Bicycle Infrastructure

A growing number of mayors want to make big strides on bike policy, and they need smart advocates to help them do it.

Biking has skyrocketed on Flushing Avenue by the Brooklyn Navy Yard since the installation of bike infrastructure in 2010, according to new counts released by the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative. The route is slated for more biking and walking upgrades as the city builds out the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway.

With construction on the massive Third Water Tunnel shifting east along Grand Street, the section of the street through Soho, Little Italy, and Chinatown is getting repaved for the first time in years. Along with the new surface comes restoration of Grand Street's protected bike lane -- this time with a twist: Unlike other NYC bike lanes, this lane is being repainted in a bright, Kermit the Frog shade of green.

Lesson learned? Last week, DOT wiped away the Prospect Park West bike lane for street repaving without installing any temporary cones to preserve the bike route during construction. Drivers parked at the curb, pushing northbound cyclists into oncoming traffic or onto the sidewalk. Now, DOT has demarcated the bike lane with orange cones as it re-stripes the road.

During the warm summer months, lots of New Yorkers decide to hop on their bicycles and head for the nearest bike lane. That's also when the city does much of its street repaving, and new asphalt is coming to Prospect Park West. But instead of maintaining the heavily used bike path with temporary materials, our bike-friendly DOT has decided that one of the city's marquee bikeways will be erased for more than a week during one of the busiest cycling months of the year.

This post is part of a series featuring stories and research that will be presented at the Pro-Walk/Pro-Bike/Pro-Place conference September 8-11 in Pittsburgh.

Michael Andersen blogs for The Green Lane Project, a PeopleForBikes program that helps U.S. cities build better bike lanes to create low-stress streets.

Like many cities in America, Cleveland grew into its own as a streetcar city. In the early part of the last century, hundreds of miles of streetcars connected all corners of the city as well as its inner suburbs. The streets where tracks carried passengers -- Lorain, Superior, Euclid -- were the circulatory system of the city, around which neighborhood life was organized.