Midtown

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.

The Department of Transportation is currently going around to community boards and presenting preliminary maps of bike-share locations. While the map for the full service area isn't finished yet, the details that have come out so far are pretty exciting.

One of the year's most exciting street safety projects is on track to get better. Thanks to a recent set of recommendations from Community Board 4, the extension of the protected bike lanes on Eighth and Ninth Avenues will include additional sidewalk expansions and on-street bike parking. Though DOT didn't adopt all of the board's ideas -- most notably, the agency is leaving a gap in the physical protection for cyclists in front of the Port Authority Bus Terminal -- on the West Side, the community board's requests are helping to build a better bike lane.

Speaking this morning at the launch of weekday Select Bus Service along 34th Street, Mayor Bloomberg, Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and New York City Transit President Thomas Prendergast released the latest stats documenting the effect of Select Bus Service improvements along First and Second Avenues.

It's no physically separated transitway, but bus riders can still get excited about the launch of Select Bus Service along 34th Street this Sunday.