Exclusive: Wider Bike Lane Coming This Spring To Sixth Ave. in Manhattan

He’s giving it a wide birth.

Mayor Mamdani will widen the protected bike lane on Manhattan’s Sixth Avenue along its most-treacherous stretch — and give more space to pedestrians in Herald Square — marking the latest project that the administration wants to complete in the run up to the World Cup.

Later today, Mamdani and Department of Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn will announce that the existing protected bike lane between W. 14th and W. 31st streets will widen from six to 10 feet — a configuration that promotes safer passing as well as side-by-side biking. The project had been announced under Mayor Eric Adams, but never implemented.

And between W. 31st and W. 35th streets through Herald Square, DOT won’t change the existing five-foot-wide bike lane, but will add nine feet of expanded pedestrian space, which will do a lot to keep pedestrians outside of the roadway in one of the busiest pedestrian areas of Midtown.

“What better way to welcome the World Cup than by making our streets safer and more accessible for everyone who uses them?” Mayor Mamdani said in a statement. “From Sixth Avenue in Manhattan to Broadway in Queens and the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, we’re redesigning our streets to better protect pedestrians, cyclists and drivers alike. Long after the sun sets on this summer of celebration, these improvements will continue serving New Yorkers every single day.” 

Double-wide bike lanes work: In 2024, DOT installed one on Sixth Avenue from Lispenard Street to W. 13th Street. In the full year before the lane went in, 26 cyclists and pedestrians were injured. In the full year after the lane went in, 21 cyclists and pedestrians were injured, despite the much higher number of cyclists who flocked to the lane upon its completion.

But the stretch without the wider bike lane remains dangerous. According to DOT, between 2019 and 2023, there were 29 traffic deaths and severe injuries on Sixth Avenue between 13th and 35th streets, enough that DOT considers the stretch a “Vision Zero Corridor” that requires additional safety features.

Wider bike lanes have become an increasingly popular toolkit for DOT. In addition to the portion of Sixth Avenue south of 14th Street, the agency also added the upsized lanes to other busy bike corridors in Manhattan, including Ninth Avenue, 10th Avenue, Third Avenue, and Second Avenue, along with Queens Boulevard in the World’s Borough.

Such projects have reduced deaths and serious injuries for all road users by 30 percent and for pedestrians by nearly 32 percent, DOT said. 

“The Mamdani administration has tasked us to work with urgency to improve safety on our streets,” Flynn said in a statement. “Sixth Avenue now hosts one the city’s most popular bike lanes, and it is time we make it even better. … Widening this bike lane will make the street safer for everyone and provide a calmer, more comfortable cycling experience by allowing more room for passing.”

The room will be created by removing one parking lane on Sixth Avenue.

The history of biking on Sixth Avenue is a fraught one. It’s almost become an urban fable, but it’s true: then-Mayor Ed Koch returned from a trip to bike-friendly China and demanded that the Department of Traffic install a protected bike lane on the then-Avenue of the Americas. It was four-feet wide and protected with concrete curbs.

The Times coverage from 1978 almost sounds like it could have been written today: “Bicycle enthusiasts have•long pressed for special lanes on the city’s streets arguing that this would encourage the use of bicycles over automobiles and would thus help the city reduce pollution and save energy. Opponents have said they would only further congest the city’s already overcrowded major thoroughfares.”

Opponents won; the bike lane was removed about a year later, despite evidence that crashes had fallen and bike riders’ compliance with traffic rules increased.

But times change: Daily bike trips over the East River bridges — a key measure of commuter cycling — reached nearly 29,000 riders in 2025, a high — almost 18 times the number recorded in 1980, when the city first began tracking bicycle traffic on the bridges, City Hall said in a statement.

DOT said it would complete the widened lane before World Cup matches begin in June. New Council Member Carl Wilson was pleased.

“This investment guarantees protected biking in one of the most highly traversed corridors in the city,” he said. “As a Citi Bike user myself, I am pleased to see this improvement, and I am so grateful to DOT for their quick efforts to move this project forward.”