Midtown

Safer streets are taking shape in Midtown, with work underway to create new paths through the heart of the city for pedestrians and cyclists alike.

Attention Scott Stringer: The anti-bike share NIMBYs of Turtle Bay don't speak for everyone who uses Dag Hammarskjold Plaza.

Manhattan Community Board 6 last night approved a DOT proposal for four new pairs of crosstown bike lanes from 39th to 55th Streets.

Anyone who rides a bike in Midtown Manhattan, or plans to once bike-share comes online this summer, should be interested in tonight's Community Board 6 meeting.

Photo contributor extraordinaire Jacob-uptown has uploaded a new batch to the Streetsblog Flickr pool, taking us on a tour of the major new bikeways DOT is implementing in Manhattan.

DOT has proposed painting four new pairs of crosstown bike lanes through the heart of Midtown, an exciting statement and a necessary move in preparation for the launch of bike-share. The lanes would be tightly spaced, located on 39th and 40th Streets, 43rd and 44th, 48th and 51st, and 54th and 55th.

Has any district in New York City ever seen the kind of bike infrastructure transformation coming to Midtown in 2012?

"It's a private property with public access," a security guard explained after stopping me from taking photos of a mid-block passageway through the Metropolitan Tower on 56th Street. The space in question, which connects 56th to 57th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, is one of more than 150 privately owned public spaces in central Midtown, many of which are products of a 1980s zoning program to improve pedestrian circulation. In exchange for development bonuses that today are worth millions of dollars in rentable square footage, developers were supposed to build and maintain publicly accessible mid-block passageways to help ease pedestrian congestion on the heavily used north-south avenues. The problem is many of these semi-public spaces now appear so private, most walkers wouldn’t even know to use them.

Reader Niles Ray sends in this bird's-eye view of bike lane construction on Eighth Avenue at 37th Street.