Protected Bike Lanes

City Council Member Jimmy Vacca has made several public shows of support for street safety initiatives since taking over as chair of the transportation committee at the beginning of the year. To draw attention to the statewide complete streets bill, he stood with Speaker Christine Quinn at 23rd Street, using the Ninth Avenue bike lane as backdrop. He appeared with Quinn, Mayor Bloomberg, and DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan at last week's big pedestrian safety announcement. And he told Streetsblog in an interview this spring that reducing speeding is one of his top priorities.

After a lot of great advocacy from the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance and a down-to-the-wire vote at Community Board 7 this spring, DOT crews are laying down the first on-street protected bikeway above 34th 59th Street, on Columbus Avenue between 96th and 77th. Streetsblog contributor Ken Coughlin sent in these pictures of the painting and striping in progress last Friday.

Last Saturday, a group of volunteers with Transportation Alternatives set up a table on East 117th Street, gathering handwritten letters urging Mayor Bloomberg to extend protected bike lanes up to 125th Street, as originally planned. I've been meaning to write up a short dispatch about it all week. After a short period where we've seen some highly sensationalized bike coverage on CBS2 (last night's installment being the exception), grand theories about bike-related culture wars in the Daily News, and equivocating from Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith about the administration's commitment to street safety improvements north of 34th Street, lets get back to the basic reasons why the way we allocate street space matters.

Last night Manhattan Community Board 4 voted unanimously in favor of an 11-block extension for the Eighth Avenue bike lane, which would bring the protected bikeway up to 34th Street. In an interesting flourish, the board asked that the extension include separate left-turn phases for bikes and cars.

A lot of neighborhood activists swear by the maxim that it's easier to organize against something than to drum up support for something new. But apparently this rule of thumb doesn't apply to the Prospect Park West bike lane.

It's not finished yet, but some segments of the First Avenue bike lane are quite rideable. I used about eight blocks of it this weekend.

Before I get to the "intrigue" part of this post (it's juicy), first let me say that if you haven't checked out the Prospect Park West re-design yet, you owe it to yourself to head on over and take a look. Last time I checked, some of the finishing touches have yet to appear, but it's already one of the most effective street transformations the city has undertaken.

Now for some positive cycling news. Vancouver, British Columbia, in response to an infrastructure-driven jump in ridership, is installing a new separated two-way bike corridor on downtown's Dunsmuir Street. The project itself, part of an eventual network of protected lanes, seems impressive enough. But as this video shows, the would-be "greenest city in the world" absolutely nails the presentation.

East Harlem residents are outraged by the city's backtracking on plans to bring protected bike lanes to their neighborhood.