Protected Bike Lanes
Streetsblog Basics
Eyes on the Street: Working Out the Kinks in the Columbus Ave Bike Lane
Upper West Side residents can ride with a new sense of safety and comfort on the recently installed Columbus Avenue protected bike lane, but between 81st and 82nd Streets, the bike lane has been consistently blocked by a minivan owned by Quality Florist, a local business located on that block.
October 26, 2010
Marty’s Message: If You Disagree With Marty, You Don’t Count
At yesterday's day of action on Prospect Park West, one contention from the opposition especially didn't sit well with everyone who turned out to support the redesigned, traffic-calmed street. With hundreds of bike lane supporters gathered on the sidewalk a few feet away, Borough President Marty Markowitz's chief of staff, Carlo Scissura, told the assembled crowd that the new PPW is the vision of just "one person," referring to transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.
October 22, 2010
Results of the New PPW: Speeding Down Dramatically, Cycling Up Big
Kate Hinds at Transportation Nation got her hands on an advance copy of DOT's Prospect Park West radar gun study and cyclist counts [PDF]. The data on traffic speeds confirm the results that Park Slope Neighbors observed this summer: The new configuration -- two traffic lanes and a two-way protected bike path instead of three traffic lanes and no bike path -- has drastically reduced speeding on PPW. Drivers now travel at average speeds that give them more time to react to pedestrians crossing the street, which will avert injuries and lessen the severity of any crashes that do occur.
October 22, 2010
Hundreds Rally in Support of Prospect Park West Bike Lane
Hundreds of Brooklynites gathered this morning at Grand Army Plaza to show their support for the redesigned Prospect Park West. They made a statement that should be hard for elected officials and the press to miss: Most people who live in the neighborhoods near PPW like biking and walking on the new, traffic-calmed street and don't want to see those changes taken away.
October 21, 2010
Three Myths From Marty About the PPW Bike Lane
It's showtime for the Prospect Park West bike lane, with a bike lane protest and a rally for the redesign coming up tomorrow morning.
October 20, 2010
Take the PPW Bike Lane Survey
We've got an addendum to today's news about Prospect Park West bike lane demonstrations. City Council members Brad Lander and Steve Levin have put up a survey to see what their constituents think of the re-designed street. The questions get pretty detailed but it only takes a few minutes to fill out.
October 14, 2010
Next Thursday: A Neighborly Rally for the Traffic-Calming PPW Bike Lane
Mark next Thursday on your calendars. It's a critical day for one of the city's most innovative livable streets projects. If you care about safer streets, it's going to be an excellent time to respectfully show your support in public.
October 14, 2010
A Proposal for NYPD: Protect New Yorkers From Jerks on the Road
The state of pedestrian-cyclist relations got some ink in the Times this weekend, in a piece the headline writers chose to run under the banner “The Cyclist-Pedestrian Wars.” That’s a pretty inflammatory choice of words, especially when you consider that the Times style guide still calls for using the non-confrontational “accident” to describe traffic collisions that kill pedestrians, cyclists, and other motorists. (Maybe these are the same headline writers who took Robert Sullivan’s 2009 plea for bike-ped solidarity and called it “The Wild Bunch.”)
September 20, 2010