Bike Lanes

From the Irish Independent:

New York City's bike lanes are now officially more popular than God. So here's a helpful tip to ambitious New York City politicians: it might just be time to get on board with bike lanes.

The gender gap in American cycling is a thorny and persistent issue, and New York City performs relatively poorly on the measure. The percentage of female bike commuters has wavered between 20 and 25 percent of the total over the last two decades, but with a marked rise in the most recent years.

Details are emerging about the plan to create shared bike/pedestrian paths cutting east-west across Central Park. The first two paths are likely to officially open on a trial basis in September, cutting across the park at roughly 102nd Street and 96th Street, said Central Park Conservancy community relations manager Caroline Greenleaf at a Community Board 7 meeting last night.

As Marcia Kramer informed CBS2 viewers last night, construction has begun on the extension of the First and Second Avenue bike lanes from 34th Street to 57th Street. The section of First Avenue from 34th Street to 47th Street is the only part of this project where the bike lane will be physically protected from traffic. Above 47th it becomes a plain painted bike lane and then transitions into a shared lane from 49th Street to 57th Street. So far, the lane only consists of paint -- construction hasn't started on any pedestrian islands -- but some cyclists are already making use of the protected space.

Given enough time, the theory goes, a thousand monkeys banging away at a thousand typewriters will eventually compose the complete works of Shakespeare. But Marcia Kramer and the crack news writers at CBS2 only needed a couple of hours, maybe less, to come up with last night’s masterpiece about the extension of the First and Second Avenue bike lanes.

If you're looking for further evidence to support Jason Gay's "the bikes have won" theory -- that the anti-bike bile-fest of last winter was so much sound and fury signifying nothing more than the windshield perspectives of the city's intransigent political and media elites -- we present the latest, and perhaps lamest, salvo from the metro desk of the New York Times.

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.