Streetsblog New York City

The Kent Avenue lane at work, with squad car. Photo: i'm not sayin, i'm just sayin.

Convened by City Council members Yassky and Reyna, the meeting got off to a rough start after MTA reps delivered news about service cuts that will affect the neighborhood. The tone was set for a contentious discussion of Kent Avenue. "Business owners came out against it," said Sholom Brody, a member of TA's Brooklyn Committee. "The problem is 'no standing'; they're really upset about the stretch between Clymer and Division Avenue," a small portion of the lane's full length.

The parking situation has already been through community board review. In April, CB1 approved plans for the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway, which would offset the removal of parking spots on Kent by identifying new spaces on side streets. (The current bike lane is a stopgap until the Greenway is built.) All told, DOT made three presentations to the community board about the project [PDF]. Opponents now say this process was insufficient.

An NYPD ticket blitz immediately after the parking rules took effect appears to have inflamed opposition, and the usual canards, of course, are in full effect. According to Brody, one bike lane opponent claimed to have seen only 20 cyclists use the lane over the course of a full day, a figure that DOT refuted with its own 12-hour count -- 500 cyclists.

If only a zoning amendment could retroactively require the New York Times Building to provide bike parking.

Some interesting nuggets are coming out of DOT bike coordinator Josh Benson's ongoing Q & A with readers of the Times' City Room blog. In yesterday's installment, Benson outlined upcoming additions to the Queens bike network: 

In Queens, specifically, we have a number of bike lane projects either under way or on the drawing board for the coming months, including:

• 35th Street, Astoria (1.7 miles)
• Linden Boulevard, St. Albans (3 miles)
• Sunnyside Connector to the Queensboro Bridge, Woodside, Sunnyside, Sunnyside Gardens (5.2 miles)
• Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City, Astoria (7 miles).

Then, responding to a question about the need for more indoor bike parking, he said a zoning amendment to mandate bike amenities in or around certain buildings is in the works (no sure thing, of course, but certainly encouraging). A City Planning spokeswoman told Streetsblog the department is aiming to introduce the amendment by the end of this year. Benson's full response comes after the jump.

A tipster sends this shot from earlier today of a newly-painted bike lane on Prince Street.

After the jump, DOT bike program coordinator Josh Benson answers a question from a City Room reader about painted lanes.

Getting in on the Bike Month action, City Room has DOT bike program coordinator Josh Benson answering reader questions this week.

As of this writing, over 100 comments have come in since the thread opened yesterday afternoon. While many concern the usual stuff -- cars encroaching into bike lanes, problems finding secure parking, etc. -- some are more esoteric. One reader suggests a city tax credit for bike commuters, while another wants city-issued baseball bats to keep drivers in line. "Ed" wonders if Benson is BikeSnob, and "BikerGrl2008" cuts to the chase with comment #1:

There’s a spot open on my bicycle built for two. Will you join me?

That you, Julia?

Photo: City Room

The Department of Transportation revealed plans for New York City's first-ever physically-separated bike lane, or "cycle track," at a Manhattan Community Board 4 meeting last night. The new bike path will run southbound on Ninth Avenue from W. 23rd to W. 16th Street in Manhattan. Unlike the typical Class II on-street bike lane in which cyclists mix with motor vehicle traffic, this new design will create an exclusive path for bicycles between the sidewalk and parked cars.

DOT's plan also includes traffic signals for bicyclists, greenery-filled refuge areas for pedestrians, a new curbside parking plan, and signalized left-turn lanes for motor vehicles. "The left turn lane will be immediately adjacent to the bike lane," DOT Bicycle Program Director Josh Benson explained to CB4 members. "As a cyclist you’ll know that if there’s a car next to you, that car is turning left." Likewise, left-turning drivers' view of cyclists will be completely unobscured. The bike lane is 10-feet wide to accommodate street cleaning and emergency vehicles.

DOT planners consulted with Danish urban designer Jan Gehl on the plan, according to Transportation Alternatives Deputy Director Noah Budnick. "They are drawing from international best-practice and being smart about talking to other engineers and planners who have implemented these types of designs," Budnick said. "They really thought holistically about everything that is going on on the street."

These types of physically-separated on-street bike lanes, increasingly referred to as "cycle tracks," are commonly found in bike-friendly cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam. Livable Streets advocates have long pushed DOT to experiment with this type of bike lane design in New York City. After Benson's presentation, Community Board 4's transportation committee voted to approve the DOT plan which is part of a larger pedestrian safety and public space initiative around the intersection of 9th Avenue and 14th Street.

The new bike lane design is a break from previously stated DOT policy. In March, during discussion of a possible Houston Street bike lane, DOT officials told Manhattan's Community 2 that physically-separated bike lanes should only be installed on streets with a maximum of 8 intersections per mile to ensure fewer conflicts with turning vehicles.

A copy of the presentation DOT made at last night's Community Board meeting can be found here.

Ian Dutton and community leaders speak out at an August 30, 2006 rally for bike safety on Houston Street.

This comes from Ian Dutton, a member of Manhattan's Community Board 2 who has been fighting to improve bicyclist safety on Houston Street:

Those of you who have been following the saga know that last year, Manhattan's CB2 and neighborhood residents called for DOT to implement safe space for bicyclists into the reconstruction project for W. Houston St.

At last month's CB2 Traffic & Transportation Committee meeting, Ryan Russo and Josh Benson of DOT presented an alternative proposal for a bike route based on parallel streets, Bleecker St. and Prince St., citing safety concerns particularly involving turning traffic and trucks on W. Houston St. The board initially was skeptical that there was nothing DOT could envision to make W. Houston St. safe for the many cyclists that use Houston St., but Russo and Benson were firm that the reason they could not propose a plan for Houston St. was safety-based and not on DOT's insistence of accommodating increasingly heavy traffic volumes.

Now this month, at the Tuesday, April 10 meeting of the CB2 Traffic & Transportation Committee, the second item on the agenda is a public discussion of the DOT's proposed alternative plan.

It is crucial that supporters of the plan make their feelings clear at this committee meeting to counter arguments that no one favors this plan for bike lanes or that there will be negative effects of removing parking from several blocks. This alternative plan in fact has many benefits for cyclists, allowing for designated space on streets that are much more pleasant to ride on than Houston St. while still creating a crosstown corridor that links to the Hudson River Greenway.

What you can do:

1. Attend the committee meeting and make sure that you voice your support! The meeting is on Tuesday, April 10, at 6:30pm, at the LGBT Community Services Center, 208 W. 13th St. between 7th Ave. and Greenwich Ave. (ask at the front desk for the room assignment).

2. Write a letter to DOT and CB2. Visit http://www.bikehoustonst.net to download a Word file -- the first page gives you some suggested points and the second page is an outline that you can fill in with a few sentences of your own. Then email it back to info@bikehoustonst.net.

DOT wants 20th and 21st Streets to be Lower Manhattan’s prime river-to-river bike route.

If you are interested in contributing to the development and improvement of New York City’s bicycle network, show up at this meeting tonight:

The transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 6 will hear a presentation by Josh Benson, the Department of Transportation’s Bicycle Program Director, regarding the river-to-river bike lane project for 20th and 21st Streets.

On 20th Street between First Avenue and the FDR Expressway (where Stuyvesant Town
and Peter Cooper Village annexed 21st Street), DOT will be removing a motor vehicle travel lane in each direction in order to stripe the bike lane and make the connection to the East River Greenway. You can be sure the Forces of Convenient Motoring will be there and they will not be happy about this one.

Come out, lend your support, and if it seems appropriate, give DOT a push to experiment with physically-separated bike lanes:

7:00 pm
NYU Medical Center
550 First Avenue
Classroom D

I will not be able to attend tonight's big meeting in Brooklyn so I really hope that someone will ask DOT about this and report back on what they say:

At the big Houston Street bike lane meeting a couple of weeks ago, DOT's Ryan Russo and Josh Benson told Manhattan's Community Board 2 that physically-separated bike lanes should only be installed on streets with a maximum of 8 intersections per mile. Houston Street has 18 intersections per mile which, they believe, makes it not a good spot for a Class I bike lane.

Ninth Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn has exactly 8 intersections per mile. It therefore meets DOT's own standards for when a physically-separated, on-street bike lane is warranted! On top of that, neighborhood people are upset about the idea of a bike lane preventing them from occassionally double-parking to load and unload their cars. A physically-separated bike lane might be an answer to those concerns and a real win-win.

The lanes could be put between the sidewalk and parked cars as is done in so many great biking cities around the world. Here is an example from Copenhagen, Denmark:

Another possibility would be to run both lanes between the sidewalk and parked cars along the southern side of 9th Street, away from the double-parking commotion in front of the grocery store, post office and car service station. Here is a two-way bike lane I saw in Paris, France recently (no one is riding because it is in the middle of a hail storm):

It's just Thermoplast. Can't we experiment in New York City?