Streetfilms: The Case for Bicycle Boulevards in NYC

We’ve seen lots of new, innovative bikeway designs appear on New
York City streets over the past few years. But there’s one very
promising concept we haven’t seen — bicycle boulevards. Bicycle
boulevard design uses a variety of techniques to create low-traffic,
low-speed streets where cyclists mix comfortably with cars. They’re
very popular in Portland and Berkeley, two cities with high bicycle
mode-share. Here in New York, though, they don’t seem to be part of the
playbook yet. In this Streetfilm we ask: Why not?

We spoke to Mia Birk, who helped introduce bicycle boulevards to Portland. She’s also the co-author of a new guidebook to bike boulevard design.
Here we explore some of the concepts in the guidebook and show how they
might be applied to New York. Outside Manhattan, especially, important
cycling routes could benefit from the bicycle boulevard treatment.