Protected Bike Lanes

Tonight, DOT will present plans for a protected bike lane on Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn to the Brooklyn Community Board 2 transportation committee. DOT shared this rendering of the redesign with Streetsblog this afternoon.

DOT unveiled its plan for a two-way protected bike lane on Chrystie Street last night [PDF], a project that promises to drastically improve safety and reduce stress for people biking to and from the Manhattan Bridge.

DOT will present plans this spring to fill most, but not all, of the remaining gaps in the north-south protected bike lanes on the East Side of Manhattan. Significantly, DOT intends to create a physically protected bike lane on Second Avenue between 59th Street and 43rd Street. Combined with the bike lane extension coming to the Upper East Side after surface work on the Second Avenue Subway wraps up, the project would close most of the remaining gaps on the avenue but leave the approaches to the Queensboro Bridge and the Queens Midtown Tunnel exposed.

DOT will show its highly-anticipated plan for a protected bike lane on Chrystie Street between Canal Street and 2nd Street to Manhattan Community Board 3 tomorrow, and Gothamist has posted renderings from the presentation.

It was just about five years ago that attorneys with the law firm Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, working pro bono on behalf of some people with ties to Senator Chuck Schumer, filed suit against the city for installing the Prospect Park West bike lane. In August 2011, Kings County Supreme Court Judge Bert Bunyan dismissed the suit, but not before bike lane opponents battered DOT and its bike program in the press for several months through various surrogates.

With Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz calling for better bike infrastructure on the Grand Concourse, there's some serious political momentum to make this major north-south thoroughfare a safer street. How far will DOT take it?

Construction of the Pulaski Bridge bike path is slated to finish at the end of April, according to a DOT spokesperson. As DOT’s bridge division puts together the finishing touches, specifics of the new design are coming to light, including how the bike lane will negotiate the drawbridge section of the Pulaski.

By a vote of 33 to 1 last night, Queens Community Board 1 endorsed DOT’s plan for traffic-calming on the streets around Astoria Park.