DOT Has a New Plan for Bike Lanes on the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge

DOT has a plan to add bike lanes to the J. J. Byrne Memorial Bridge, which carries Greenpoint Avenue across Newtown Creek between Brooklyn and Queens [PDF]. The agency has also mapped out new striped bike lanes and markings in Sunnyside and Long Island City [PDF], which would improve access to the bridge.

A similar DOT plan for the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge from 2010 would have changed the roadway from two car lanes in each direction to one, with buffered bike lanes on either side. DOT mothballed the bike lanes a year later after opposition from Brooklyn Community Board 1 and local trucking and industrial interests.

With two wide lanes in each direction, the bridge has remained a source of constant complaints about speeding. DOT says it has received requests for changes from Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer and Assembly Member Joe Lentol.

Bike planning workshops DOT hosted with Queens Community Board 2 in 2012 identified the bridge as a missing link in the network. On the Brooklyn side, the crossing connects to bike lanes on Greenpoint Avenue, which currently terminate at Kingsland Avenue at the foot of the bridge. About 600 cyclists cross the bridge on weekends and weekdays, according to DOT counts from June 2014.

The current DOT project calls for adding striped, unprotected bike lanes on both the Queens and Brooklyn approaches, with two lanes of car traffic maintained in each direction. On the bridge's center span, the bike lanes would gain four-foot buffers. Two lanes for Queens-bound car traffic would be retained, while Brooklyn-bound drivers would merge into one lane before returning to two lanes as the bridge touches down in Greenpoint.

On the Queens side, as reported by the LIC Post, DOT is planning the second phase of bike network expansion in Sunnyside and Long Island City. Like the first phase, it will mostly consist of painted bike lanes and sharrows, though there is a short two-way protected bike lane proposed for Borden Avenue.  

DOT's 2010 plan modified the complex intersection on the Queens side of the bridge, where Greenpoint Avenue intersects with Review Avenue and Van Dam Street. At the Queens CB 2 transportation committee meeting last Tuesday, DOT staffers recognized the intersection's safety problems but did not commit to any changes, according to Queens Transportation Alternatives volunteer Steve Scofield.

The additions to the bike network would include:

• Painted bike lanes on the Honeywell Street bridge, which crosses Sunnyside Yards from Skillman Avenue to Dutch Kills and Astoria. Bike lanes were added last year to the 39th Street bridge, just to the east of Honeywell.
• Upgrading sharrows on 11th Street between 44th Drive and 47th Avenue to striped bike lanes, pending further traffic analysis.
• A two-way protected bike path on Borden Avenue as it crosses a branch of Newtown Creek just south of the Long Island Expressway, part of a route linking Long Island City to Maspeth.

Before recommending a particular design for bike lanes on Review Avenue and 56th Road that would run between the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge and Maspeth, DOT says it needs to meet with industrial businesses and analyze truck turns, loading zones, and parking needs. This stretch has few intersections, and 56th Road could be wide enough to handle a protected bikeway to keep truck traffic away from cyclists.

Neither the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge bike lanes nor the bike network expansion have received votes from Queens CB 2. The Greenpoint Avenue Bridge plan goes before the Brooklyn Community Board 1 transportation committee on March 17.