Streetsblog New York City

Two months after winning support from Manhattan Community Board 12, a safer connection to the Hudson River Greenway is now in place at 181st Street.

Before, Riverside Drive north of 181st Street served as a one-way highway on-ramp, forcing cyclists exiting the greenway to either ride against traffic or dismount. Cars, too, drove the wrong way to get back on local streets without entering the Henry Hudson Parkway, creating unsafe conditions.

Now, DOT has turned a short stretch of Riverside back into a two-way street with shared lane markings painted in both directions. At the cost of a few parking spaces, this critical Upper Manhattan greenway entrance has been made safer and more easily accessible.

The changes check off one item on Community Board 12′s list of requested bike infrastructure improvements, which it passed unanimously this July. Perhaps some high-quality bike lanes for Upper Manhattan will be next.

Streetsblog regular Ken Coughlin alerted us to a Saturday afternoon collision between a yellow cab driver and a cyclist on the Hudson River Greenway at 43rd Street. Ken took this picture at 3:45 p.m. He said the cyclist appeared to be unconscious.

The crash happened at the entrance to the Circle Line dock, which Coughlin says is “a particularly dangerous crossing because it gets a fair amount of fast-moving traffic coming in from the east.” Data from Transportation Alternatives’ CrashStat show that seven cyclists and one pedestrian have been injured in collisions there since 2003. The site is a few blocks north of where greenway cyclist Carl Nacht was killed by an NYPD tow truck driver in 2006.

The NYPD public information office had no details on the crash. According to a spokesperson, this indicates “minor injuries only” and “no criminality involved.”

If you have any information on what happened here, please leave it in the comments or send us an e-mail.

Upper Manhattan cyclists will finally have a safe way to exit the Hudson River Greenway at 181st Street under a plan presented by the Department of Transportation and approved by Community Board 12′s transportation committee last night.

Right now, Riverside Drive north of 181st Street runs one-way and quickly becomes an on-ramp to the Henry Hudson Parkway. The only entrance to the Hudson River Greenway in the area is on that block, meaning cyclists exiting the much-used path must either illegally ride against the highway-bound traffic or dismount and walk south along the sidewalk. At the same time, drivers parked on that block often drive in reverse to 181st Street rather than go forward onto the highway. That’s created unsafe conditions which local activists have fought hard to fix.

The new configuration would change the section of Riverside before it becomes a true on-ramp into a two-way street with shared bike lane markings, reported Bike Upper Manhattan member Brad Conover, who attended last night’s meeting. Parking would be removed from the west side of the street, a fact which the community board grudgingly accepted, noting in its resolution that it would like to find replacement parking elsewhere.

“Bike Upper Manhattan applauds CB-12 Traffic and Transportation Committee’s resolution last night endorsing DOT’s plan to correct one of the most glaringly unsafe street designs in Washington Heights,” said Conover. “Cyclists exiting the Westside Greenway at 181st no longer will be dumped into oncoming one way traffic.”

In the long-term, DOT told the community board, a redesign of the park could provide cyclists with a ramp that connects directly onto 181st Street. Those changes would be years away at the earliest, however. In the meantime, the changes will help connect Washington Heights to the country’s most-used bike path.

A reader sends along this shot from the Hudson River Greenway exit at W. 72nd Street. Cyclists are apparently no longer required to dismount on the shared path that connects the greenway and Riverside Drive, a ham-handed directive issued by the Parks Department last summer. Our tipster says the new signs have replaced dismount instructions, which were reportedly backed up by threats of summonses.

Good to see Parks acknowledge the value of this link to cyclists with an eye toward safety for all users.

Green lines are major north-south bike routes; red lines represent obstacles to the West Side Greenway; purple lines are wide, dangerous crosstown streets; and orange lines are westbound connections to the greenway. View a larger map.

Streetsblog reader Mark Davis has put together a map showing how greenway-bound cyclists are funneled through the West 29th Street tunnel where Marilyn Dershowitz was killed on Saturday.

Dershowitz, 68, was riding with her husband Nathan at around noon when she was hit by the driver of a US Postal Service truck just west of Ninth Avenue, underneath a building overhang that straddles the street. She later died at Bellevue Hospital. The driver, who claimed he was unaware he hit someone, did not stop after the collision. He has not been charged.

As Davis’s map shows, there is no other continuous westbound greenway connection between 17th and 43rd that isn’t a wide and dangerous street.

“The project advisory committee of the DOT Hell’s Kitchen Study (which covers this area) has proposed a number of east-west connections,” says Christine Berthet, co-founder of the Clinton/Hell’s Kitchen Coalition for Pedestrian Safety. “Hopefully the DOT bicycle team will accelerate their implementation. Unless these bike paths are protected, nothing will prevent another tragedy like this one.”

Marilyn Dershowitz was one of three people known to have been killed by a driver last week in Manhattan. On Thursday, 78-year-old Yolanda Casal died when an unlicensed driver chasing a parking spot backed into her and her daughter on Amsterdam Avenue. Chinatown pedestrian Kok Hoe Tee was killed Friday when an NYPD Auxiliary officer drove a department van onto the sidewalk after reportedly confusing the accelerator with the brake. Streetsblog is awaiting word from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance regarding Edwin Carrasco, who hit Yolanda Casal, but as of this writing none of the drivers involved in these fatalities were reported charged.

“I am sickened by this death,” says Berthet, “and the fact that this driver is probably driving his truck again.”

Read more…

Via Gothamist — check out this bollard on the Hudson River Greenway at work.

One of the strange and dangerous things about the greenway is that car traffic crosses the car-free path at several points. Twice in 2006, motorists killed people using the greenway. On December 1, 2006, cyclist Eric Ng was run down by Eugenio Cidron, who was speeding on the greenway at 60 mph for a mile after driving away drunk from a party at Chelsea Piers. Earlier that year, Dr. Carl Henry Nacht was killed by an NYPD tow truck operator entering the tow pound at 38th Street.

A year after Ng’s death, Transportation Alternatives issued a call on Streetsblog for safety improvements to the greenway, including the installation of fixed bollards, like this one, to keep motorists from driving onto the car-free path.

I look at this picture and feel a mix of reassurance, satisfaction, and terror. How is it possible for someone to run into one of these high-contrast yellow-and-black plugs, about the height of a toddler, in broad daylight?

Streetsblog will be offline Monday and back publishing on Tuesday. Enjoy the long weekend, folks.

We got a couple of e-mails this week about a new directive from the Parks Department ordering cyclists to dismount on the Riverside Park path that connects the Hudson River Greenway and Riverside Drive at W. 72nd Street. On his Flickr page, BicyclesOnly says he learned of the restriction from parks enforcement:

[An] officer rode his SUV up the path behind me and issued a "warning bleep" and ordered me to dismount. I pointed out to him that the dismount instruction was first announced ahead of me and it was the first time I had ever seen the sign (which was true), so why did I have dismount? He told me that they would be getting more signs so that the entire pathway would be a dismount zone, and directed me to dismount.

Following his instructions, I dismounted, took out my camera, and a took this picture. He then asked why I was taking a picture. I told him there was no reason for me to tell him. He then told me it was a violation of park rules to take a picture of any official Parks Department signage. I told him I didn't believe there was any such rule and that I'd like him to go ahead and issue me a summons for taking a picture in the park. He got upset and scolded me for being sarcastic (I wasn't being sarcastic), but he didn't write me the summons.

He then proceeded to follow directly behind me in his SUV as I walked my bike up [the] hill. Then he took up a position in the 9A underpass and began scolding other cyclists.

Another tipster told us that a parks officer said cyclists would be issued summonses for ignoring the new rule, which, he points out, exponentially increases the commute time from Riverside Drive to the greenway. "The rule change and signage are symbolic of Parks' vague approach to dealing with the growing volume of cyclists on the greenway," he said, adding that the dismount order has not been accompanied by suggestions for alternate connections.

We have a message in with the Parks Department for details on the new dismount rule, including what's behind it.

If you biked down the Hudson River Greenway from the upper parts of Manhattan this morning, we've got some good news for your ride home. Here you see the freshly opened stretch between 83rd and 91st Street, which debuted today, giving cyclists a straight route without having to detour up through the middle of Riverside Park. The grand opening was also something of a symbolic occasion. Up until today this was the last missing piece in the greenway below the George Washington Bridge.

A meeting of Manhattan Community Board 7's Parks and Environment committee Monday night touched on several items of interest to the thousands of cyclists who use the Hudson River bike path, including the last remaining gap below the George Washington Bridge and the dangerous lack of lighting on some stretches of the greenway.

The long-awaited extension of the bike path along the river between 83rd Street and 92nd Street is slated for opening "around Memorial Day," according to Riverside Park Administrator John Herrold. The path will be 14 feet wide and will be striped for bike lanes and walking lanes in both directions (four lanes in all). This is the final section of the path to be completed between Battery Park and the George Washington Bridge and will mean that cyclists no longer have to make a 10-block detour into Riverside Park before rejoining the path.

As many commuting cyclists know all too well, lighting is nonexistent on the path between 63rd Street and 72nd Street and on the Cherry Walk some 35 blocks to the north. Herrold is aware of the problem in both areas. Between 63rd and 72nd, he's working with the DOT to install lighting similar to what's currently on the path between 59th and 63rd. He expects this new lighting to illuminate the way by the time the days grow shorter in the fall. Cherry Walk is more of a challenge, because the installation of electric lights there would be quite costly due to the lack of electrical hookups. Herrold is investigating solar-powered lighting, and in the meantime he's considering putting reflectors on some of the trees.

Meanwhile, the potential for greater conflict between cyclists and pedestrians may be developing on the path near the Pier I Café at 70th Street. The café uses a service facility on the east side of the bike path to store food and supplies, and a permanent restroom facility is being constructed on that side of the path as well. In addition, a Bike & Roll bicycle rental station will soon be opening a few steps to the north. All of which means that foot traffic crossing the path will likely increase at what is already a sometimes crowded bike-ped intersection. Herrold is aware of the potential hazards when fast-moving cyclists mix with pedestrians who walk into the path without looking, and he's considering speed humps to slow the faster cyclists down, as well as additional signage for crossing pedestrians.

In the fall of 2007, 2008, and again this year, Streetsblog readers have alerted us to hazardous conditions on the "Cherry Walk" segment of the Hudson River Greenway. According to the city, no major improvements are in the offing.

Due to the absence of lighting, once clocks are rolled back for daylight-saving time the Greenway between W. 102 and W. 125 Streets is plunged into darkness during the evening rush. Making matters worse is the glare of headlights from the Henry Hudson Parkway. Writes Upper Manhattan commuter Brad Conover:

The combination of no lights on the path and oncoming headlights of southbound traffic makes it impossible to see the bike path. There should be three new lines painted marking north and southbound biking lanes, not just one line separating bikers from pedestrians with no indication as to N/S-bound bikers, and there should be lights on the path and/or hedges to block the lights of oncoming traffic. I am sure someone is going to get seriously hurt on that path through no fault of their own.

Jacob-uptown, who sent in photographs of the area last year, was informed in a January 2009 letter that DOT would be recommending that the Parks Department include Cherry Walk lighting in its next round of capital construction contracts (though Parks previously indicated to Streetsblog that such a project would fall under the purview of DOT). Aside from some new shrubbery that "only helps a bit," Jacob reports that no changes have been made since last fall.

Last week, DOT told Streetsblog that defective highway lights along the Cherry Walk stretch would be replaced, but said there are no plans to install lighting on the Greenway itself.