These 13 crossings should function as convenient connections between neighborhood street networks, where people feel comfortable getting around by walking or biking. Instead they're overbuilt for cars, like small highway segments disrupting the local street grid.
Streetsblog's David Meyer will have a post on DOT's announcement later today. In the meantime, you can look over the DOT report [PDF], which lays out a series of bike and pedestrian fixes for several Harlem River bridges and the streets that feed into them. Below is a brief look at some of the report's best visuals for enhanced bridge access.
While this plan is very encouraging, there's a lot of advocacy and oversight still to come. Timetables are missing for most of the projects, the city will need to be pressed to make the best possible design choices, and the momentum from the bridge improvements will have to carry over to more surface streets to create a truly safe network for biking and walking.
Image: NYC DOT
Approaching the Broadway Bridge from Manhattan, DOT is proposing a short segment of parking-protected bike lanes, feeding into buffered bike lanes on the bridge itself, which will be included in an upcoming bridge replacement. DOT expects the Broadway Bridge replacement to wrap up in 2020.
A capital project on the Macombs Dam Bridge will widen the north sidewalk so it can function as a shared path. At 11 feet wide, it would still be pretty narrow to handle large numbers of people biking and walking.
On the dangerous approach to the Madison Avenue Bridge from Manhattan, where cyclists currently have to mix it up with motor vehicles moving on 15-foot-wide lanes, DOT is proposing a capital project to add a two-way bike lane.
Ben Fried started as a Streetsblog reporter in 2008 and led the site as editor-in-chief from 2010 to 2018. He lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, with his wife.
Attendees of the E-Vehicle Safety Alliance's latest meeting castigated a Transportation Bureau deputy inspector for saying that delivery workers are responsive to safety issues.