Wider Sidewalks & a Bicycle Park-and-Ride for Williamsburg

1:58 PM EST on December 18, 2006

Streetsblog has gotten a hold of a draft of DOT's plan to widen the sidewalk and install new bike racks at the Bedford Avenue L subway station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. As diagrammed above, the plan calls for the elimination of five motor vehicle parking spaces on N. 7th Street at Bedford Avenue, alongside the subway station stairwell on the southeast corner (see the corner at the bottom of the diagram).

The Bedford Avenue L is a popular park-and-ride spot for area bicycle commuters. With the bike racks on N. 7th between Bedford and Driggs often overloaded, it is common to see clumps of bicycles locked to street signs, subway railings and just about anything else.

Unfortunately, prior to this development, every so often park-and-ride cyclists would return home from work to find that their bikes were gone. As the New York Times reported last November, the bicycle thief was not who you'd think:

On Wednesday, 28-year-old graphic designer Miao Wang rode herbicycle 12 blocks from her apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to theBedford Avenue L subway station. She locked up, boarded her train andwent to work. That evening, she emerged from subway to find that herblack Diamondback bicycle was gone. Ms. Wang'sbicycle was one of nine confiscated in the latest police sweep of bikeslocked to railings, street signs and parking meters around the subwaystation.

DOT will be issuing a press release shortly and we'll have more information on this promising and, I believe, unprecedented development. Does anyone know of any other cases in New York City in which on-street car parking was removed and replaced with bicycle parking?

Photo: Untitledname on Flickr

Aaron Naparstek

AARON NAPARSTEK is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparsteks journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is the author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage" (Villard, 2003), a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by the endless motorist sociopathy observed from his apartment window. Prior to launching Streetsblog, Naparstek worked as an interactive media producer, pioneering some of the Web's first music web sites, online communities, live webcasts and social networking services. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Naparstek is a co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. You can find more of his work here: http://www.naparstek.com.

Wider Sidewalks & a Bicycle Park-and-Ride for Williamsburg

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