Protected Bike Lanes

After years of planning and advocacy, an effort to improve the dangerous, ugly asphalt expanse on the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn Bridge is set to take a big step forward tonight. Community Board 2 is meeting to vote on a resolution in support of a plan to expand space for walking and biking, realign car lanes, and add trees [PDF] that cleared its transportation committee with a unanimous 7-0 vote last month. Construction on the first phase is on track to begin as soon as the end of this year.

Is your city trying to take its bike infrastructure to the next level? If so, the Green Lane Project wants to help.

DOT continues to make progress with the extension of the Columbus Avenue protected bike lane. Doug Gordon sent us these shots, taken this morning, of pedestrian island construction at 75th and 73rd Streets.

Here's another case of a top company that sees safe streets for biking as talent recruitment tool. One of America's largest retailers is chipping in to make cycling more appealing at its new headquarters in downtown Seattle.

While parents and kids were out celebrating three years of safe, all-ages cycling at the Prospect Park West Family Bike Ride last week, the remnants of NBBL were apparently scouring their Rolodex for media contacts who still take them seriously.

A study published in this month's American Journal of Public Health finds that highly influential transportation engineers relied on shoddy research to defend policies that discourage the development of protected bike lanes in the U.S. In their paper, the researchers point out that male-dominated engineering panels have repeatedly torpedoed street designs that have greater appeal to female cyclists.

A few years ago, it was a pretty big deal when on-street bike parking was installed in any city.  Though it is always welcome news, today it hardly merits a mention.

Reader Mike Epstein sends in this photo of a "mixing zone" on L Street in downtown Washington, D.C., that looks a lot different than the ones here in NYC. Mixing zones are the areas where bike traffic merges with turning car traffic at the approach to intersections along protected bike lanes. New York's mixing zones don't have flexible posts, and the markings are supposed to emphasize that drivers should yield to passing cyclists, instead of directing cyclists to merge to the right of turning cars, as seems to be the intent in D.C.

An interesting example of state DOT interference in local street safety policy, from our team in Chicago...