Streetsblog New York City

Tomorrow night, the transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 7 will take public input on the possible expansion of protected bike lanes on the Upper West Side.

Traffic crashes and injuries dropped significantly after the installation of the Columbus Ave. protected lane. Photo: Civitas

On the agenda is a request from the board that DOT complete a proposal for protected lanes and other changes to the streetscape, including pedestrian islands, turning lanes and loading zones, on Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues from 59th Street to 110th Street.

The existing protected lane, on Columbus from 96th Street to 77th Street, was narrowly endorsed by CB 7 in 2010. Six months after its installation, traffic crashes were down by 34 percent, and the number of traffic injuries dropped by 27 percent, according to DOT.

Data collected by the city following the completion of the one-mile segment showed that, on the blocks of Columbus to the north and south of the bike lane, 29 percent of motorists were clocked speeding, while between eight and 17 percent of vehicles on the stretch of Columbus with the bike lane were found to be traveling faster than the 30 miles per hour speed limit.

The protected lane is also popular with residents, according to a survey conducted by City Council Member Gale Brewer. Safe streets proponents want protected bike lanes running north and south, and want those lanes to connect with existing protected lanes on Eighth and Ninth Avenues.

Nevertheless, a community board recommendation is no sure thing.

“For too long, the leaders of the transportation committee of Community Board 7 have neglected to protect residents and visitors on our streets,” said Lisa Sladkus, of the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance, in an email to Streetsblog. “Protected bike lanes protect ALL road users, including motorists, pedestrians, and bicyclists. There are no excuses for not implementing them on many of our streets, connecting people to parks, work, school, and commerce. Yes, parking will be re-allocated for this change. As a community, we need to stand up for safety over the desire to park private vehicles on our public streets. Upper West Side residents deserve safer streets. Please help us in communicating this message to our appointed leaders of the transportation committee. They need to hear a unified and strong voice.”

Tomorrow’s meeting will be held at 250 W. 87th Street at 7 p.m.

Once again, the National Association of City Transportation Officials has proven what an agile, modern coalition of transportation agencies is capable of. It was just a year and a half ago that NACTO released its first Urban Bikeway Design Guide and today, it’s released the first update to that guide.

A bicycle boulevard identification sign in Madison, Wisconsin. Image: NACTO

NACTO’s guide is far ahead of the industry standard, old-guard manuals: the Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices and the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials’ design guidelines.

NACTO’s Urban Bikeway Design Guide was the first to provide engineering guidance for protected bike lanes. It also laid out four different kinds of bike signals, four types of striped bike lanes and a variety of intersection treatments and signage recommendations. The update, released today, also includes bike boulevards, which NACTO defines as “enhanced, low-stress, low-speed streets parallel to major roads.” (Check out this Streetfilm to see bike boulevards in action.) All of the treatments NACTO highlights are in use internationally and around the U.S.

Meanwhile, AASHTO just published its first update in 13 years and is still not ready to embrace protected bike lanes. (Boulevards do get a mention.)

The speed with which updates are made and disseminated could be the biggest difference between the two guides. With just 18 months’ turnaround, NACTO is updating its guide with the newest ideas. Meanwhile, AASHTO is hoping to get around to an update within five years, but given their history, it could be two or three times that long. It’s not online, and it’s not free — you have to order a paper copy (how quaint!) for $144.

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Photo: @J_uptown

Hats off to @J_uptown, who spotted this bit of temporary bike infrastructure in Midtown. He writes:

Unfinished 9th Ave protected #bikenyc lane gets protected detour at 50th! Thx @NYC_DOT

Nice to see DOT taking a page from cities like Copenhagen, where construction crews take care to keep cyclists safe. The extension of protected bike lanes on Eighth and Ninth Avenues will improve safety for cyclists and pedestrians north to 59th Street. The project was proposed by DOT and endorsed by Community Board 4 last year.

Jacob also tweeted a shot of the new bike lane on 30th Street at Ninth, where DOT has sandwiched cyclists between two through lanes and a double turn lane. It’s hard to imagine Citi Bike riders lined up in this lane, surrounded by crosstown traffic. See it after the jump.

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Image: NYC DOT

Before cleaning his workspace yesterday and packing up for New Haven, Noah Kazis snagged one more piece of good news, which it is my pleasure to report: DOT will begin constructing a protected bike lane on Second Avenue in East Harlem at the end of August.

The first section to be built will stretch from 125th Street to 100th Street. (Second Avenue Subway construction will keep the redesign from extending further south for a few more years.) The construction timetable for the northbound lane on First Avenue will be available soon, according to a DOT spokesperson.

This project has been a long time coming — protected bike lanes up to 125th Street were first announced early in 2010 — and a lot of people helped bring it to this point. Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito steadfastly advocated for the project after City Hall walked back the initial timetable and when local restaurant owners temporarily eroded support from the local community board. Transportation Alternatives and local volunteers mobilized when the Bloomberg administration’s commitment to complete the redesign appeared to be flagging. And in the final round of community board meetings, the Department of Health helped DOT dispel the notion that the project would worsen asthma rates.

I also give Noah a lot of credit for highlighting the support for this project from Mark-Viverito and State Senator José Serrano when it seemed like it might continue to languish. Not long after that post last April, East Harlem’s protected bike lanes were officially “well on their way.”

Photo: Hilda Cohen

Construction on Midtown protected bike lanes continues apace. Reader Hilda Cohen sends in the above shot from Ninth Avenue, where she says “contractors are out marking lines between 47th and 39th.”

“Traffic was already moving smoother,” writes Hilda.

Photo: Andrew Neidhardt

On Twitter, @andrewneidhardt posted this photo of Ninth at 38th.

Regular Streetsblog readers may know that I don’t ride a bike. While the pedestrian safety benefits are often overlooked, as one who walks the city I am much more likely to linger, shop and eat in places where the sidewalk is bounded by a bike lane. I doubt I’m the only one.

Exciting stuff. Keep ‘em coming, folks.

Photo: Doug Gordon

Doug Gordon of Brooklyn Spoke fame sends these shots of another milestone in the extension of the Eighth Avenue protected bike lane: The pedestrian islands are going in. These pools of pure unspoiled concrete were spied at the intersection of 35th Street.

Watching this NYC DOT safety project take shape in the heart of Midtown, a favorite quote from livable streets guru Jan Gehl comes to mind: “How nice is it to wake up every morning and know that your city is a little bit better than it was the day before.”

Photo: Doug Gordon

Work is almost complete at this corner of 56th Street and "6 1/2 Avenue." Photo: @BornAgainBikist

Safer streets are taking shape in Midtown, with work underway to create new paths through the heart of the city for pedestrians and cyclists alike.

Crosswalks and street signs are in place for one of the Department of Transportation’s most original projects, a pedestrian thoroughfare designated as 6 1/2 Avenue. Thanks to a 1980s zoning provision, a series of mid-block passageways cut a path through Midtown office towers, providing a popular shortcut through the busy area. Under DOT’s plan, a series of six passageways will get the city’s official imprimatur as a pedestrian path, along with mid-block stop signs, crosswalks and neckdowns. Reader @BornAgainBikist sends us the above shot of the “corner” of 56th Street and 6 1/2 Avenue, where many improvements are already in place, including a street sign for the new path. Elsewhere, markings are down to show construction workers where to put new crosswalks.

Pedestrian refuge islands haven't been installed yet, but for cyclists, the Eighth Avenue bike lane extension is looking pretty good. Photo: @J_Uptown

And the extension of the protected bike lanes on Eighth and Ninth Avenues, which will bring proven safety gains for all users north to Columbus Circle, continues apace. Last month, a photo from Jacob_uptown showed some of the striping on the Eighth Avenue extension in place, but not yet in effect. The future bike lane was, at the time, filled with parked cars and delivery trucks.

In an update sent over Twitter, Jacob shows the almost-completed lane working just as intended, with a cyclist comfortably separated from traffic near 44th Street. “Best 8th Ave #bikenyc commute ever,” he wrote. On Ninth Avenue, he said, the old lane markings have been removed all the way to 59th in preparation for the installation of the new design.

The extension of the First Avenue protected bike lane up to 72nd Street is nearly complete. Photo: Jacob-uptown/Flickr

Photo contributor extraordinaire Jacob-uptown has uploaded a new batch to the Streetsblog Flickr pool, taking us on a tour of the major new bikeways DOT is implementing in Manhattan.

The extension of the First Avenue bike lane from the Queensboro Bridge up to 72nd Street is nearly complete. It’s the first protected bike infrastructure on the Upper East Side — “very exciting progress,” Jacob says, but he notes that the connection from the bike route south of the bridge could be better:

There is a big gap between the sharrows on 1st Ave leading up to 57th, and the beginning of the protected lane on 61st. At 57th the sharrows simply end, with no indication that a much nicer facility is only a few blocks away.

More photos from Jacob after the jump.

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Under one recommendation from DOT's new West Side transportation study, paint would be used to channelize a block of 66th Street from three lanes down to two.

The Department of Transportation has completed a multi-year transportation study of the Upper West Side, and Wednesday night the agency walked local residents through the many proposed changes [PDF]. The suggestions for the area between 55th and 86th Streets, west of Central Park, include a number of valuable intersection-level improvements to pedestrian safety, but left some feeling that the recommendations don’t go far enough.

Locals hoping to expand the protected bike lane network on the Upper West Side beyond the current mile of cycle track on Columbus Avenue were initially disappointed; the West Side study doesn’t so much as mention new bike lanes. When pressed on the issue during the Q&A, however, DOT reps gave residents looking to expand the bike lane’s safety benefits cause for optimism. “We are interested in increasing the bike network in this community,” said DOT Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione.

Forgione said DOT is finishing up a final evaluation of the existing Columbus Avenue bike lane and plans to show the new data to the local community board. Then, she said, DOT wants “to have the board help define where we go next.” The two options she mentioned Wednesday were extending the Columbus Avenue lane and creating a northbound match on Amsterdam.

Included in last night’s presentation were a host of smaller safety improvements. “This is not the sexiest,” warned Council Member Gale Brewer, who provided the original impetus for the study.

Two striped islands on West End Avenue at 58th and 59th Streets would be converted into concrete refuge islands, for example, to provide real physical protection to crossing pedestrians.

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Cross-posted from Brooklyn Spoke.

DOT's original April 2010 plan for a two-way protected bike lane on Plaza Street.

In April 2010, DOT proposed an overhaul of the chaotic and dangerous Grand Army Plaza to include two-way protected bike lanes on Plaza Street East and West. (Plaza Street is not the high-speed roadway around the arch and fountain, but rather the less trafficked outer roadways, which already have one-way buffered bike lanes. Plaza Street is fronted on one side by residential buildings and on the other side by planted berms.)  DOT’s proposal [PDF] used the existing footprint of the bike lane and parking lane, as well as two more feet from the very wide moving lane, to flip the parking lane and bike lane, putting a two-way bike lane against the berm side of Plaza Street, protected by parked cars — a design nearly identical to that of the redesigned Prospect Park West.

DOT’s Grand Army Plaza overhaul was eventually constructed in 2011 minus the protected bike lanes, some say as a result of the political blowback from the Prospect Park West bike lane lawsuit.  With the suit now dismissed and the safety and congestion fears of bike lane opponents completely discredited, DOT will re-introduce a proposal for two-way bike lanes around Plaza Street. However, the Brooklyn Paper and other sources indicate that the city might propose two alternatives: one protected by parked cars, as in the 2010 plan, and one unprotected (yet still two-way). This is odd, given the phenomenal success of the Prospect Park West redesign; a meeting next week may be the public’s only chance to speak out for a well-designed, safe, protected bike lane on Plaza Street.

An unprotected two-way lane would essentially take over the existing bike lane’s footprint, with a painted buffer between the bike lane and moving vehicles and bright green paint on the bike lane itself, but would not alter the position of parked cars on the street. This presents a bit of a conundrum: how can DOT protect contra-flow cyclists from moving vehicles, and where does DOT expect cyclists to ride while the bike lane is blocked by double-parked vehicles, motorists awaiting parking spaces, and drivers (quite legally) entering and leaving parking spaces?

It appears that the unprotected proposal is, at least in part, a response to a few local residents’ concerns that relocating parked cars would narrow the roadway on Plaza Street and cause traffic backups every time someone double parks.  But this concern fails on two levels. First, even with a protected bike lane, much of Plaza Street would still remain wide enough to accommodate a double parked vehicle and room for motorists to pass — and emergency vehicles could legally drive in a protected bike lane at any time if they needed to. Second, and perhaps more importantly, since when do we design our streets primarily to facilitate illegal and anti-social acts of double parking, as opposed to protecting our most vulnerable street users?

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