Midtown

In 2015, a temporary sidewalk expansion relieved crowding on a block of 32nd Street with heavy foot traffic between Penn Station and Herald Square, but the project was scrapped after a trial run. Now advocates are pushing to bring it back, and they recently won the support of Manhattan Community Board 5.

What could be a safe, direct connection to the Midtown core and Central Park instead deposits cyclists into five lanes of chaotic car traffic.

DOT and Citi Bike marked the return of a protected bike lane to Sixth Avenue today with a ribbon-cutting and celebratory ride. The event also served to highlight Women's Bike Month and a Motivate campaign to encourage women in NYC to ride bikes.

The Sixth Avenue protected bike lane is just about finished between 8th Street and 33rd Street, except for the pedestrian islands. The redesign is still in that awkward transitional phase where people are figuring out how to use it, so today Streetsblog checked in with a few of the thousands of people who bike Sixth Avenue daily to see how the change is coming.

"Plaza 33" is back, transforming the eastern half of 33rd Street between Seventh Avenue and Eighth Avenue into a car-free public space -- and it's set to remain indefinitely.

A senior hit by a driver in Midtown earlier this month has died. NYPD charged the driver with violating the victim's right of way.

DOT has a plan for a protected bike lane on 16 blocks of Second Avenue that will test out a new configuration, where the only protection is a row of short, yellow plastic "tuff curbs." The project shrinks the protected bike lane gap on the avenue in Midtown but still exposes cyclists to fast-moving motor vehicles on the heavily-trafficked approach to the Queens Midtown Tunnel. DOT presented the plan last night to the Manhattan Community Board 6 transportation committee, which endorsed it with one abstention and no votes against.

Later today, NYC DOT will present its plan to install a protected bike lane on Second Avenue between the Queensboro Bridge/59th Street and 43rd Street to the Manhattan Community Board 6 transportation committee. The project would significantly shrink the gaps in the southbound protected bike lane but still leave cyclists exposed for several blocks approaching both the bridge and the Queens Midtown Tunnel.

Soon there will be a continuous northbound protected bike lane along the length of First Avenue, from Houston Street to the Harlem River. On Monday, the Manhattan Community Board 6 transportation committee voted for DOT's plan to plug the critical gaps in physical protection near the United Nations and the approach to the Queensboro Bridge [PDF].