Alarmingly Narrow Bike Lanes Are Coming to Grand and Canal Streets

The city plans to install a two-way protected bike path on Grand Street and parts of Canal Street this year, but each bi-directional lane will be only eight feet wide — a symptom of the Department of Transportation’s periodic reluctance to confront the loudest opponents of street safety infrastructure in lower Manhattan.

Bike advocates said the paths will provide a critical crosstown connection in Lower Manhattan, but urged the agency to enhance public safety with more space for cyclists and pedestrians by repurposing space currently allowed for the owners of cars.

“The bike lane is only eight feet wide, which to me is a little small for a two-way bike lane,” Chris Sanders, a Manhattan-based activist, said after DOT showed off the design at a Tuesday community board meeting in SoHo. “They should have just removed the parking on the south side of the street. Sometimes you just have to own it.”

Narrow bike lanes squeeze cyclists and make it dangerous for riders at different speeds to pass each other. Some pedestrians and drivers take time to get used to the two-way bike lane format on one-way streets because they are accustomed to not looking both ways when crossing.

DOT’s proposal is the first stage of a much larger and long-anticipated redesign of Canal Street. Rather than add a protected bike lane on Canal itself, the agency chose to convert the existing east-bound protected bike path on Grand into a two-way lane.

The new bike paths will connect to the two-way north-south bike path on Chrystie Street in the east, and link up to new protected paths on Canal Street via Sixth Avenue and Varick Street, along with Watts Street, leading west to the nation’s busiest bike path along the Hudson River Greenway.

The majority of Grand is 34 feet wide, so DOT’s plans for the most part look like this:

At eight feet of total width – or four feet in each direction – the proposed paths measure well below the minimum width of two-way paths recommended by the National Association of City Transportation Officials. The influential organization notes that eight feet “should be avoided except on short street segments.”

But the Grand Street bike lane will extend for 16 blocks. In fact, the revamp allocates two-thirds of the roadway — 23 out of 34 available feet — for the movement or storage of cars. That will be wide enough for motorists to continue double-parking.

DOT’s project manager Preston Johnson admitted that the bike lane was “the smallest we can make it,” at the presentation Community Board 2’s executive committee, but added that the city would need to remove a parking lane to make more room.

The decision to install such a narrow bi-directional bike lane represents a troubling backslide at DOT. In recent years, the agency has installed increasingly wider bike lanes, to account for the increasing bike ridership in the city and varying speeds of new modes like e-bikes and e-scooters.

Examples include the 16-foot two-way bike lane on 31st Avenue in Astoria, along with the double-wide bike lanes on Second Avenue, Third Avenue, Sixth Avenue, Ninth Avenue, 10th Avenue and Queens Boulevard. The incoming bike lane is even smaller than Bloomberg-era bike lanes, like the 10-foot, two-way path on Prospect Park West.

NACTO guidelines encourage planners to carve out room for bike paths by narrowing road space dedicated to cars. The group recommends that cities allocate as little as nine feet for travel lanes, and as few as seven feet for parking lanes, in order to create “increased rideable width” for cyclists. DOT’s plan allocates more than 10 feet for car travel and another 13 feet for parking on Grand Street.

On the more positive side, the agency wants to add concrete islands to protect the new bike lanes on Canal Street and the existing protected path on adjacent Sixth Avenue, which will also receive a bus boarding island, officials told the community board committee.

A phased plan

The bike paths belong to a larger planned overhaul of the Canal Street area that DOT first unveiled last summer. The agency intends to revamp the corridor from the Manhattan Bridge to the Hudson River with more space for cyclists and pedestrians.

The eastern side of the redesign has garnered more pushback from some people in Chinatown who have repeatedly opposed city measures limiting motor vehicle access – most notably the fight to keep Park Row car-free.

Opponents of the Canal Street redesign shouted down city transportation planners at a chaotic meeting with three local community boards in December, and after months of radio silence around the project, the Mamdani administration chose to advance the less controversial section of the redesign west of Broadway.

Tuesday’s presentation mostly covered that western portion of the proposal, along with the Grand Street bike lane. The agency also wants to add more crosswalks and some curb extensions at several corners, along with some traffic rerouting to reduce backups near the Holland Tunnel.

Additionally, DOT plans to restrict some car traffic on the western end of Canal by banning left turns at Greene Street and West Broadway. Revealingly, the agency said most car traffic on Canal Street is local, with only 17 percent of vehicles using the street to reach Brooklyn via the Manhattan Bridge or New Jersey via the Holland Tunnel.

What about ‘super sidewalks’?

DOT had originally planned to paint block-length ‘super sidewalks’ on Canal Street from Broadway to Elizabeth Street, and pedestrianize a slip lane at the eastern end of Walker Street. But some local businesses and residents said the plan would remove parking and invite more unpermitted street vendors.

Since the agency’s newer proposal redesign would not touch Canal’s notoriously crowded sidewalks east of Broadway for now, at least one CB2 member implored the agency to once again consider expanding pedestrian space on Grand. “You really do need a sidewalk study as well,” said Shirley Secunda.

DOT officials said they wanted to come back later this year to discuss the eastern portion and implement changes next year, after conferring with City Hall about street merchants.

“One of the things that we heard the most was the discussion on vending,” said DOT Assistant Commissioner Dan Wagner at the CB2 meeting. “So we are continuing to work with City Hall, we are continuing to work with elected officials, agency partners, to effectively balance and manage the vending activity in the area.”

Several attendees at the Tuesday feedback session complained about unlicensed street vendors who peddle knockoff designer bags around the intersection of Canal and Broadway. One blamed the vendors for crowding out Canal and apparently accused them of illegally immigrating to the country — while ignoring the six full-size lanes that motorists take up in an area where the vast majority of residents don’t own a car.

“The pedestrian sidewalk crowding is due [to] the 70-plus illegal vendors and the tourists that come and visit them,” said resident Ronnie Wolf at the meeting. “So solve the illegals, and you won’t have pedestrians walking everywhere.”

But other locals said the city should complete the entire project immediately, and criticized the city for delaying a redesigned eastern Canal Street, which suffers from more crowding, crash injuries and deaths.

“Everybody deserves a safe place to walk, especially on Canal Street. I only wish that the design would continue the whole way, from the west to the east, because it’s ridiculous, too many people have died crossing Canal Street.” said Nolita resident Andrea Petersen. “I think this is a great project, I just want it to be done sooner – too many meetings, we go over the same thing all the time.”

DOT spokesperson Mona Bruno said the agency can still adjust its design if necessary, but justified the layout saying it was needed to accommodate the “many truck delivery needs” on Grand Street.

“We look forward to delivering major safety upgrades on Canal and Grand streets, including a widened, two-way cycling connection on Grand,” said Bruno in a statement. The eight-foot-wide path, along with a three-foot buffer, will serve crosstown bike traffic while still accommodating the many truck delivery needs of businesses along the street.”