Bicycle Infrastructure

Reader Liz Patek sends these shots of the new road markings on First Avenue in the 60s. The protected bike lane that Manhattan Community Board 8 approved last summer is going in.

Sidewalks, bike lanes, traffic calming projects -- they save lives. Not just by protecting cyclists and pedestrians (not to mention motorists), but by encouraging physical activity that leads to a healthy life.

Six cities will adopt innovate street designs for safer cycling over the next two years as part of a new program from Bikes Belong.

The New York City Department of Transportation recorded an eight percent increase in the number of people biking into Manhattan below 50th street this year. The bike count has now doubled since 2007, when the city's first on-street protected bike lane was installed on Ninth Avenue.

Three concrete walls will soon surround the Manhattan entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge, as reported in Gothamist and the Villager. The construction, already underway and due to be completed at the beginning of next year, is part of a Department of Transportation effort to force cyclists coming down the ramp from the bridge to slow down and choose to ride on quieter side roads rather than dangerous Delancey Street, which will remain unchanged.

In 2007, in order to route cyclists away from a challenging 7-lane crossing on busy Hiawatha Avenue, Minneapolis built the Martin Olav Sabo Bridge.

At this point, we’re not expecting any movement on a transportation bill, in either house, before the August recess. (After that, get ready for a panicked frenzy of activity ahead of the September 30 deadline.)

DOT needs to accelerate the build-out of the city's bike network in working-class neighborhoods outside the center city, say graduate students in the Hunter College urban planning department. They argue that expanding the geographic focus of the bike program would not only improve access to safe cycling for underserved neighborhoods, it might just help overcome the current backlash as well.