Manhattan CB 7 Asks DOT for Protected Bike Lanes on 110th Street

Manhattan Community Board 7 has asked DOT to aim higher with its plan to add bike lanes to 110th Street.

The DOT plan [PDF] presented to the board’s transportation committee last night includes a bi-directional protected bikeway, but only for the Riverside Drive service road at 110th Street’s western terminus. To the east, DOT would repurpose extra-wide 13-foot parking lanes as five-foot painted bike lanes, and narrow painted medians from 14 feet to 10 feet.

On the block before the entrance to Central Park at Frederick Douglass Circle, DOT would remove a through-lane for motor vehicles in each direction and install painted bike lanes and a 12-foot concrete median.

Willow Stelzer, an Upper West Side resident and Transportation Alternatives volunteer, suggested protected lanes during the public comment session. Committee members agreed. DOT will revise the plan and bring it back to the committee.

“I got the strong impression that [DOT] was open to coming back with a safer alternative that would provide more protection and hopefully physical protection for cyclists,” said board member Ken Coughlin, who emphasized that he was speaking for himself and not the board. Without enforcement, said Coughlin, painted bike lanes on 110th would be overrun with double-parked vehicles.

The 110th Street plan is one of several bike projects DOT has in the pipeline ahead of the Citi Bike expansion to 130th Street later this summer.

On the east side of Central Park [PDF], DOT is planning a two-way protected bike lane on Fifth Avenue between Central Park North and 120th Street, and a one-way protected lane on one block of 110th Street between the park and Madison Avenue. From there, the bike lane will convert to a painted, unprotected lane connecting to the Harlem River Greenway, with 111th Street as its westbound counterpart.

Further north, DOT plans to add painted lanes to 128th Street and 126th Street.

“DOT plans to conduct additional outreach over the summer with the goal of implementing [the projects] in the fall,” a DOT spokesperson told Streetsblog.