Bike Lanes

There was no decision today in the Prospect Park West "Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes" lawsuit. The next hearing was set for July 20.

Despite a committed group of local advocates, official consideration of new bicycle infrastructure in Upper Manhattan has been on hold for years. A public forum held by Manhattan Community Board 12 last week could finally lead to some forward movement on street safety and bicycle issues for the neighborhood.

With five bus lines, two subway stops, a busy commercial strip, the only entrance to the Hudson River Greenway for blocks, and major bridge crossings at both ends of the street, Washington Heights' 181st Street is a tangle of cars, buses, bikes and pedestrians. For years, DOT has been looking to redesign the corridor entirely, with the goal of finding a way to serve all those different needs.

Well this is embarrassing. This video from Casey Neistat, of Neistat Brothers fame, is right in Streetsblog's wheelhouse but went totally viral before we got it up on the site. Even the Today Show beat us to the punch.

The Department of Transportation has made it a de facto policy not to implement major changes to the streets without a favorable vote from the local community board. The idea is to defer to a group perceived as representing the will of the entire neighborhood.

NYC DOT's proposed design for bike lanes from 34th Street to 57th Street along First and Second Avenues, which call for a protected lane on First Avenue from 34th to 49th Streets and shared lanes everywhere else, earned the endorsement of Community Board 6's transportation committee last night. The 7-5 vote in favor of DOT's plan -- the nays thought it included too much space for cyclists, not too little -- came after a misleading discussion in which the committee members seemed not to understand what they were voting on.

City Council Member Brad Lander and Brooklyn Community Board 6 member Richard Bashner have filed an amicus brief in support of the Prospect Park West redesign carried out by NYC DOT. The brief recounts the extensive public process that preceded the installation of the bike lane in 2010 and DOT's ongoing engagement with the community board as the agency has refined the project and measured its impact. The next hearing on the PPW lawsuit is scheduled for June 22.

It looks like DOT is exercising its option to stripe a bike lane on Washington Avenue, imposing some order on street markings from Eastern Parkway to Atlantic Avenue. Previously it wasn't really clear whether this part of Washington was one traffic lane or two traffic lanes in each direction, leading to a lot of double-parking, dodging, weaving and speeding. Now it's official: Washington Avenue is one lane in each direction with left-turn bays and a marked bike route (some of which is sharrows). I could be wrong, but this bike lane might be NYC's first new route in 2011, which is shaping up to be a slower year for bike network expansion compared to the previous three years.

It's getting to the point -- probably well past the point, actually -- where the non-stop cyclist hate spewing from the New York Post has attained a level of self-parody. So free of fact and full of bald-faced vitriol is the paper's latest editorial, praising Ray Kelly's NYPD for a marked increase in cyclist summonses, that it's tempting to dismiss it as unworthy of thoughtful response.