Different neighborhood, same story.
The city is once again halting a modest proposal for unprotected bike lanes in Brooklyn, this time in Midwood, after the all-too-familiar backlash from some car-focused locals.
Department of Transportation honchos recently told local electeds they would pause the proposed network of unprotected bike lane in the southern Brooklyn's Community Board 14 that has been in the works for at least four years, frustrating residents who want to safely travel around without a car.
"Really disappointed to see yet another safety project delayed," said Liz Denys a resident and advocate with Transportation Alternatives. "The longer we wait to get more safety projects on our streets, the more dangerous it is in the meantime."
DOT had planned to install painted bike lanes going east-west and north-south in the district this summer and fall, but will back off the bulk of the project in the southern section, following a closed-door meeting over the summer between politicians and Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez, members of CB14 said at their full board meeting on Monday.
"There was a meeting between the DOT with the commissioner as well as local members of the community, some community leaders as well as elected officials that represented that area," CB14's Transportation Co-Chair Binyomin Bendet told the board. "Based on the feedback and the conversation, it was decided ... there will be no further movement on that bike lane in the south."
This sudden reversal comes after one of the area's lawmakers, Republican Council Member Inna Vernikov, boasted in the spring of her ability to stop the agency's "woke agenda."
CB14 has virtually no safe cycling infrastructure, with just a small section of the nation's oldest bike path on Ocean Parkway. The Adams administration's backpedal mirrors a similar watering down of a project to install a set of protected bike lanes on Kingston and Brooklyn avenues in Wingate after some car-focused pushback.
DOT had began installing the northern bike lanes on Foster Avenue and Farragut Road this year, and was going to proceed south of Brooklyn College with north-to-south paths on E. 12th, E. 13th, E. 14th, E. 17th, and E. 18th streets, and east-to-west lanes on Avenues I, J, L and M.
The area is in dire need of safer streets, as it is one of seven in Brooklyn and Queens that DOT identified as having a disproportionate share of drivers killing or severely maiming cyclists.
Bike lanes reduce crash risks by about one-third, and reduce injuries across the board, according to DOT stats. Painted bike lanes have shown to lead to 15 percent fewer people killed or seriously injured, a figure that rises to 16 percent among pedestrians, according to a citywide agency review of projects spanning 13 years.
However, these kinds of deeply researched safety stats were bottom of mind for some locals who showed up to a June CB14 Transportation Committee meeting and accused the agency of targeting the area's Jewish community in particular.
"You guys are being anti-Semitic with this, because you’re putting it in the area without telling people about it, that’s the problem here," said one person who called into the Zoom meeting under the name Ephraim. "DOT is doing what they — pardon the expression — damn please, which is not going to fly over here."
The agency first proposed the bike lane network for CB14 back in 2021, and made some tweaks to it along the way, but presented it again to the committee in June 2023 and last November — outreach highlighted by another local at the meeting.
"The outreach has been extensive, truly exhausting how many times I’ve heard this same presentation," said Roisin Ford. "I don’t want to hear about it anymore, I want to see it. We were told about this for all of these consecutive years and nothing has happened, we continue to see close calls."
The supposed lack of community outreach feeds right into the narrative of this mayoral administration, with Hizzoner caring more about vague notions of hearing from people – read drivers – over the proven boosts of protected bike and bus lanes.
In practice, that means catering to those with power and access, like the now-indicted film production executives Gina and Tony Argento, who got Adams confidante Ingrid Lewis-Martin to stop the protected bike lanes on McGuinness Boulevard in Greenpoint, allegedly as part of a bribery scheme.
But City Hall interventions have continued after Lewis-Martin resigned last year, primarily thanks to First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, who has scuttled or paused DOT projects, including the removal of a section of the protected bike lane on Bedford Avenue, reportedly holding up the 34th Street busway, delaying the years-in-the-works Queensboro Bridge pedestrian path, and undoing some modest parking reforms on the Upper West Side.
DOT and Vernikov did not respond to requests for comment.
