Streetsblog New York City

The crosswalks will be getting shorter on Delancey Street — one of the city’s deadliest corridors — thanks to a new safety plan from the Department of Transportation [PDF]. At 14 of 19 crossings between Clinton Street and the Bowery, neckdowns will extend the sidewalk into the street, making the distance across the extremely wide street a bit more manageable. While DOT found ways to add pedestrian space where it could, however, the department rejected options, some of which were very popular, that would interfere with the heavy traffic headed to and from the Williamsburg Bridge.

The changes to Delancey focus on the dangerous blocks approaching the Williamsburg Bridge. Cyclist Jeffrey Axelrod and pedestrians Patricia Cuevas and Dashane Santana were killed by drivers along these blocks in the last year alone. Over a five year period, 129 people were injured in traffic crashes at both Delancey and Essex and Delancey and Clinton.

The most extensive changes will come at Delancey and Clinton, the intersection right by the bridge entrance. Right now, the distance across Delancey is an incredible 165 feet, including a 30 foot median. “It begins to look more like a highway than a normal street,” said DOT bicycle and pedestrian director Josh Benson. “It gives a perception to motorists that they’ve entered a new environment, that it’s not a neighborhood street anymore.”

On the north side of Delancey, the sidewalk will be extended into the street a full 49 feet using paint and planters. The first lane coming off the bridge is a right-turn only lane, and there’s no reason for the space directly in front of it to remain open to traffic. “What we can do is capture that space, formalize it, and make it safe for people to walk to that place in the crosswalk,” said Benson.

Across the street, the service road for Delancey will be filled in and turned into pedestrian space: 14,160 square feet between Norfolk and Clinton.

On the other end of the corridor, at Bowery, another large neckdown will be installed at the southern end of the intersection. As Kenmare becomes Delancey at that intersection, each half of the street abruptly widens from two lanes to four. That means there’s a lot of extra road space, some of which is being reclaimed for pedestrians. The road will now widen to four lanes more gradually.

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Three concrete walls will soon surround the Manhattan entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge, as reported in Gothamist and the Villager. The construction, already underway and due to be completed at the beginning of next year, is part of a Department of Transportation effort to force cyclists coming down the ramp from the bridge to slow down and choose to ride on quieter side roads rather than dangerous Delancey Street, which will remain unchanged.

The redesign of the bridge approach, set in place with concrete barriers and metal fencing, is built to last. Does the project signal that DOT isn’t planning to take action to calm down the deadly traffic on Delancey?

Under the new design, three-foot concrete walls will surround the median at the foot of the Williamsburg bike and pedestrian path. Small gaps in the wall will provide access to crosswalks and bike lanes, but the narrow openings will compel cyclists coming off the bridge to slow down considerably, if not stop completely.

In addition, a curved fence will guide cyclists headed into Manhattan north onto Clinton Street. From there, cyclists can connect to bike lanes on Rivington and Stanton Streets, one and two blocks north of Delancey. Less traffic, slower vehicle speeds, and painted bike lanes make those streets safer to ride on.

In contrast, Delancey is one of the most dangerous streets in the city. A pedestrian and a cyclist have been killed on Delancey already this year, according to Transportation Alternatives, and 134 pedestrians and cyclists were hit by cars on the street between 2008 and 2010.

Helping cyclists find the safest route off the bridge, even nudging them towards that route, is all well and good, but it’s likely that many cyclists will still end up on Delancey. “People want to take the most direct route to where they’re going,” said Caroline Samponaro, the director of bicycle advocacy for Transportation Alternatives. “Even though there are currently markings sending people to use Clinton Street, people continue to use Delancey Street.”

And even if every cyclist detoured onto Clinton, the wide expanse of Delancey would remain a mortal threat to pedestrians. A safety fix for Delancey itself remains necessary, with or without the latest construction at the bridge. The area’s entire political delegation — Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, State Senator Daniel Squadron, Borough President Scott Stringer and City Council Member Margaret Chin — have requested that Delancey be made safe for Lower East Siders.

Said a DOT spokesperson over e-mail:

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Here’s another story of how Police Commissioner Ray Kelly allows his scarce traffic safety resources to be spent. Reader Marc Norman took this picture after an encounter at the base of the Williamsburg Bridge bike-ped path this morning. He writes:

Because I can’t help myself, I got off my bike and asked the cop parked here, who was reading the New York Times, why he was parked in the middle of the walkway. He informed me that cyclists were going 40mph down the Manhattan approach and that parking there slows them down. When I noted that a Tour de France cyclist would have a hard time going 40 mph down the Alps and that forcing peds and cyclists into the narrow space was dangerous his window went back up. Eyes back to the day’s news. Sad.

If New York had more officers on foot and bike patrol and less ingrained windshield perspective, maybe it wouldn’t come to this. A cop using his squad car to squeeze pedestrians and cyclists into conflict, in the name of safety, oblivious to the cars hurtling off the bridge a few feet away, into one of the city’s most notorious deathtraps.

Starting Tuesday, the south bike-ped path of the Williamsburg Bridge will be closed for resurfacing and other improvements. The changes on the way will introduce new markings, reducing conflicts between cyclists and pedestrians by separating bike and foot traffic into different lanes.

Users will be re-routed to the north path until the first phase of work is completed. Crews will then move to the north path as users are directed to the south. The full construction timeline is unknown at this point.

Also tomorrow, Transportation Alternatives will be surveying cyclists on the Manhattan side about the routes they take once they get off the bridge. How many people keep riding straight on Delancey Street, and how many are using the first available side street?

With DOT adding new bike routes on side streets in an attempt to divert cyclists from dangerous Delancey, the survey could provide useful before-and-after data, said TA's Caroline Samponaro. The lanes on Suffolk, Rivington, and Stanton are slated for striping later this spring. "If people are continuing to ride on Delancey," Samponaro asked, " what does that mean?"

You can take the survey at the Manhattan base of the bridge from 7 to 10 a.m. tomorrow.

Two weeks after NYCDOT revealed a package of pedestrian and cyclist improvements for the Lower East Side, the full membership of Community Board 3 voted overwhelmingly to approve the plans. 

There was only one "no" vote against the proposals last night, said Transportation Alternatives' Caroline Samponaro. "There were three strong two-minute speeches in favor," she added, "and no one spoke opposed." 

The plans will paint new curbside bike lanes on Stanton, Rivington, and Suffolk Streets, defining routes on low-traffic side streets to help cyclists avoid Delancey Street as they get on and off the Williamsburg Bridge. The board also voted in favor of a planted median on the wide and barren Bowery. Implementation of both projects is scheduled for May.

What's next for the Lower East Side? Samponaro said that a top TA priority is to ensure that plans for First and Second Avenues -- "the single biggest investment in biking in New York City, ever" -- are implemented effectively. So is helping cyclists deal with dangerous, traffic-ridden Delancey Street, which these improvements don't address. That will happen "in part by letting folks know about alternative routes and also by supporting those who are trying to create a safe connection" along Delancey itself, she said.

NYCDOT unveiled a slate of pedestrian and bicycle improvements to the transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 3 last night. Presenters asked for votes on two street safety projects: the construction of a planted center median on the Bowery between Canal and Division streets, and the addition of new curbside bike routes to improve connections to the Williamsburg Bridge.

Despite a few moments of crankiness from one member ("I can’t in good conscience vote for any more bicycle lanes"), the committee approved resolutions in favor of both measures.

The new bike routes on Suffolk, Stanton, and Rivington streets would complement improvements built last year, which extended the Williamsburg Bridge approach to Suffolk. Slated for implementation in May, the painted, curbside lanes are intended fill in key east-west connections north of where Delancey Street feeds into the bridge path.

The changes are important because Delancey remains extremely dangerous even as biking on the Williamsburg Bridge increases rapidly.

This January, 74-year-old Fuen Bai was killed by a school bus driver while riding in the no-man's-land between the bridge and Allen Street. Every year, traffic injures dozens of pedestrians and cyclists on the corridor, according to CrashStat. Meanwhile, DOT bike counts indicate that cycling on the bridge has quadrupled since 2004. Despite all the people biking over the bridge, the tantalizing proximity of the Allen Street bike path, and the dismal safety record of Delancey Street, the new plan does not address Delancey itself.

DOT's strategy is to divert Williamsburg Bridge bike traffic to calmer, safer side streets. "One of the issues is that people don’t know about the alternatives," Bicycle Program Coordinator Josh Benson told the audience last night. "When you get out there and try this route, it’s gonna make sense. It will change people’s behavior." DOT has no plans to add bike infrastructure to Delancey, he said.

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WABC is reporting that a woman riding a bike was struck and killed by a school bus driver at the intersection of Delancey and Ludlow at around 4:00 p.m. this afternoon. Streetsblog has a request in with NYPD for more information. From ABC's aerial picture of the crash scene, it appears as though the fatal collision occurred on the east-bound side of Delancey.

The intersection is just a few blocks away from the entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge. Since 2008, volunteer group Adopt-a-Bike Lane has been advocating for a protected bike path on this stretch of Delancey. "This is tragic news -- no one should risk his or her life to get to and from the most popular bridge for biking in the country," said Adopt-a-Bike Lane coordinator Marin Tockman. "We can only hope that in the wake of such sad news that our city officials do something to improve this essential corridor."

Fresh markings are going down on the revamped approach to the Williamsburg Bridge at Delancey Street. Courtesy of Adopt-a-Bike Lane volunteer leader Marin Tockman, here's what the site looked like as of yesterday afternoon. Seems like a marked, one-block connection to the median at Suffolk Street is imminent.

Another reader informs us that Suffolk, which runs one-way north to south, is set to receive a bike box at the point before it crosses Delancey. So riding to the bridge from the north should feel a lot more convenient, safe, and "normal" than before.

I'm also digging those continuous zebra stripes across Delancey.

We've received a few reports in the past week about construction work on the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge. DOT's press office says six bike ramps are being installed, and we hear from observers on the ground that construction is largely complete as of this morning: The bridge approach at Delancey and Clinton Street has three new curb cuts, as does the raised median at Suffolk Street. Now cyclists can get on and off the bike path without having to dismount or hop the curb.

The volunteers at Adopt-a-Bike-Lane have been pushing for a safer ride to the Willy-B since last fall. Together with Allen Street's ongoing livable streets makeover, this new, smoother approach is bound to whet appetites for a protected connection to points west.

A reader sends this note about today's commute:

Cops ticketing bikers on Delancey by the Williamsburg Bridge this morning. They claimed it wasn't us, that they were sent out because of community board complaints about bikers.

"The community board made us do it." If that's the case, then can we also get ramped up enforcement of reckless driving, which communities all over town have been demanding for as long as we can remember?

Update from our source:

Two bikers ahead of me were stopped by cops, I assumed because of running red lights. I hadn't even done so yet, when I was motioned by a cop towards him, where the two cops ticketed all three of us. I thought it was very interesting to note that the cops made a point of telling each of us that it really had nothing to do with us, that they were specifically told to come out and target bikers. I have no idea why they said that, but it seemed like they were trying to act respectfully. One cop even said, "Just get off the bike and walk it through the red." Wouldn't that be jaywalking? "Failed to yield to ped" is what the ticket says. There were no pedestrians around, other than the two cops, which I was nowhere near. I will be pleading Not Guilty.

Update 2: Thanks for the corroborating reports in the comments, folks. According to the community affairs desk at the 7th Precinct, the police have not received complaints from CB 3 about cyclists exiting the bridge. So, the issuing of bogus tickets to cyclists would appear to be the NYPD's own initiative.

Update 3: CB 3 district manager Susan Stetzer confirms that her community board has not complained to NYPD about cyclists.