That Lafayette lane should just be made parking protected.
The buffer is very big, and the paint is basically invisible now.

Bedford Ave. is pretty gnarly in places, too.

Without good markings, even protected bike lanes stop working well. Look at how the contractors working on the third water tunnel have replaced the original Grand Street bike lane with an inferior version sans buffer zone (fodder for a future post). You would need grade separation to lessen the importance of maintaining good markings.

the Lafayette Street lane between Prince and Spring.
You guys really work out of Bike Habitat?  What dedication. 

No, but seriously, that lane sucks.  It was the queue for the gas station in the post-sandy Chaos. 

And it’s also a passing lane for impatient cars and the site of the last time I was hit by a car on my bike (who didn’t realize he was in a bike lane as he throttled north on Lafayette to pass someone on the left when the light changed . . except i was in the way . . . and he did $200 of damage to my bike!). 

Man, I get so angry when I think about the time I got hit of Lafayette.  I was pretty much fine (minor scrapes) and, since I was in a hurry and I was ok (and I didn’t realize my bike was damaged) I was like ok, whatever man.  But what the fuck. He could’ve killed me.  Some dude, in a bike lane, accelerates and hits me from behind, lifting me into the air.  And to him, it’s a 3 minute delay (oh, my bad).   

And even better!  That intersection is where the NYPost did their stake out where they counted all the bicyclists who violated traffic laws (to say nothing of the cars, who are the invaders, in cramped pedestrian overrun SoHo).   So,  NYPost goes out of the way for some bs about killer/reckless bicyclists, at an intersection, where I could’ve been killed by an idiot driver.  

God, I cannot wait for bike share.  Not just for the convenience.  But for the democratizing effect it’ll have on our population.  Biking will no longer be some “niche”.   It’ll be viewed as another option for people to get around.  As it should be. 

To clarify, by “grade separation” I meant putting the bike lane at sidewalk grade, like on Allen Street or Sands Street. Not building elevated bikeways.

@BenFried:disqus 
Oh, the Grand Street bike lane.  Hahahhaha.  That’s a joke.  

There’s always construction, Chinese merchants, and chickens in that bike lane.  And I swear it used to be green too.

Yah, cannot wait for the update.  it’s like a cruel joke.  Grand St was supposed to be a good one.  And now . . . blah.   

kevd  is right:”That Lafayette lane should just be made parking protected.
The buffer is very big, and the paint is basically invisible now.”

And it should be made to two-way.

In Chicago, they are taking every opportunity they can find to create protected bike lanes. Here, we look for excuses to not create protected lanes. We restripe the double parking-clogged buffered bike lanes on Hudson Street with the same buffered lane setup, even though there is tons on local support for them to be converted into parking-protected lanes and they connect to other protected lanes. We’ve been waiting for years for the 1st Ave lane in the UES and East Harlem to be installed, even thought the CBs have approved it THREE TIMES! We let existing protected lanes on Grand Street fade into oblivion, even the advocates and the city went through hell to put them in and keep them. All this is happening under Sadik-Khan. Imagine what will happen when we get a mayor and commissioner that aren’t friendly to bikes.

@BenFried:disqus “To clarify again, the point I wanted to make in my original comment is that you need to maintain the markings on protected bike lanes as well as the un-protected bike lanes. I don’t think raising most bike lanes in NYC to sidewalk level is a cost-effective or good idea.”

I agree wholeheartedly on both counts. The bike lanes on 164th Street near me have pretty much faded into oblivion roughly 5 years after they were striped. I wonder if there’s anything better than thermoplast as far as longevity goes?

@BenFried:disqus I think we’re in agreement. Raising most bike lanes would make them flush with the sidewalk and while that works in some cities – Berlin, Copenhagen – I think they’d just become sidewalk extensions here.  Witness 8th Avenue above 42nd St.

The point is to push for separation where it makes sense and where space is available.  Even Copenhagen has a lot of lanes on side streets that are just painted  Lafayette, Hudson Street…it would seem to make a lot of sense to turn these very wide buffered lanes into separated lanes.  That would mostly erase the urgent need to repaint – paint would last longer too, since there would be fewer incursions from heavy cars and trucks.

report faded bikelanes here: http://on.nyc.gov/XJQuCJ 

I didn’t realise that the Cartlon Ave. bridge was back. Great.

Regarding bike lanes that need to be re-striped: the last few blocks before the Williamsburg Bridge are in pretty sad shape. Once you get to S.4th St. from Borinquen Pl., the lane is not so visible. The worst part is the sidewalk section, on the east sidewalk of S.5th Pl., which is meant to carry bridge-bound bike traffic. The lack of clear markings creates confusion at the intersection of S.4th St. and S.5th Pl., where more and more bridge-bound bicyclists ride in the street on S.5th Pl., going the wrong way on the on-street bike lane.
And how about the Dean St. lane? Has that been repainted after the repaving? The last time I was on that street, which was about three weeks ago, there was no lane at all east of Nostrand Ave.

If I may return to Williamsburg for a moment (and apologise for going a bit off topic): what can be done about the badly-placed “East” sign on Roebling St. that directs northbound cyclists to turn right at S.3rd St? Whose idea was this? If you turn right at that corner, you get to Borinquen Pl., where you are deposited on the westbound side of the street The bike map says “Eastbound Use Sidewalk”; but there are no markings for this. In practice, the sign just leads to more wrong-way cycling on the street.

Clearly, the “East” sign on Roebling belongs at S.1st St.  Making a right turn there leads a cyclist to Marcy; another right brings you south, across Borinquen, where you can make a left to continue east on Borinquen Pl. / Grand St.

I wrote to the DOT about this, and I got a form reply.  Does anyone here have a thought about whether there is any hope of improving this situation?

Anyway, it doesn’t matter; it’ll all be gone in a few years when the next mayor comes in.  As a daily Williamsburg Bridge commuter, I want to weep every time I emerge on the Manhattan side and I see all the westbound bicyclists zooming onto the one-way mid-street Delancey St. bike lane that’s meant to be used only eastbound, as the large “Wrong Way” signs clearly indicate. These idiots ignore these signs, riding right between them onto the bike lane, and then zoom into the left lane of westbound Delancey.

Every bicyclist who behaves like that is contributing to the certain end of our bike infrastructure — the general public, seeing this kind of bicycling behaviour, comes to the conclusion that there is no point in preserving or extending bike lanes, since bicyclists so often abuse them. I wish I could say that these people were wrong.

(Sorry for going on. It just makes me so sad to see this destructive behaviour on the part of my fellow bicyclists.)

Thanks for the suggestion about 311 and the Community Boards. Maybe I’ll try that.

About the infrastructure: from a philosophical standpoint, you are entirely correct that the streets should be designed for riders’ needs. However, I was talking in terms of strategy. Even though a two-way mid-street bike lane certainly could work on Delancey St., the lane as it exists right now is not two-way, but westbound only. We bicyclists need to acknowledge that, for our own good.

An analogous situation exists with respect to red lights. Obviously, a reasonable policy would be that bicyclists should have to treat red lights as stop signs, coming to a full stop, and then proceeding when safe. But, that is in fact not the state of the law, which requires bikes to stop and wait at a red light.

This is, of course, absurd. Nevertheless, our behaving as though the reasonable stop-sign policy exists will not get us any closer to actually having it; rather, this type of behaviour will only make it less likely that we’ll ever get there, by providing drivers with dinner-table conversation about those crazy bicyclists who don’t follow the law.

I won’t claim to be 100% perfect on this score at all times day and night. At midnight on Myrtle Ave. in Queens when no one is around, I sometimes go through before the end of the red-light period. But, most of the time — such as when I ride on Manhattan avenues during the day, being seen by hundreds of people at any given moment — I surely do wait the full period at all red lights.  And it might surprise you how often I get thanked by pedestrians and by drivers! Evidently, pedestrians and drivers expect to see bicyclists flouting the law, and are often surprised when this doesn’t happen.

This tells me two things:

1) Every bicyclist is in a sense an ambassador to the general public. The public sees any given bicyclist as representative; so each of us has a responsibilty not to act foolish. 

2) We are in big trouble, as the next mayor is bound to pander to this widespread public perception of cyclists as scofflaws, and to roll back most of the positive changes that the current administration has brought in.

The sad truth is that we are far from the point where we can say that bicycle infrastructure has arrived as a permanent part of the fabric of the City. All of it could be gone at the stroke of a pen. So it’s incumbent upon us not to blithely throw our infrastructure away by giving the next administration reasons to remove it. 

To add to my last comment, while also touching on what jrab said about advocating for cyclists rather than for paint and lines, we need to take a cue from great cycling countries when designing bike infrastructure. One thing I’ve heard repeatedly is the line “bikes flow like water”. In other words, you should design infrastructure to enable that natural flow. Requiring complete stops is a tool which should be used very sparingly, and then only when there’s no reasonable alternative. The problem with a lot of NYC’s new bicycle infrastructure is the fact that it really doesn’t take this into account. Striping a lane, or even  moving the parking lane over to make a protected bike lane, doesn’t magically turn a street into a great bike route, not when you still have red lights every 2 or 3 blocks at average cycling speeds. You either need to get rid of the lights, or build a grade-separated route. If you fail to do either of these things, then don’t be surprised when cyclists routinely ignore red lights. On the flip side, when you build a great route, the cyclists will come. Witness how popular the West Side Greenway is. Incidentally, I rode the Belt Parkway Greenway for the first time on Sunday. While not ideal (the roadway is too narrow on some of the bridges and there should be a bridge over Flatbush Avenue instead of a signalized crossing), it’s worlds better than anything else I’ve ever been on. Not needing to stop or slow down for 8 miles makes for quick, relaxed trips. We need a lot more of this type of bike infrastructure. Maybe if we had it, cyclists would actually obey the one or two red lights they might encounter once off the greenways.

Riding a bicycle doesn’t entitle you to break the law, but you are always free to break laws that you believe are wrong. It’s called civil disobedience.

That said, there is a difference between civil disobedience and selfishness, and it is that if you are engaging in civil disobedience you have to be prepared to accept the consequences. No whining that the cop chose to ticket you, and no pretending that you didn’t run the red light. Go and tell the judge: I chose to run this red light because I believe the law is wrong. This won’t get you off the hook (and it shouldn’t), but the idea is that if enough people do that, eventually the powers that be notice and change the law. Will it work in this case? I doubt it, but that’s the idea.

Do they have traffic lights every 80 m (250 ft) in Copehagen, Paris, and Berlin? I’ve visited all three but I didn’t ride a bike and this topic wasn’t on my mind, so it’s hard for me to tell.

@qrt145:disqus I’ve never been to any of those cities, but in European cities in general they don’t use traffic lights all that often, opting instead for roundabouts. Mostly you might have a lot of traffic lights only in the very densest parts of town. Also, when traffic signals are used on bike routes, it’s often to give bikes priority via detectors over motorized traffic, not to stop them. On the other hand, NYC even by the standards of the US grossly overuses traffic signals. We have more signalized intersections than New Jersey, Connecticut, and upstate NY combined.

Joe R.: “On a trip of any length coming to a complete stop at every red light just isn’t physically possible even for the strongest cyclists. That’s the real reason the law needs to be changed. The law as it stands now is effectively asking cyclists to do something they just can’t physically do except on the shortest trips, and then penalizing them when they don’t.”
I don’t get why you say that stopping at every red light “isn’t physically possible”. How is that so taxing? I mean, it’s annoying; but it sure isn’t impossible. As I mentioned, I stop at all red lights, with occasional exceptions during the overnight, and then only when there is no one around. Understand that I am not all that afraid of getting caught (though I did once get a ticket); rather, I am unwilling to be a bad advertisement for bicycilsts.

Today I rode 33 miles all through Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn; and I stopped at every red light. This past summer, I did several days of over 80 miles, and two days of over 100 miles, including my longest trip ever, a 117-mile ride to Seaside Heights. (Little did I know that that would be my last chance to see that place in its then-current condition!) And I stopped at every red light during all of those trips.

From the physical standpoint, stopping at a red light is not at all impossible, or even diffucult. It is only an annoyance, as I mentioned.

Joe R.: “Most unjust or nonsensical laws are changed only because large segments of the population ignore them.”

You are correct about that; widespread lawbreaking often has a beneficial effect in society. For example, the widespread use of marijuana has had a positive effect on the legal landscape, helping to create a climate in which legalisation is not unthinkable.

However, you are ignoring the differences in scale: a huge percentage of people smoke or have smoked weed, quite possibly a majority. Whereas, only a fraction of that number are bicyclists. Indeed, one of the arguments about the continued criminalisation of marijuana is that it has the absurd effect of making this huge segment of the population guilty of criminal acts. If bicyclist constituted a majority / near-majority of the public, then we’d be similarly positioned to fight unjust laws by means of widespread lawbreaking.
Joe R: “For example, New York State raised the speed limit on the Thruway from 55 to 65 mph exactly because most drivers weren’t obeying the lower speed limit.”

Well, we see there that even sensible laws can be altered by widespread lawbreaking, as long as the lawbreaking is done by a huge portion of the population.  Unfortunately, we bicyclists just ain’t got the numbers.

Joe R. “Paris recently changed the law to allow cyclists to treat reds as yields (with the reasonable provision that a cyclist can’t sue a motorist or press charges if they get hit doing this). NYC could do the same.”

Yes, it could — jf there were the political will here. But there isn’t. For all the welcome increase in bicycling over the last decade, and for all the good that the bike infrastructure has done to help accustom motorists to our presence, we bicyclists are still a small minority, and are even considered weirdos by many (i’d guess most) motorists.  Without selling short the heroic political work of bike advocacy groups, I would remind you that it wasn’t the masses’ political will which has got us this far; it was simply the good fortune of having the visionary Janette Sadik-Khan in the Bloomberg adminstration.

Joe R.: “Most of the objection on the part of motorists to allowing cyclists to pass reds is due to concern that their insurance would go up if they were sued after colliding with a cyclist passing a red light.”If only motorists’ objection to such a scheme were based in something so reasonable; if it were, it could be answered easily.  In reality, most motorists harbour a contempt for bicyclists. They see bicycles as toys which do not belong on the road, which are “in the way”; and they see bike infrastructure as impeding the proper uses of streets. (Let’s remember that these were the underlying assumptions of every professional in the DOT (and everywhere else in City government) before Sadik-Khan.) Motorists’ objection to allowing bicyclists to treat red lights as yield signs (or even stop signs) resembles xenophobes’ objection to amnesty for undocumented immigrants: why should we reward these people for breaking the law?

I advocate bicyclists’ obeying the law, but not out of any ideological desire to be consilatory.  I would be correctly defined as a “radical” in many respects.  In my ideal New York City, the majority would be bicyclists, and there would be few private cars — none at all in Manhattan south of 110th Street. Motor vehicles would be used mainly for their legitimate uses: buses, delivery vehciles, and emergency vehicles.

My position that we bicyclists ought to obey the laws (even the stupid laws) is a strategy designed both to protect the gains which we have seen, and to avoid instigating a backlash which would undo these gains.

Furhtermore, there is an ethical component: if we want the bike lanes and other infrastructure, we have to agree to use this infrastructure “correctly” — that is, in keeping with the law in its current state, even as we work to change the laws.

But, if we bicyclists forget that we are a small minority, with a fraction of the political clout of motorists (even in a city where the majorty of residents do not own cars), and if we behave as though we are operating from some kind of position of strength, then not only will we not make progress, but we will see the progress we have thus far made wiped out.

One more thing here regarding the infrastructure. NYC isn’t operating in a vacuum. If you look, you’ll see cities across the country and the world installing bicycle infrastructure. NYC’s next mayor will have to continue to build on the work of JSK, regardless of the feelings of a few cranky constituents, just to keep NYC from being seen as falling behind on this issue. In the end it might be one-upsmanship, rather than genuine desire to help cyclists, which gets a lot of new infrastructure built. London or Paris or Chicago or Beijing will do something, then NYC will turn around and say look, we can do it better. The beauty of cycling infrastructure is that it’s relatively cheap, even if you go the entire nine yards and make it grade-separated. We might not be able to afford to outdo China with subway construction, but we could make them envious of our bicycle network with very little money.

@FerdinandCesarano:disqus Thank you very much for the response and especially for your life story. As such, I feel obligated to tell you a bit more about myself. When I was very young, we lived on Melrose Street in Brooklyn. I don’t remember much because we moved to Woodside Houses in Astoria when I was about 3 or 4, in the mid 1960s. We stayed there until we moved to our present location-a private house in Flushing, located in the area near Jewel Avenue and 164th Street, in 1977. I therefore spent a lot of my childhood and youth in a solidly urban setting. When we moved out here, it initially felt like the boondocks. The subway was a 2.5 mile bus ride away instead of a few blocks walk. I missed the street life of Astoria. Eventually I got used to it. The good part is this area is centrally located. I can be in Manhattan in 35 minutes via bus/subway. Or I can walk to downtown Flushing in about the same amount of time if I want to experience a vibrant urban setting. Jamaica is also within easy walking distance. I would ride to these places instead of walking if only decent, safe bike parking existed (that’s really a problem citiwide, not just here).

Anyway, when I lived in Astoria I stopped riding a bike much once I was in middle school. Moving out here in Eastern Queens, I rediscovered my love for riding, partially because there just wasn’t as much to see or do as there was in Astoria. And like you, I tended to explore more urban areas than where I lived. I rode many times to my old neighborhood. I did and still do ride along Jamaica/Hillside Avenues for the return part of trips out to Glen Cove Road in Long Island (I take Union Turnpike going out).

The truth is I would most certainly find riding through many of the areas you describe infinitely more interesting than many of the places I currently ride. The big problem has been the marked increase in auto traffic since the 1980s. This has turned riding through urban settings from something which was relatively pleasant into a chore. Many roads where I used to be able to make quick, stress-free trips are now clogged with double-parked cars, crazy drivers, and about three to five times the number of traffic lights. I used to ride Queens Boulevard frequently, for example, sometimes all the way to Long Island City. At one time I could make that trip in not much over 30 minutes. Now Queens Blvd. is a mess, full of potholes and unsynchronized traffic lights which seem to stay red forever. It’s much the same on many other urban routes I used to take. Now mind you, I don’t expect to average 25 mph in an urban setting, but expecting to average 15 mph or so isn’t entirely unreasonable, and in fact I used to sometimes do better than that. Now if I try riding some of these roads in the daytime, I’m lucky to average half that. Many times, I can walk as fast, especially if I stop at all the lights. This is why I now pretty much just ride after 9 PM, and on roads where the traffic lights are sparse. Yes, it’s limiting, but riding on the roads I used to love is now nothing but a tedious chore. I might love to see those bike lanes in Manhattan, but getting there means putting up with over 10 miles of tedious riding unless I go late at night (and I’ll still need to pass many red lights if I want to make reasonable time). Late nights I wouldn’t be experiencing much street life anyway, so what would be the point?

That brings me to some greater points about our bike network. I regularly ride all of the streets you mentioned in Eastern Queens, and yes, they’re not bad as is. Same thing with the LIE service road, where I can often average 16 to 18 mph without passing red lights simply because you only have lights every 10 blocks or so, and they seem timed for my riding speed. We probably don’t need all that many bike lanes here because traffic is often light, particularly on side blocks. What we do need, and what I would like to see, are a few trunk routes similar to the Belt Parkway Greenway. Manhattan suddenly becomes a viable destination for me if I can just ride, say 5 blocks to the LIE, then hop on a grade-separated bike lane, haul a$$, and cover the 10 miles in maybe 30 to 35 minutes (or even under 20 minutes with a good velomobile). Or use the same route to go to points east. Add in a few north south bike highways connecting to the east-west ones. Now maybe anywhere within Brooklyn and Queens you’re within a mile or so of an express route. These may not seem like riding to you, but for me it would be nirvana. I may want to take it easy and see the sights once I’m in Manhattan, but I also like to get there as fast as my legs will allow. At the same time, we also engineer away the red light problem by reducing the number of times a cyclist will have to stop on any trip to a handful. I personally feel that’s why we have poor red light compliance among cyclists here-there are just too many red lights. Once you make cycling quick and safer with the bike highways, you may well experience greatly reduced motor traffic on regular streets. Now you can eliminate a lot of those traffic lights, making things better yet again for your average cyclist.

We both want the same thing. It’s just a matter of getting the political will. A lot of factors are in our favor. The rising price of gas, general disenchantment with the automobile, high cost of building more subways, and so forth will drive more people to self-powered transportation.

@FerdinandCesarano:disqus Yes, I’m two blocks from 73rd Avenue, and that bike lane is usually where I start my rides. I stay on 73rd Avenue until Springfield Blvd., go left on Springfield, then right onto the LIE service road. I take that until East Hampton Blvd, then turn around and take the LIE service road back the other way, all the way to Main Street. I turn around at Main Street, then usually do a few ~8 mile loops (LIE service road-Francis Lewis Blvd-Union Tpke-Main Street, and back to the LIE service road). Other times I choose different routes just to make things interesting, like taking Francis Lewis Blvd to Whitestone, or taking Union Tpke past city limits. Sometimes I just randomly ride to explore new streets.

I don’t own a velomobile but it’s on my wish list, and for now well out of my price range. I’d probably choose between the Quest or the Go-One Evo K. I’ve never seen a velomobile, either, but they look like a blast to ride. I did purchase a nice, used titanium Airborne bike with a Dura-Ace gruppo on eBay in August 2011. For me it was a big upgrade over my rusting 25+ year old Raleigh. I’ve already put over 3800 miles on it. Great bike, plus I never have to worry about rust!