Protected Bike Lanes

The re-design of First and Second Avenues has been a complex project to judge since the initial plans were unveiled earlier this year. From the beginning, it's been the most ambitious re-envisioning of a major corridor we've seen in New York City to date: 250 blocks of faster bus service and safer traveling for cyclists and pedestrians. But it has not met the high expectations of New Yorkers who held out hope for a truly high-performance busway and a continuous, protected bicycle corridor.

Last night, NYCDOT's Ted Wright presented a revised design for the Flushing Avenue bikeway to the transportation committee of Brooklyn Community Board 2. The new version preserves plans for a fully-protected, two-way bike path while leaving room for two-way bus service and auto traffic. Because the revised design requires more complex construction work than the original, however, Brooklynites will have to wait a few years before that phase of the project gets built. In the meantime, DOT plans to lay down a less-robust interim project, which the committee endorsed unanimously.

Earlier this week, the transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 7 issued a split decision on the protected bike lane proposed for a 20-block stretch of Columbus Avenue. One of the committee chairs who voted against it, Andrew Albert, told the room full of bike lane supporters that he couldn't endorse the project because of potential difficulties with commercial deliveries. According to Columbus Avenue BID director Barbara Adler, opposing the proposal on those grounds is, basically, a whole lot of nonsense.

Looks like some Manhattan community board types still want to see their local streets keep that highway-in-the-city feel.

The self-hating cyclists at the Brooklyn Paper are at it again. A year after siding with a handful of merchants who wanted to erase the Fifth Avenue bike lane, Gersh Kuntzman and the editors of Brooklyn's flagship media property say they don't want to see a protected, two-way bike path on Prospect Park West:

The current concept for the Flushing Avenue segment of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway footprint calls for converting the street to one-way westbound traffic flow. Two-way vehicle traffic, say DOT planners, will create conflicts that endanger cyclists and pedestrians as trucks and cars turn left into the Brooklyn Navy Yard. At Wednesday night's public meeting on the project, the one-way conversion didn't sit well with most people who showed up, prompting the DOT team to say they'll take a second look at how the street can be configured.

Brooklyn Community Board 2, NYCDOT, and City Council members Steve Levin and Letitia James are putting on a public meeting tonight to get feedback on the two-way protected bike path with planted pedestrian medians proposed for Brooklyn's Flushing Avenue. The project is part of the footprint of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway and would form an important connection to three East River bridges and Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Last night, Streetfilms' Robin Urban Smith and I got to catch the second half of NYCDOT's info session about the Prospect Park West traffic calming/two-way bike path project. The first half of the evening is when the fuss happened -- apparently a few people made it known in no uncertain terms that they think it's crazy to narrow a wide street where more than 70 percent of drivers are speeding. When we showed up, everyone was calmly perusing the DOT posters and talking amongst themselves. The upshot is that we don't have much drama for you in these short interviews -- just clips of people explaining why they like the project.