East Harlem

Community Board 11 Approves East Harlem Protected Bike Lanes

The full board of Community Board 11 voted to approve protected bike lanes on First and Second Avenues last night. The news was first reported by Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson over Twitter this morning.

By Noah Kazis

12:32 PM EDT on September 21, 2011

When complete, the bike lanes and pedestrian refuge islands will run from 96th Street to 125th Street on both avenues. Construction will start on Second Avenue, where there is currently no bike infrastructure, and will not cover Second Avenue south of 100th Street until Second Avenue Subway construction is complete.

CB 11’s transportation committee approved the plans by a vote of 5-1-2 earlier this month. East Harlem residents and elected officials had been promised the lanes last year, but when revised plans had construction limited to below 34th Street, they fought hard to get the lanes built in their neighborhood.

Wolfson thanked City Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito for her support of the lanes. “Yeah!” she responded. “Protected bike lanes benefit all in our community.”

We’ll update this post with more information on last night’s vote as it becomes available.

Noah Kazis

Noah joined Streetsblog as a New York City reporter at the start of 2010. When he was a kid, he collected subway paraphernalia in a Vignelli-map shoebox. Before coming to Streetsblog, he blogged at TheCityFix DC and worked as a field organizer for the Obama campaign in Toledo, Ohio. Noah graduated from Yale University, where he wrote his senior thesis on the class politics of transportation reform in New York City. He lives in Morningside Heights.