Protected Bike Lanes

It's not finished yet, but some segments of the First Avenue bike lane are quite rideable. I used about eight blocks of it this weekend.

Before I get to the "intrigue" part of this post (it's juicy), first let me say that if you haven't checked out the Prospect Park West re-design yet, you owe it to yourself to head on over and take a look. Last time I checked, some of the finishing touches have yet to appear, but it's already one of the most effective street transformations the city has undertaken.

Now for some positive cycling news. Vancouver, British Columbia, in response to an infrastructure-driven jump in ridership, is installing a new separated two-way bike corridor on downtown's Dunsmuir Street. The project itself, part of an eventual network of protected lanes, seems impressive enough. But as this video shows, the would-be "greenest city in the world" absolutely nails the presentation.

East Harlem residents are outraged by the city's backtracking on plans to bring protected bike lanes to their neighborhood. 

A reader sent along this item spied on the DOT events calendar for next week. On Wednesday the 16th, at Manhattan Community Board 4...

The re-design of First and Second Avenues has been a complex project to judge since the initial plans were unveiled earlier this year. From the beginning, it's been the most ambitious re-envisioning of a major corridor we've seen in New York City to date: 250 blocks of faster bus service and safer traveling for cyclists and pedestrians. But it has not met the high expectations of New Yorkers who held out hope for a truly high-performance busway and a continuous, protected bicycle corridor.

Last night, NYCDOT's Ted Wright presented a revised design for the Flushing Avenue bikeway to the transportation committee of Brooklyn Community Board 2. The new version preserves plans for a fully-protected, two-way bike path while leaving room for two-way bus service and auto traffic. Because the revised design requires more complex construction work than the original, however, Brooklynites will have to wait a few years before that phase of the project gets built. In the meantime, DOT plans to lay down a less-robust interim project, which the committee endorsed unanimously.

Earlier this week, the transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 7 issued a split decision on the protected bike lane proposed for a 20-block stretch of Columbus Avenue. One of the committee chairs who voted against it, Andrew Albert, told the room full of bike lane supporters that he couldn't endorse the project because of potential difficulties with commercial deliveries. According to Columbus Avenue BID director Barbara Adler, opposing the proposal on those grounds is, basically, a whole lot of nonsense.