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COURIER L 4 IFE, FEBRUARY 5-11, 2021
Bridging the gap
Mayor wants to give Brooklyn
Bridge car lane to bikes
The mayor wants to turn the innermost car lane on the Manhattan-bound side of the bridge
into a two-way bike lane. Mayor’s Offi ce
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
We told you so!
Mayor Bill de Blasio confi rmed the
city’s plan to turn a car lane on the
Brooklyn Bridge roadway into a twoway
protected bike lane Thursday.
The mayor plans to turn the innermost
of three car lanes on the Manhattan
bound side of the 138-year-old span
over to bicycles by the end of this year,
while restricting the wooden walkway
above to pedestrians only, as part of
his new cycling plan dubbed “Bridges
for the People” which he will offi cially
announce at his fi nal State of the City
speech later today.
“Now, it’s time to bring them into
the 21st century and embrace the future
with a radical new plan. On the
Brooklyn Bridge, we will ban cars from
the innermost lane of the Manhattanbound
side to transform it into a twoway
protected bike lane and turn the
existing shared promenade space into
a space just for pedestrians,” de Blasio
said in a statement on Jan. 28.
The Queensborough Bridge connecting
Queens to Manhattan will
also see a roadway turned into a bike
lane, according to the mayor, who fi rst
revealed his plans exclusively to the
New York Times.
The scheme comes seven months
after the Brooklyn Paper fi rst reported
that offi cials at the Department
of Transportation were in talks with
the de Blasio administration about the
plans for Brooklyn’s iconic namesake
span, which a agency rep let slip to local
Community Board 2’s Transportation
Committee back in June.
However, when pressed for further
details, then-DOT Commissioner
Polly Trottenberg and her press offi -
cers accused their rep of “misspeaking,”
while trying to discredit this
paper’s reporting in the process —
despite video evidence backing up
the story.
“Somehow I think between maybe
what the staffer said and what was in
that article, it wasn’t quite accurate,”
said Trottenberg at the time, who has
since been nominated to serve as the
number two at the US DOT under
President Joe Biden.
Back then, de Blasio claimed he
hadn’t heard of the proposal, and
said he was skeptical of giving a lane
to bikes on the heavily-traffi cked inter
borough connector.
“The Brooklyn Bridge, that one’s
a sensitive one, because it’s such a
crucial artery,” the mayor said at a
daily press briefi ng June 22. “I had
not heard that, I’m not sure how
workable that is.”
The current shared bike and pedestrian
path across the Brooklyn
Bridge is often a dangerous squeeze
for all involved, especially prior to
the COVID-19 pandemic, when tourists
crowded onto the narrow space.
In September, a group of bike
advocates launched the campaign
Bridges4People, calling on the city to
repurpose two car lanes for bikes on
each of the three East River bridges
between Brooklyn Manhattan amid a
cycling boom during the pandemic.
The world has changed a lot over the last
century. But at Ridgewood Savings Bank, our
mission, to Multiply the Good in the lives of our
customers, has stayed the same for 100 years.
We have never wavered in our commitment
to helping our neighbors make the most of the
present and plan for a bright future – and we
never will.
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