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.

Cyclists exiting the Manhattan Bridge this morning were immediately greeted by a parked NYPD van in the new temporary bike lane on the Bowery. Photo: Ben Fried

Today was the first day of a construction detour expected to send thousands of cyclists onto the Bowery from the Manhattan Bridge every day. A temporary bike route extending from the south side of Canal Street to Prince Street was constantly blocked by parked police vehicles, trucks, and cars during the morning rush, forcing cyclists to weave into the stream of Bowery traffic — full of buses and large trucks.

The northbound detour sends cyclist up the Bowery from just south of Canal. Image: NYC DOT

The detour is expected to last for at least six months. As a consequence of cable rehabilitation work, which according to the city will make the Manhattan Bridge bike path unrideable, DOT is directing cyclists to swap places with pedestrians and take the south side of the bridge. The announcement mapping the detour routes went out last Friday [PDF].

The Manhattan Bridge sees the second-most bike traffic of the four East River bike crossings — an average of about 3,000 cyclists each day, according to DOT’s 2010 counts. All was well on the Brooklyn side this morning, and the detour for bridge-bound cyclists on the Manhattan side doesn’t call for riding on any streets that might be especially hazardous for cyclists.

But the Bowery detour was hairy, to say the least. Some sort of physical protection, like Jersey barriers, will be necessary to prevent situations like this, just north of Canal:

Photo: Ben Fried

North of Hester Street, the route consists of curbside sharrows until you hit Prince. Curb regulations apparently call for no standing in the shared lane from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. on weekdays (that is unofficial — Streetsblog is trying to confirm the rules). Even when the regulations were in effect this morning, the lane was constantly blocked and impassable for cyclists:

Photo: Doug Gordon

Streetsblog has a request in with the Manhattan Bridge community liaison about further steps to protect cyclists. If the Bowery is going to be the northbound Manhattan Bridge bike detour until January 2012, more must be done to clear the route of obstructions and keep cyclists safe.

New York Post columnist Steve Cuozzo, proponent of birther-style conspiracy theories about the growth of cycling in New York, might want to check out this YouTube clip that NYC DOT posted earlier this week, along with other information on how it conducts bike counts. It’s a time-lapse video of cyclists on the Brooklyn approach to the Manhattan Bridge during the morning rush last May. Real people riding real bikes — see for yourself, Steve.

Last year, the city counted 2,984 cyclists per day on the Manhattan Bridge, compared to 2,606 in 2009 and 2,210 in 2008, the last full year before the Sands Street bike path was built. Those counts come from averaging the number of cyclists using the bridge between 7 a.m and 7 p.m. on six days between April and October. Back in 2005 (when the city got its numbers from a single day’s observation instead of six, making comparisons to today somewhat indirect), 829 cyclists were counted on the Manhattan Bridge [PDF].

After the jump, bonus time-lapse footage from Tracy Collins, showing bike and car traffic over the Vanderbilt rail yard on Sixth Avenue in Brooklyn last August. By my count there are about 30 bikes and 80 motor vehicles headed toward Park Slope over the course of about 30 light cycles:

The only thing more congested than Canal Street might be Canal Street's sidewalks. Photo: Bertrand Duperrin via Flickr

Canal Street, to put it mildly, is due for a makeover. The street is clogged with traffic from the Holland Tunnel and the un-tolled Manhattan Bridge. Pedestrians jostle for space on the packed sidewalks, and they’re especially at risk of getting hit by a car, according to the city’s Pedestrian Safety Study.

Fortunately, the funds are in place for an eventual reconstruction and re-imagination of the street, thanks to federal World Trade Center emergency relief aid. To help determine how to design Canal Street, which must strike a balance between serving the local community and the regional transportation system, NYMTC, the region’s metropolitan planning organization, has been engaged in a nearly decade-long process of studying the area and drawing up recommendations for the corridor.

In a report released last Thursday [PDF], NYMTC recommends making Canal Street friendlier for pedestrians by adding significant amounts of sidewalk space. But larger changes, in particular the creation of a carpool lane in the Holland Tunnel, weren’t included. According to the NYMTC report, NYCDOT has agreed to use the recommendations to inform its plans, though a DOT spokesperson said only that the agency was reviewing the findings.

The Canal Area Transportation Study process began in 2002, and the first phase ended with some relatively small improvements to the area, like high-visibility crosswalks, new signage, and temporary improvements near Allen Street. Since 2005, the second, larger-scale phase of the study has been underway, bringing together all the regional transportation agencies as well as others with a stake in the project.

The NYMTC team studied a wide array of congestion-busting ideas for the corridor. Some, like two-way tolling on the Verrazano Bridge or congestion pricing, were dismissed because they required legislative approvals well outside the project’s scope. Transit expansions, like bringing the PATH train north from the World Trade Center or building light rail on Canal, were rejected as too costly. Some ideas were nixed because they lacked community support or because they conflicted with New York City’s Street Design Manual. Other ambitious proposals, like keeping traffic off side streets including Pell, Doyers, Mosco, and Mulberry, were referred to the appropriate agency for further study.

What’s left still has a lot to like.

In addition to a few recommendations that have already been implemented, like a HOV lane on the Manhattan Bridge and a median on Bowery, the plan calls for significant new pedestrian amenities. Those include leading pedestrian intervals at intersections and a redesign for the intersection of Bowery and Canal, at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge. Curb extensions would be built on Canal at Varick Street, between Elizabeth and Mulberry and between Baxter and Lafayette, replacing traffic lanes.

A separate memo on parking policy [PDF] also puts forward some powerful suggestions for making the most of scarce curb access and reducing parking-induced driving. That document recommends a further crackdown on parking placards, which in Lower Manhattan would significantly cut traffic. It also suggests that Park Smart might be successful in the area and puts forward the goal of keeping ten percent of spaces open at all times, which Donald Shoup would approve of. Though the report does raise the idea of building more parking on the area’s periphery, it notes that this hasn’t been particularly successful in other downtowns.

But NYMTC recommends against one significant change. Putting a HOV3 lane through the Holland Tunnel, the NYMTC model found, would shift cars with one or two passengers from the Holland Tunnel to the Lincoln Tunnel, George Washington Bridge, and Staten Island crossings. A NYMTC spokesperson added that those new trips, since less direct, would likely add extra vehicle miles traveled overall, and that a HOV lane already exists for the approach to the tunnel on the Jersey City side. While the tunnel itself would have less traffic with a HOV lane, NYMTC projected, the Manhattan streets it empties into would just fill up again with other traffic from the over-congested streets nearby.

NYMTC also looked into turning Canal Street one-way headed east, pairing it with a westbound Grand Street. While that option would have allowed for even wider sidewalks on Canal, wrote NYMTC, “the wider Canal Street sidewalks in the one-way alternative would be offset by the negative traffic impact of the one-way pair on both Grand Street and Spring Street.” In other words, the cars won out over the pedestrians on that one.

The study also includes a wealth of data for those interested in the area’s travel patterns. Congestion on Canal Street is worst on Sundays, for example, because non-work trips mean that there are more turns onto side streets, more cruising for parking, and more passenger drop-offs. The sidewalks are the most overcrowded between Broadway and Centre Streets. And during the weekday rush, there are roughly equal amounts of vehicles crossing Manhattan, beginning or ending their trip in Manhattan, and traveling within the Canal Street area.

DOT needs to make a strong safety plan for the year when construction will take place above the Manhattan Bridge bikeway. Image: NYCDOT

The Manhattan Bridge is held up by four major cables and hundreds of suspenders connecting the cables and the bridge deck; the cables need repairing and the suspenders will be replaced. Work on the two cables toward the center of the bridge -- "B" and "C" on the above diagram -- will disrupt some vehicular lanes but won't affect the bike or pedestrian paths. 

Additionally, repairs along the southernmost cable, over the walkway, shouldn't be too disruptive. At a presentation to Brooklyn Community Board 2 [PDF], DOT reported a plan to cover the path with protective sheds under any active construction. The walkway would be a bit cramped, as the sheds are only three feet wide, but people could walk or bike across the bridge as normal.

However, when the northern cable is under construction -- a job that's expected to take almost a full year to complete -- both pedestrians and cyclists could see their trips disrupted. The sheds aren't wide enough for bikes to pass each other, so DOT is considering rerouting cyclists to what is normally the pedestrian side and putting pedestrians under sheds on the bike side. That could pose a number of problems for the city's second-most popular bike route over the East River. 

The Manhattan Bridge pedestrian path (right) would lead thousands of cyclists every day to Bowery near Canal, a dangerous location disconnected from the bike network.

The big one is safety at the Manhattan end of the bridge. "The connection on the Manhattan side to the pedestrian path is very dangerous," said Caroline Samponaro, director of bicycle advocacy at Transportation Alternatives. While the Manhattan end of the regular bike path has safe connections leading north, south, and east, the walkway would dump cyclists off at the intersection of Bowery and Canal -- "two of the craziest streets downtown," in Samponaro's words.

If DOT decides to route bikes over the walkway, she said, some combination of signage and temporary bike lanes will be necessary to keep the ever-increasing number of cyclists using the bridge safe. An average of 2,606 cyclists used the bike path daily from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. in 2009, a number that's probably gone up this year.

Another concern Samponaro identified is that the city would try to force all cyclists to cross to the walkway side, perhaps by putting in dismount barriers at entry points to the bikeway. "I worry that people would try and ride through anyway," she said. 

Instead, she urged, "it's important that both sides be accessible to both bikes and pedestrians." People will be confused by the switch and probably end up on the wrong side, she argued, so both sides will need to be safe for both types of users. "There's a way to make it work," she said, even if it requires cyclists and pedestrians alike to be more aware of their surroundings.

No matter what happens, when the northern cable is under construction, biking and walking over the bridge is going to be more confusing and chaotic, leading more people to opt for the Brooklyn Bridge promenade, which will itself be narrower due to rehab work. We're going to see even more cramped conditions where pedestrians and cyclists already struggle to share scarce space. It's up to DOT to bring some ingenuity to the challenge of keeping all bridge users safe during this period.

The Manhattan Bridge officially opened on December 31, 1909. While its 100-year anniversary came and went with little fanfare a few months ago, city officials paid respects today.

At the ceremony, Clarence caught up with Gridlock Sam Schwartz, who heads the NYC Bridge Centennial Commission. In this clip Schwartz describes the nearly catastrophic deterioration of the bridge, which prompted a massive rehab that began in the 1980s and is just now concluding.

You'll definitely want to pause and take a close look at the 1:01 mark for a reminder of just how easy motorists have it today compared to 100 years ago.

This community district includes the approaches to the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. If you ride those bridges, you'll want to turn out for what promises to be a substantive discussion of street safety. We hear that the panel will field written questions from audience members. Here's where to go to speak up:

6:00 pm
St. Francis College - Founders Hall
180 Remsen St. (bet. Court & Clinton Sts.)
(2/3/4/5/M/R to Borough Hall)

Photo: Matt Hogan.

Vehicles exiting the Manhattan Bridge have turned this block, often teeming with people waiting for the Fung Wah Bus, into a constant danger zone. Here's what an employee at the jewelry store across the street told the Tribeca Trib:

"Ever since I was a kid, trucks come flying off the bridge," he said. "It’s at least three or four times a year, this happens, and it’s always these trucks. They fly right off that thing like there’s no tomorrow."

After 10 years at the store, John said he no longer ventures across the intersection for his lunch for fear of becoming the next casualty.

Update: Reader Matt Hogan informs us that the truck bed was packed with what looked like 50-pound bags of cement at the time of the crash. The rear of the vehicle is outfitted with an apparatus for mixing and pouring out concrete.

Chalk up more bikeway innovation to the folks at the NYC Department of Transportation. Nearly complete, the Sands Street approach to the Manhattan Bridge is now safer and more enjoyable thanks to a New York City first: a center-median, two-way protected bike path. The facility is a perfect solution to counter the dangers posed by a tangle of roads and highway on-ramps that burden the area. Dramatic before-and-afters tell the delicious story.

We'll also take you back into the archives to April 2005, when, following a severe injury to Transportation Alternatives' Noah Budnick, advocates held a passionate rally asking Mayor Bloomberg to not only improve bike access to the Manhattan Bridge, but to all East River bridges. Four years later, there's much to be proud of. As DOT Assistant Commissioner for Traffic Management Ryan Russo points out, back in 2005 about 800 cyclists used the bridge daily. In 2009, those numbers have soared to over 2,600. That gives us a serious case of happiness.

Time Warner sets up an operation in the Sands Street bike path. Photo: Gothamist.

A well-placed source tells us that DOT is working with the post office and delivery companies to keep the mountable bike lane clear, and that the agency is considering the addition of a direct crosswalk between the Sands Street path and the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge path.

"We are working on ways to properly guide cyclists safely from the end of the Sands Street path to the start of the Manhattan Bridge path," a DOT spokesperson said when we asked for confirmation.

The project isn't finished yet, so it's still in the adjustment period. But without any bollards from Navy to Gold, it's going to take constant enforcement to keep that block clear for cyclists. As Gothamist noted last week, it's a very short trip from the bike path to the Brooklyn tow pound.

Cyclists who've crossed the Manhattan Bridge this summer should be familiar with this sight. It's the construction project at the foot of the bike path on the Manhattan side. This is the view from Canal and Chrystie.

We've been trying to find out exactly what's going on here, but so far the answers from DOT have been pretty vague. Here's what we know:

• DOT is installing "access control improvements" on both sides of the Manhattan Bridge bicycle path and pedestrian path. A notice sent to local community boards last month says the project will prevent "unauthorized vehicle access" and "enhance safety" for pedestrians and cyclists. We later learned that this refers to the installation of bollards. So far, so good.
• A reader reports that construction workers said they were shaving down the turning radius for vehicles at this corner. This is where drivers exiting the bridge turn right on to Canal Street. If this project gives drivers more space to make that turn, they'll take the curve faster right before crossing the path of cyclists exiting and entering the bridge. (Check after the jump for a shot of that intersection.) DOT's press office has neither confirmed nor denied that the finished project will include a turn designed for faster car speeds.
  
• This is a "high-security" project and DOT won't release renderings or plans. The work, which is being carried out by the Army Corps of Engineers, will last until January.

When all is said and done, will this project encourage higher vehicle speeds at one of the most critical points in the city's bike network? Maybe that's the kind of thing the progressive elements within DOT won't allow to happen. One would certainly hope so.

You'd also think the new DOT wouldn't try to improve safety on Pelham Parkway in the Bronx by taking a few pages from the 1960s-era "forgiving highway" approach to street design. But they are.

Motorists turning right onto Canal from the Manhattan Bridge immediately hit the signalized intersection where cyclists access the bridge. Photo: Neotint/Flickr.

The Sands Street path runs from Navy Street to the foot of the Manhattan Bridge at Jay Street.

This project is still ongoing. As we continue to implement the improvements, we will be certain to make any adjustments necessary to facilitate bikers getting to and from the bridge.

The question we sent was specifically about the traffic signal at Jay and Sands, and whether an exclusive phase for cyclists might be added. Seems like they're still evaluating the options.

An evening commuter enters the Sands Street bike path at Jay Street, after descending from the Manhattan Bridge.

Last month, the long-awaited Sands Street bike path officially opened, giving cyclists a much safer connection to the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge. From what I can tell so far, everyone loves the new protected space between Jay and Gold, which separates bike traffic from all the trucks and cars accelerating onto the BQE. If you bike over the bridge from Fort Greene or points east and south, it's a huge improvement. And once the Carlton Avenue Bridge reopens, this path should be an attractive approach to an even bigger swath of Brooklyn bike commuters.

We've received a few emails from readers who think the path would be safer with a few not-so-dramatic changes, and it will be interesting to see if DOT tweaks the Sands Street approach to address these concerns. One trouble spot: At the intersection where the Sands Street path meets the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge, cyclists have to cross against southbound traffic on Jay Street and eastbound traffic on Sands. Many are doing it in one fell swoop, making a diagonal movement that can be pretty dangerous.

Here's my attempt at a triptych showing what this looks like as a cyclist exits the bridge. The curb cut you see in the third frame is the entrance to the Sands Street protected path:

Some readers might get on the cyclist's case here for crossing against one of the lights, but I think this behavior is going to be pretty common as long as cyclists are asked to wait through two signal phases and make two separate crossings.

Here's a short video clip where you can see a few other ways people are handling this condition (apologies for the amateurish camera-work). 

One step that might encourage safer crossings would be to add an exclusive bike/pedestrian phase at this intersection. Another would be to cut a hole in that black fence on the bridge side of the street and install a direct crosswalk, giving cyclists a straight shot between the two paths. We have a query in with DOT to see if some tweaks might be on the table.

Another question is whether the block between Gold and Navy Street is adequately protected and delineated as space for bike traffic.

Photo: brooklynbybike/Flickr.

Workers add markings to the Sands Street lane. Photo: brooklynbybike/Flickr

Sands Street is where, in 2005, TA Senior Policy Advisor Noah Budnick was seriously injured after hitting a pothole. Reads a TA media release:

In the years that followed, cycling in New York City has seen some massive improvements, including the nation's first on-street traffic-separated bike lane and the installation of hundreds of new bike-parking spots. Concurrently, the number of city cyclists increased 80 percent with the number of daily Manhattan Bridge bike-commuters soaring from 829 to 2,232.

Noah helped make many of these improvements happen and nowhere is that more apparent than on the stretch of Sands Street that connects Navy Street with Jay Street.

DOT and DDC personnel will be on hand, as will Council Member Tish James. The event begins at 6:30 at the Manhattan Bridge and Sands Street and will culminate in a ride along the new path, followed by a gathering at nearby Recycle-a-Bicycle in DUMBO.

There's a fresh coat of asphalt on the Sands Street bike path, and guys on the construction crew say this long-awaited approach to the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge should officially open for riding next week. Still to come: pavement markings and fencing.

Streetsblog's offices are just a short walk away on Water Street, and I figure it's not often that you get to show a piece of heavy duty bike infrastructure round into form, so here are a few more pictures showing the progress since last week. To appreciate how much this project will improve commutes for cyclists, check out the "before" pictures from last September.

The crew works on the section between Navy Street and Gold Street.

This signal, at the intersection of Sands and Gold, is for cyclists.

This is the barrier separating the bike path from auto traffic. The silver markings are there to guide installation of a fence.

Soon, you won't have to ride in car traffic on the Sands Street approach to the Manhattan Bridge.

The long-awaited Sands Street bike path, a protected approach to the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge which took a few years longer than expected to go through New York City's construction bureaucracy, looks tantalizingly close to completion these days. It's not there yet, but you can start to picture how this critical addition to the city's bike network will appear when finished. The Department of Design and Construction tells us the whole thing should be paved by the end of the week, weather permitting, and the path should officially open to cyclists next week, after some fencing is added.

Above is the view looking toward the bridge entrance from the north side. Here's how it looked last September:

More pics after the jump.

Here's the view looking in the opposite direction -- toward the BQE overpass -- from the same spot. Fencing will be added along the concrete barrier.

The view from Gold Street looking toward the bridge. The path will carry two-way bike traffic from here to the bridge.

Between Gold Street and Navy Street, the path runs between Farragut Houses along both sides of a center median. The surface for bikes is raised above the surface for autos. To allow for free pedestrian movement across the street, there is no concrete barrier.

Construction of the Sands Street bike path was promised to begin in 2006...

The slow pace of safety improvements for downtown Brooklyn streets became tragically apparent earlier this month when eight-year-old Alexander Toulouse was killed by a postal truck on Livingston Street. A $5 million traffic calming project for the area, unveiled in 2007, is not the only livable streets initiative to suffer delays. The Sands Street bike path, a physically protected approach to the Manhattan Bridge, has languished behind schedule for years, held up in the city's construction bureaucracy. The project serves as a prime illustration that livable streets hinge not just on DOT, but on other, more obscure city agencies as well.

...here's how Sands Street looks today.

In April 2005, Noah Budnick of Transportation Alternatives was riding on Sands Street, after exiting the Manhattan Bridge, and crashed on a dangerous stretch where cyclists often have to contend with deeply pock-marked pavement and cars accelerating onto the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. He sustained severe head trauma, requiring hospitalization and a prolonged recovery.

Two years earlier, Budnick had joined other Brooklyn bike advocates in calling on the Department of Transportation to improve the safety of the very same bridge approach. Borough President Marty Markowitz and City Council member David Yassky pledged support (right). DOT, under the leadership of commissioner Iris Weinshall at the time, did announce plans for a protected bike path on Sands Street -- two months after Budnick's crash. Construction would start in 2006, the agency said.

This June marked the third anniversary of that announcement, and construction on the Sands Street bike path has still not begun. (A contractor is slated to begin work in October.) Last year, a new team took the reins at DOT and dramatically accelerated the pace of bike improvements. But getting this critical safety measure through the different stages of government approval has been slow as molasses. Why?

Capital projects like Sands Street are carried out by the city's Department of Design and Construction, which works with contractors to see DOT's designs through to completion.

The initial DOT design for Sands Street called for a two-way bike path, running along a raised median, protected from car traffic by a fence on both sides. Transportation Alternatives and Community Board 2 lobbied DOT to replace the fence with bollards. A continuous fence, they said, would have kept residents of nearby Farragut Houses from walking across the street midblock, in addition to posing a danger to cyclists by making it harder for them to exit the bike path in case of an emergency. A bike path design using bollards was adopted.

DOT and DDC attempted to fold the bike path project into an existing contract where work was already underway, the reconstruction of Flushing Avenue. DDC put out the $40 million Flushing Avenue bid in 2003. DOT and DDC initially stated that the contractor, Bronx-based firm Demicco Bros., would not agree to incorporate the bike path work into the project.

On Sands Street, cyclists contend with broken pavement and cars getting onto the BQE.

Frank Demicco of Demicco Bros. says his firm was never officially told to do the work. "It was something that was just talked about," he said. The city did not go so far as to issue a change order instructing Demicco to build the bike path. "There's no items in the contract for me to construct that, so it's really illegal for them to give me work without issuing a change order, and the change order might have been too expensive, or whatever they thought. That's probably why they went that route." The city is reluctant to push through such projects by issuing a change order, he added, when it can do the work cheaper through competitive bidding.

In the case of Sands Street, this meant forgoing the originally promised construction timetable and letting the project out to bid again. DDC sent Streetsblog a revised statement after Demicco's version of events was brought to their attention: "At the time this project was requested, the option of adding the path to the active reconstruction project was explored, but due to a number of issues including approvals, funding, and scheduling, it was decided a new procurement would need to take place. It was DDC's decision to proceed as noted above, not the contractor's."

That decision was reached through an internal process known as a change order estimate, wherein DDC projected a price tag for the bike path. When the agency arrived at a figure, work was not allowed to proceed because another city agency, the Office of Management and Budget, rejects change order estimates that exceed 10 percent of the total project cost.

The Sands Street path is now under a separate, $4.6 million contract with a firm called Trocom Construction. When it is finally completed, the path will serve as a critical link in the city's bike network. Just as bridge approaches become choke points for car traffic during peak hours, they also serve large numbers of cyclists, especially bike commuters. The increasing popularity of biking in New York is reflected in the number of cyclists crossing bridges. In 2005, an average of 829 cyclists crossed the Manhattan Bridge every day. In 2006, the last year for which data is available, daily crossings shot up to 1578, a 90 percent increase.

Bridge approaches handle some of the densest bike traffic in the city, and the volume is only going up.

The more people bike across the bridge, the greater the number of potential conflicts between drivers and cyclists. The hazards are amplified on Sands Street, where drivers access two on-ramps to the BQE.

"You're navigating through very high vehicle traffic," says Caroline Samponaro of T.A. "It's essential to have protected space set aside, and proper signage and lighting."

Thousands of cyclists have been put at risk because this project was delayed for two years.

Rendering: NYCDOT

Photos: Aaron Naparstek

Next Thursday, artist Olaf Eliasson's much-anticipated "New York City Waterfalls" installation will debut along the East River. The project, as elegantly described in this week's New Yorker, "features four tall, widely separated, openwork steel towers housing powerful pumps that will pull river water up to a high basin and send it cascading down again, continuously, from seven in the morning until ten at night, through mid-October."

There will be one waterfall each near the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, one off the Brooklyn Heights promenade, and one off Governors Island. If you want to see all four by bike, DOT has you covered with its "Bike the Falls" guide, featuring a map to viewing points along with written directions to lanes and paths along the route. Road markings will also be in place. Check it out.

On Tuesday, Community Board 3 unanimously approved a resolution in support of DOT's plans for improved Manhattan Bridge access, including bike lanes on Chrystie Street.

Though members of the board's transportation committee (along with Streetsbloggers) advocated for protected lanes, these recommendations were not included in the resolution, the full text of which appears after the jump.

WHEREAS, DOT plans to install a complete network of bike routes and pedestrian safety measures on streets around the Manhattan Bridge. The project goal is safer and more comfortable streets for all street users. Design objectives include:

 
1) Creating dedicated cycling space on direct and convenient routes to and from the Manhattan Bridge.

2) Improving safety for all street users, particularly senior pedestrians.

3) Traffic calming for all street users.

4) Maintaining vehicular access and traffic flow by preserving current vehicle capacity; and

WHEREAS, The project would install dedicated bicycle lanes in both directions on Chrystie St between Canal St and E Houston St and on East Broadway between Chatham Sq and Grand St; and

WHEREAS, Between 2001-2006, there were 864 crashes on the 7 blocks of Chrystie St, of which 116 involved pedestrians (4 fatalities) and 26 involved cyclists (1 fatality); and

WHEREAS, The project would install 2 pedestrian refuge islands and 7 left-turn bays on Chrystie St between Canal St and Rivington St. The north-bound roadway between Rivington St and E Houston St would be narrowed to one through lane; and

WHEREAS, The project would remove 52 parking spaces along the east side of Chrystie St between Grand St and Stanton St. These are the parking presently adjacent to the wall of Sara D Roosevelt Park, which primarily serve daytime customers (all 52 of these parking spaces have middle-of-the-night street cleaning signage and 19 have 2-hour metered parking between 9am-7pm); now therefore

BE IT RESOLVED, that Community Board 3-Manhattan supports the Manhattan Bridge Bicycle Access Network, which includes bike lanes and street configuration changes on Chrystie St, Canal St and East Broadway as described above; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that CB3 asks DOT to prepare the public and other agencies for these changes by:

1) Producing a fact sheet in English, Spanish and Chinese to distribute to residents and businesses in the area. The situation with parking spaces should be explained, and businesses will need to understand traffic regulations regarding bike lanes.

2) DOT should work with NYPD so they understand the new regulations and street geometry.

America is in love with the internal combustion engine. But cars, trucks and buses are killing and maiming pedestrians and bicyclists in New York City virtually every day. They are choking the street life of our city. Our thirst for fossil fuels is forcing us into horrible foreign adventures like the Iraq war.

In 2007, 23 bicyclists and over 100 pedestrians were killed by motor vehicles on New York City's streets. City Room covered the event too.