Bicycle Infrastructure

This past August, a young cyclist and a beloved Transportation Alternatives volunteer, James Langergaard, was struck and killed by a car at Queens Boulevard and 69th Street.

Community boards in districts east and west of Central Park will hold sessions tonight on cycling infrastructure and safety.

If you care about safe biking in Williamsburg and Greenpoint and you'd like to see the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway eventually reach completion, you'll want to show up at tonight's Brooklyn CB1 transportation meeting. The Kent Avenue bike lane is item number one on the agenda.

Team Amsterdam won running away at Saturday night's New Amsterdam Bike Slam design battle, the two-team competition to devise the best plan for boosting bicycle modeshare in New York City. But Team New York could go home with their heads high -- they presented a lot of ideas that would work wonders on New York City streets.

Clarence sends these shots from Kent Avenue, where the striping and painting of the city's first two-way, on-street parking protected bike lane is currently in progress. This is the view looking north from the vicinity of Clymer Street. The project will be completed in two phases. According to DOT's project presentation [PDF], the current work, stretching from Clymer to Broadway, will be complete in mid-September; the second phase, from Broadway to North 14th Street, is slated to wrap up in about a month. Below is the view looking south toward Clymer.

This afternoon the DOT press office emailed a brief reply to our query about potential safety enhancements to the recently opened Sands Street bike path. They say some details of the path, which is rideable for cyclists, are in progress:

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.

The Lo-Down, a blog covering the Lower East Side and environs, just wrapped up a slate of interviews with all the candidates running for the 1st District seat in the City Council: Margaret Chin, Pete Gleason, Arthur Gregory, PJ Kim, and the incumbent Alan Gerson. Along with John Liu, Gerson has been one of the council's most vocal critics of recent safety improvements for pedestrians and cyclists. But after reading up on the views of his competitors, it's doubtful that dumping Gerson in the September 15 primary -- provided he makes it on the ballot -- would put a more progressive voice in City Hall.

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.