It's back — and it's never going away again.
Cyclists will not only soon be able to ride through the tunnel below First Avenue outside the United Nations — as they have for the past five years during the annual confab of world leaders — but the protected bike path in the western tube between E. 40th and E. 49th Streets will be made permanent.
"We saw this as a chance to actually make an express lane through the tunnel," Department of Transportation bike program director Hayes Lord told Community Board 6's Transportation Committee last month.
The plans include a jersey-barrier-protected bike lane through the tunnel and some changes to realign the existing uptown protected cycling path along the curb near the entrance at 40th Street.
For five years, city and federal law enforcement agencies diverted cyclists through the First Avenue tunnel during the United Nations General Assembly in order to seal off the above-ground avenue for additional security protocols. There's a clear demand to make it a full-time thing, as brave riders already ride that path anyway, according to Lord.
"If you were to stand out at the corner for an afternoon, you will see a lot of people already using the tunnel — by bike, by scooter, whatever means that is not a car," the DOT rep said.
Officials first unveiled the project to make the change in the spring and hoped to get it rolling by wrapping it into a road repaving before the General Assembly.
DOT will begin implementing the new East Side path in August, the agency said in a notice earlier this month [PDF], and the UNGA will start on Sept. 10, so it has just under a month to get the revamp done.
The upgrade will replace the left car lane that merges with the right lane of the tunnel, which motorists currently use to speed around other drivers, Lord said.
"A lot of motorists end up using it to speed and to bypass other slowly-moving vehicles," the DOT rep said.
First Avenue has a curbside protected bike lane, but going through the tunnel avoids having climb the hill overhead, stop at red lights, or dodge reckless drivers at intersections, according to locals.
"It’s an area that’s opportune for conflicts between cyclists, drivers, and pedestrian, and the tunnel presents an opportunity to bypass all of that," said Jason Froimowitz, the CB6 Transportation Committee chair, who made clear that he's not speaking for the board. "It takes half the time to ride through there, you avoid the traffic lights and all the conflicts with traffic."
Car drivers will still cut across the path above-ground path, and committee members urged DOT to build out better protection at intersections, such as the corner of 45th Street where one resident said she routinely sees dangerous encounters between motorists and cyclists.
"About every two minutes there’s a very close call between a cyclist and a car," said Mariam Rauf at the July 1 CB 6 committee meeting. "These two-ton vehicles are really dangerous and I really see them ignoring us more vulnerable folks on the roads very often."
That corner is also where a heroic NYPD officer refused to accept a driver's explanation for why he cut off a cyclist, as Streetsblog reported.
DOT will install a ridge with plastic posts between 39th and 40th streets as the bike lane shifts from the curb over to meet the tunnel entrance, but Lord said there wasn't room to install jersey barriers there without cutting into the car lanes, which he said have to be at least 10 feet.
The agency is also looking into redesign corners at 45th and 47th streets where car lanes mix with bike lanes into off-set intersections, according to Lord.
Other tunnels should also become bike express routes, Froimowitz said, such as the Park Avenue tunnel near Grand Central that riders have been able to check out during this year's Summer Streets.
The connector would create a more direct bike route for Midtown residents to Grand Central Terminal than the north-south paths at First and Second Avenues, the Manhattanite said.
"I’d love to see how this works and to identify other places in the city where this makes sense," said Froimowitz. "Having a bike route to Grand Central that doesn’t require you to go to the edge of Manhattan, this could be a first step to it."
DOT declined to comment for this story.
