BY BEN VERDE
Transit advocates gathered
to celebrate the 10th
anniversary of the Prospect
Park West bike lane on Sunday,
where the enthusiastic
cyclists unofficially conamed
the green-painted
pedal pushing path after
safe-streets activist Eric
McClure — whose advocacy
made the lane’s construction
possible back in 2010.
“It’s amazing, you forget
how fraught it was,” Mc-
Clure said on Sunday. “It
was a real knock-down-dragout
battle.”
A year after construction
began in 2010, a group
of politically connected
Park Slopers — including
former city Transportation
Commissioner Iris Weinshall,
the wife of Sen. Chuck
Schumer — filed a lawsuit
opposing the dedicated cycling
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path, which kicked off
a six year court battle that
finally ended when a judge
tossed the legal petition in
2017. Since then, the city has
slowly moved to wrap the entire
exterior of Brooklyn’s
Backyard, as well as many
major thruways leading to
the greenspace, in parkingprotected
bike paths.
Attendees of Sunday’s
event, who capped the celebration
with a “family ride”
down the lane in support
of the project, honored Mc-
Clure for his relentless activism
that helped overcome legal
and political challenges
to the lane — giving him a
DOT-style road sign dubbing
the path as “Eric McClure
Bikeway on Prospect Park
West.”
McClure, along with fellow
proponents of transportation
alternatives, have
lauded construction of bike
lanes as safer for both pedalers
and cars alike.
According to city data, no
bikers were fatally injured
along Prospect Park West
since the lane’s opening, and
motor vehicle speeds have
signifi cantly dropped — as an
average of 74 percent of cars
were recorded speeding along
the thruway before construction,
compared to just 20 percent
one year after.
Park Slope Councilman
Brad Lander remarked at
the weekend’s unofficial
dedication on how much
the city’s transit policy had
changed since a decade ago,
when there were no substantial
protected bike lanes —
but said the DOT should continue
working toward a full
citywide network of safe cycling
paths.
“Here we are 10 years
The Prospect Park West bike lane is now unoffi cially named after safestreets
activist Eric McClure. Photo by Ben Verde
later, and we still have a
long way to go,” said Lander.
“We’re seeing the need for
bike superhighways, for substantially
more bike and pedestrian
infrastructure, for
a city that can genuinely get
people out of their cars onto
transit and all types of transportation
alternatives.”
PEDAL PUSHING
PPW bike lane celebrates 10th year,
gets unoffi cial co-naming after activist
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