Bike Lanes

With construction of the new Ninth Avenue separated bike path in Chelsea still underway it is way too early to draw any conclusions about the project. The new medians and planting beds haven't been built, the markings aren't done and DOT still needs to install new traffic signals. Once the Muni-Meters are turned on, every other block will be reserved for paid commercial parking -- deliveries only. Likewise, DOT says that it is working with the police department on ramping up enforcement but that hasn't started yet either.

Apparently unaware of New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's assertion that "human-powered vehicles are never going to be the answer," USA Today reports that several large U.S. cities are accelerating their efforts to encourage commuting on two wheels. The article cites New York for the new separated bike lane, and for putting bike racks where cars once parked.

The interim redesign of Ninth Avenue and 14th Street is done. Tables, chairs, planters and some of those giant granite blocks from DOT's Bridges Division have been set out as multipurpose bollard-bench-tables atop a gravelly, earth-tone pavement surface. 

The Department of Transportation announced the installation of a buffered bike lane on Fifth Avenue in this month's NYCycles, a monthly e-newsletter produced by DOT on cycling issues.

The Department of Transportation revealed plans for New York City's first-ever physically-separated bike lane, or "cycle track," at a Manhattan Community Board 4 meeting last night. The new bike path will run southbound on Ninth Avenue from W. 23rd to W. 16th Street in Manhattan. Unlike the typical Class II on-street bike lane in which cyclists mix with motor vehicle traffic, this new design will create an exclusive path for bicycles between the sidewalk and parked cars.

Streetsblog has gotten word that bike lane construction is set to proceed next month on several streets in Brooklyn Community Board 1 territory.

DOT plans to simplify a dangerous Queens intersection where a school teacher was killed last December.

A buffered section of Manhattan's 8th Avenue bike lane.