Bicycle Infrastructure

A city plan designed to make Prospect Park West safer and more accessible for cyclists and pedestrians has not materialized months after its promised delivery date, the Brooklyn Paper reports, and Brooklynites have Marty Markowitz to thank for it.

It may seem obvious that speeding traffic discourages walking and biking. But the evidence is scarce and scattered. A new paper by Peter Jacobsen, Francesca Racioppi and Harry Rutter aims to improve the understanding of how traffic affects cyclist and pedestrian behavior by collecting the existing research in one place.

Tens of thousands of people from nearly every nation on earth have descended on Copenhagen this month for the UN climate summit. As the delegates try to piece together a framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, they're also absorbing lessons from one of the world's leading cities in sustainable transportation. In Copenhagen, fully 37 percent of commute trips are made by bike, and mode share among city residents alone is even higher.

After almost two years of waiting for DOT analysis of a proposed cycle track for Dyckman Street in Upper Manhattan, advocates this week were promised ... more waiting.

Addressing a packed house in Washington last night, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, founder of the Congressional Bike Caucus, posed a Zen-like 'universalist cyclist question'.

We've seen lots of new, innovative bikeway designs appear on New York City streets over the past few years. But there’s one very promising concept we haven't seen -- bicycle boulevards. Bicycle boulevard design uses a variety of techniques to create low-traffic, low-speed streets where cyclists mix comfortably with cars. They’re very popular in Portland and Berkeley, two cities with high bicycle mode-share. Here in New York, though, they don’t seem to be part of the playbook yet. In this Streetfilm we ask: Why not?

At October's Walk21 Conference, I got the chance to tour the High Bridge, a viaduct connecting Manhattan and the Bronx which has been closed to the public for nearly 40 years.

Clarence Eckerson sends these shots of DOT street safety improvements taken on a recent ride near the Brooklyn and Queens waterfront. Above is the newly traffic-calmed intersection of Joralemon and Hicks -- part of the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project -- which now sports two sidewalk extensions. (According to the Post, a third corner was slated for a curb extension, but DOT changed plans after residents said they were worried about how fire trucks would negotiate the turn.) Says Clarence: "I am sure the speed reductions will be dramatic, the equivalent of a chicane."

We've received a few reports in the past week about construction work on the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge. DOT's press office says six bike ramps are being installed, and we hear from observers on the ground that construction is largely complete as of this morning: The bridge approach at Delancey and Clinton Street has three new curb cuts, as does the raised median at Suffolk Street. Now cyclists can get on and off the bike path without having to dismount or hop the curb.