hudson provides a safer crossing over the Harlem River for cyclists than the nearest alternative, the Broadway Bridge. But, as signs on both ends of the path announce, cycling is not allowed. Here's what happened to reader James Rather when he recently tried to bike across:

As soon as I rode on to the path from the Inwood side, an MTA tollboth officer left his booth, looked at me, and screamed, "Walk the bike!" I yelled, "excuse me?" and he says, "You heard me, NO BIKES." There you have it.

With this policy in effect, there is no decent and safe crossing between Upper Manhattan and the Bronx -- Broadway is unsafe and the Broadway Bridge actually requires that you dismount as well, unless you want to take your chance on the roadway, with most experienced riders choosing the latter option. 

MTA Bridges and Tunnels spokesperson Judie Glave said the agency's guidelines prohibit bike riding on paths no wider than 10 feet. "Our pathways are all pedestrian walkways," she said, including the Triborough Bridge path and the Marine Parkway Bridge path, which connects to the Rockaways. "They're not wide enough to accommodate bike riders and walkers at the same time."

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The New York City Parks Department has come up with a striking new method to demean pedestrians and cyclists and disrupt the public right-of-way.

Parks has allowed a catering hall called the Vanderbilt ("Staten Islands only oceanfront ballroom") to fence off a portion of the greenway running alongside the boardwalk in South Beach, according to a report in the Staten Island Advance. The fence forces greenway users to turn around and detour to Father Capodanno Boulevard, and it's already claimed a victim: Local resident Gregory DeRespino landed in the hospital with injuries to his shoulder, neck and calf, after unsuspectingly biking into the fence the morning it went up.

Vanderbilt manager Joe Tranchina received permission from Parks to put up the fence after pitching it as a safety precaution to reduce conflicts between greenway users and the restaurant's delivery vehicles and valet service. Apparently, someone at Parks gave the green light "on a trial basis," according to a department spokesperson quoted by the Advance.

You've got to wonder how the city allowed such an idea to reach this point. A private business just convinced Parks to let it block off the public right-of-way and "erase" street markings with what looks to be a hasty paintjob. Did they even have to fill out any paperwork, or does it just take a few phone calls? Neither the Parks Department nor Tranchina have returned our requests for information so far.

Hat tip to Meredith Sladek for alerting us to this story.

On Sunday, a group of city officials and East Side electeds made their case for a deal to close the gap in the East River Greenway, addressing a full auditorium at the Schottenstein Cultural Center on East 34th Street. The deal has several moving parts, but the major takeaway was that the Bloomberg administration and a large group of legislators want to make the greenway happen.

Currently there is no greenway between 60th and 37th Streets -- a huge gap around the United Nations campus that forces cyclists on the East Side into some of the most harrowing traffic in the city. The linchpin of the deal unveiled Sunday involves trading city land for U.N. financial support to build the greenway connector.

The city would sell the western part of Robert Moses Playground, a rectangle of asphalt at the corner of 41st and First Avenue. An area that attracts occasional recreational use would be annexed. Space used for a dog run, handball and basketball courts would not be touched. In turn, the U.N. would pay the city $150 million, mainly for the right to construct a new building the same height as the current U.N. tower. The funding would be used to complete the East River waterfront esplanade and plug the greenway gap.

A succession of local electeds spoke in favor of the deal, including State Senator Liz Krueger, Assemblymember Brian Kavanagh, City Council Member Daniel Garodnick, and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who told the crowd, “I want to ride my bike there.”

The details of the plan were fleshed out by Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe and Madelyn Wils of the NYC Economic Development Corporation.

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Construction is set to begin on the first stages of the South Bronx Greenway this summer, marking the first tangible results of a community-based, bottom-up campaign for more livable streets. The project will bring safer walking and biking and much-needed green space to neighborhoods where people-oriented streets are in short supply.

The redesigns of Lafayette Avenue and Hunts Point Avenue, as well as new waterfront park space at Hunts Point Landing, will all begin construction this summer, according to the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Those streets will receive landscaped medians, expanded sidewalks, and new bike lanes. Work on Food Center Drive, which will include the first physically protected bike lane in the Bronx, is scheduled to begin this fall.

Implementation is close enough that people are getting excited about each construction truck that comes to the area, even though so far the crews are just doing regular road maintenance, said Miquela Craytor, the executive director of Sustainable South Bronx and a longstanding advocate for the greenway. 

Construction of the Randall's Island connector, which will eventually tie the South Bronx Greenway into the Manhattan bike network, is scheduled to begin in fall 2011, according to EDC. Adding a biking and walking path from the South Bronx to Randall's Island will give residents better access to the island's recreational facilities and provide a safe route to the new bike lanes planned for First and Second Avenue in Manhattan. When the connector is finished, said Craytor, the greenway will be between a quarter and a third complete.

What's about to be built differs somewhat from the original plans for the greenway, first put forward in 2006. In particular, plans to place pedestrian and bike paths along a median on Lafayette Avenue have been revised, with space for biking and walking shifted to the side of the street at the request of the Fire Department and the Department of Environmental Protection.

"We ended up putting quite a bit of that streetscaping to the sidewalk and expanding the sidewalk," said Craytor, noting that the center median will remain planted with trees and shrubs. She isn't particularly disappointed. "We successfully pushed back and ensured that the concept of slowing down traffic and narrowing the street was increased," said Craytor. "This will be an area for people, not vehicles."

More pictures below the fold:

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The current concept for the Flushing Avenue segment of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway footprint calls for converting the street to one-way westbound traffic flow. Two-way vehicle traffic, say DOT planners, will create conflicts that endanger cyclists and pedestrians as trucks and cars turn left into the Brooklyn Navy Yard. At Wednesday night's public meeting on the project, the one-way conversion didn't sit well with most people who showed up, prompting the DOT team to say they'll take a second look at how the street can be configured.

Toward the end of the event, City Council member Tish James asked for a show of hands: Who'd be satisfied with a bikeway plan where Flushing stays a two-way street? Most people in the crowd of about 80 raised their hands. It's not clear, however, whether the street can accommodate both two-way traffic and a safe, protected path for biking and walking.

For followers of bike lane disputes, the meeting had a little bit of everything. Some speakers cited concerns for bus riders who'd have to wait on Park Avenue, a BQE service road, if eastbound routes get shifted from Flushing. Navy Yard businesses pleaded to keep truck access the way it is now. Other speakers vented typical anti-bike sentiment, calling for bike licensing, registration and fees. Fears that all eastbound traffic on Flushing (a fraction of the westbound traffic heading to the free Manhattan Bridge) would divert to Park Avenue were widespread. And at times, the evening veered into a heated discussion of whom bike infrastructure is meant for.

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