Bike Lanes

From sudden collapses to botched repairs, the current condition of the East River Greenway is a far cry from the vision of a continuous path on Manhattan's eastern shore. While filling in the greenway's gaps could take at least a decade, there are some small, short-term gains on the table. On Monday, Community Board 6's transportation committee backed a slate of bike improvement that aim to make accessing the greenway from Murray Hill a little bit easier.

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. Second in a series.

When New York City began to rapidly accelerate the expansion of its bike network in 2007 -- adding 366 miles of bike lanes over seven years -- the pent-up demand for cycling became strikingly clear.

Well, that didn't take long.

A proposal to enhance safety on Franklin Avenue in Crown Heights, which would put the street on a road diet and extend a painted bike lane one mile further south, is stuck in a tale of two community boards. CB 8, which covers the northern half of the project, is set to back the plan after its transportation committee voted 9-1 in support on Tuesday. CB 9, covering the area below Eastern Parkway, narrowly rejected the plan at a general board meeting last week, though the board's district manager says it will likely come up again for another vote next month. The vote was a surprise coming from CB 9, which has a track record of urging the city to retrofit streets with bike lanes.

A project that slims a dangerous section of Kent Avenue in South Williamsburg and straightens out an awkward stretch of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway route is nearing the finish line.

The huge surface parking lot and inward-facing, suburban-style design were bad enough. Now the Gowanus Whole Foods Market is taking over the Third Avenue bike lane and sidewalk as a private loading zone.

Atlantic Avenue is one of New York’s most prominent streets, and in most respects, it is completely broken.

Staring down a highway trust fund that he described as "teetering toward insolvency" by August or September, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said Monday that better bike infrastructure projects are part of the solution.