Public Demands Safer West Side Highway at Packed Workshop

Dozens of New Yorkers packed into a room at Javits Center on Tuesday to demand that the proposed redesign of the Hudson River Greenway seize adjacent space currently devoted to cars in order to widen the crowded bike and pedestrian path.

“The chorus was aligned” in wanting a wider greenway and fewer conflicts between pedestrians, cyclists and drivers, said Jeffrey LeFrancois, executive director of the Meatpacking District BID, who attended the meeting hosted by the state Department of Transportation, which owns and maintains the greenway and adjacent six-lane road.

Route 9A, still known as the West Side Highway decades after an elevated highway structure on the route was taken down, functions as a highway with traffic lights for drivers — creating a dangerous separation between Manhattan and its waterfront.

Cyclists and pedestrians, meanwhile, must contend with a narrow and increasingly crowded greenway path that hasn’t been substantially altered in decades. Since 2011, drivers have killed seven pedestrians and seven cyclists on the strip below 59th Street — including seven people who died in a vehicular terrorist attack back in 2017.

“[Taking some space from cars] to give space to pedestrians and bikes is necessary, ” said Christine Berthet, co-chair of CB4’s Transportation Planning Committee, who also attended.

NYS DOT’s revamp of 9A from 59th Street down to the Battery is in the early planning stages — Tuesday’s meeting inaugurated what will be an 18-month process of gathering input and studying traffic patterns on the street. The next public workshop will be held virtually on June 3.

The New Yorkers who packed into Tuesday’s meeting brought a wealth of personal experience with the problems that plague cyclists and pedestrians on 9A, and what must be done to make things better.

“Tens of thousands of people cross the West Side Highway [in the Meatpacking District] daily. … Route 9A is disproportionately allocated to cars, and it needs to be fixed,” said LeFrancois.

After splitting into groups to discuss the road’s weaknesses, participants from each group share top three issues that came up. Several expressed that the lack of sufficient space for people walking or biking perpetuates an unsafe environment.

“There’s not enough space for non-automotive traffic, and what does exist is being forced to be split between two modes of traffic,” said one participant who did not provide a name.

Known for being the busiest bike path in the country, the greenway’s standard width forces conflicts between “cyclists who are commuting, cyclists who are there for exercise, walkers, runners, and people who are just out enjoying the day,” the person said.

Other attendees described struggling to pass slower cyclists due to congestion, narrow lanes and bollards installed after the 2017 terror attack, as well as the harrowing spots where cars cross over the greenway to access the waterfront. Refuge spaces for pedestrians waiting to cross the road are so small that people often onto the bike lane while waiting for the infrequent walk signal.

Attendees floated a number of strategies to make the greenway more hospitable for its users, including to:

• Eliminate a vehicle lane or vehicle lanes to widen the greenway,
• Add bus lanes on the route to speed up transit service,
• Build pedestrian bridges over the roadway,
• Install more crosswalks and large pedestrian refuges,
• Replace bollards with more effective car-blocking barriers,
• Designate a fast lane slow lane on the bike path,
• Improve crosswalk visibility and signal timing for safer pedestrian crossings,

Back in 2022, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, who’s now running for city comptroller, floated a mockup of a reimagined Route 9A that repurposed the westernmost downtown car lane for a two-way on-street protected bike lane.

Berthet agrees with the spirit of Levine’s proposal, she said.

“The pedestrian should have one thing, the slow bikes should have one lane, and the fast bikes have another lane,” she told Streetsblog.

The idea of designating lanes for speed differentials in particular seemed very popular among meeting attendees. Popular ideas floated over the course of the workshop — like nixing a lane of traffic — often received applause. LeFrancois commended state officials for what he said was a “really good meeting.”

“It’s a breath of fresh air for an usually opaque NYS DOT,” he said.

You can submit comments and concerns about specific locations on the greenway via the state-made interactive map embedded below:

_{A public feedback map hosted by the New York State Department of Transportation where users can place pins and comment on issues along the Route 9A corridor. Submissions go directly to NYSDOT. Map: NYSDOT}