Protected Bike Lanes

At tonight's Brooklyn Community Board 6 meeting, NYC DOT will present its final report on the re-designed Prospect Park West. The Brooklyn Paper has the latest safety stats from the city, and they show what one would expect from a project that has substantially reduced speeding: crashes and injuries are down across the board.

We talk a lot about windshield perspective on Streetsblog, so with his latest salvo against safer cycling and walking, CBS 2's Tony Aiello has done most of the work for us.

This dispatch from last night’s meeting of Brooklyn Community Board 6 comes to us from reader Doug Gordon. You can follow Doug at his blog, Brooklyn Spoke.

On the heels of Brad Lander's survey showing that a whopping 78 percent of interested Brooklyn residents want to keep the traffic calming Prospect Park West bike lane, DOT has released still more data [PDF] showing that the new street design keeps New Yorkers safer and helps them get where they're going.

DOT's planned safety improvements for the intersection of St. Nicholas and Amsterdam Avenues are currently being installed, as shown in pictures snapped by Streetsblog reader BicyclesOnly. Major features include shorter crosswalks, additional pedestrian space, and Upper Manhattan's first segment of physically-protected bike lane.

David Goodman's City Room piece on the PPW bike lane survey includes the first new information in months about the extent of former DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall's involvement in efforts to do away with the current design.

After a chaotic committee meeting Monday, Manhattan Community Board 7 was able to discuss the implementation of the Columbus Avenue protected bike lane far more productively at its full meeting Tuesday night, according to people who attended. The discussion of the new street design may lead to the creation of a community board task force charged with helping Columbus Avenue merchants work out their delivery issues.

After rallying on the steps of City Hall this afternoon, Transportation Alternatives delivered 2,500 handwritten letters urging Mayor Bloomberg to complete the protected bike lanes on First and Second Avenues. Joined by elected officials and more than forty supporters, T.A. called on Bloomberg to fulfill the promise of safe walking and cycling on Manhattan's East Side and to complete the bike and pedestrian improvements up to 125th Street.