Bicycle Safety

This afternoon the DOT press office emailed a brief reply to our query about potential safety enhancements to the recently opened Sands Street bike path. They say some details of the path, which is rideable for cyclists, are in progress:

Last month, the long-awaited Sands Street bike path officially opened, giving cyclists a much safer connection to the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge. From what I can tell so far, everyone loves the new protected space between Jay and Gold, which separates bike traffic from all the trucks and cars accelerating onto the BQE. If you bike over the bridge from Fort Greene or points east and south, it's a huge improvement. And once the Carlton Avenue Bridge reopens, this path should be an attractive approach to an even bigger swath of Brooklyn bike commuters.

Via Gizmodo: A laser device that allows cyclists to project their own bike lanes has gone from cool idea to prototype. Positive reponse to the concept from Alex Tee and Evan Gant of Altitude Inc. was significant enough to put LightLane into production. See the beta version in action above. Thoughts?

The Lo-Down, a blog covering the Lower East Side and environs, just wrapped up a slate of interviews with all the candidates running for the 1st District seat in the City Council: Margaret Chin, Pete Gleason, Arthur Gregory, PJ Kim, and the incumbent Alan Gerson. Along with John Liu, Gerson has been one of the council's most vocal critics of recent safety improvements for pedestrians and cyclists. But after reading up on the views of his competitors, it's doubtful that dumping Gerson in the September 15 primary -- provided he makes it on the ballot -- would put a more progressive voice in City Hall.

Biking Rules, the new campaign organized by Transportation Alternatives, is sponsoring a video and photo PSA competition. Submissions are now being accepted for two categories in the competition: "Why Biking Rules!" and "The Biking Rules Street Code."

There's a fresh coat of asphalt on the Sands Street bike path, and guys on the construction crew say this long-awaited approach to the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge should officially open for riding next week. Still to come: pavement markings and fencing.

The long-awaited Sands Street bike path, a protected approach to the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge which took a few years longer than expected to go through New York City's construction bureaucracy, looks tantalizingly close to completion these days. It's not there yet, but you can start to picture how this critical addition to the city's bike network will appear when finished. The Department of Design and Construction tells us the whole thing should be paved by the end of the week, weather permitting, and the path should officially open to cyclists next week, after some fencing is added.

Spurred by comments following yesterday's post on Greenway access in Washington Heights, a reader put together this map [download the full size version] of how to get from the Greenway to the George Washington Bridge. It's no straight shot by any means. If the arrows are a little hard to follow, here are the directions:

Last Friday afternoon my wife and I walked the Hudson River Greenway from Morningside Heights north toward home in Inwood. It was nice and warm out, and after a while we wanted water, so just south of the George Washington Bridge we decided to head over to Broadway, where we could stop for a beverage before catching a train the rest of the way. We exited the Greenway at 165th Street in Washington Heights, a route neither of us had taken before. After crossing the pedestrian bridge over the train tracks and taking a trail under the Henry Hudson Parkway and through the woods, this is what we found.