Bicycle Infrastructure

On Wednesday night, Manhattan Community Board 10 voted not to approve a buffered bike lane along Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard but left the door open for a second vote and a different outcome. The decision followed a unanimous vote by the board's transportation committee in favor of the new lane. For the time being, at least, a major addition to Harlem's bike network is on hold.

The reconstruction of East Houston Street will include wider medians, bigger sidewalks, fewer traffic lanes, and a new bike lane. But instead of installing a physically protected path for cyclists, the city plans to paint a buffered, Class 2 lane. The project, which received funds freed up by stimulus spending, will go out to bid this summer.

Yesterday Mayor Bloomberg unveiled the list of city transportation projects set to receive an injection of federal stimulus cash. Budget-wise, the big ticket items are mostly bridge repair projects, but channeling those stim bucks toward necessary maintenance also frees up a lot of money for other things, including a sizable slate of pedestrian and bicycle improvements. In New York, at least, there are plenty of "shovel-ready" projects to get excited about.

Biking the Triborough. Photo: E-BAD/Flickr.

Apologies for the last-minute heads up, but livable streets supporters in Chinatown and the Lower East Side won't want to miss this action at Community Board 3 tonight. A DOT project to expand pedestrian space and add center median protected bike paths to the Allen and Pike Street malls will be on the table at a meeting of the transportation committee. The plan also calls for new pedestrian plazas connecting the malls at six intersections, per DOT:

Negotiators from the House and Senate are set to begin talks finalizing the stimulus bill at 3:00 p.m. this afternoon, Reuters reports. While a topline figure of $789 billion has apparently been agreed to in principle, the devil is in the details, and there's still time to speak up for investment in green transportation and livable streets.

The Senate approved its version of the stimulus bill this afternoon by a 61-37 vote. Attention now turns to conference committee negotiations, where differences between the House and Senate bills will get ironed out. Politico has the scoop on who will be negotiating on the Senate side, and they're not exactly an urban bunch:

Senator Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican who said that directing stim funds toward bicycle and hiking infrastructure will not help the economy or create jobs, has gone too far. He and Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma have just proposed an amendment that would kill all stimulus funds for bike and hiking trails.