8
BROOKLYN WEEKLY, FEBRUARY 9, 2020
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
The city’s chief street
designer hopes to fast-track
a protected bike lane along
Sheepshead Bay’s Emmons
Avenue this year, after local
Councilman Chaim
Deutsch pressed offi cials
at an oversight committee
hearing on Jan. 29.
“I really want to have a
conversation on this and
try to get it done, if feasible,
because I think protected
bike lanes are the way to go,
and not shared bike lanes
with cars on the streets,”
Deutsch said at a meeting
of the Council’s Transportation
Committee.
Department of Transportation
Commissioner
Polly Trottenberg said
that her agency still had to
work out some of the plan’s
details, but she vocalized
her support for constructing
the bike lane in 2020
— a year earlier than her
agency had proposed just
hours earlier.
“I hope to get it done
this year, yes,” Trottenberg
said. “I think there’s still
a few design issues we’re
working through… I think
we’re close, but still a few
things to work out.”
Plans to install a bike
lane along the southern
curb of the maritime boulevard
between Knapp Street
and West End Avenue have
been kicked around for
years, including in 2017
when offi cials wanted to
connect Emmons Avenue
with the Jamaica Bay
Greenway.
But the transit department
publicly punted on
the idea earlier this week,
when they announced 10
miles of new protected bike
lanes in the borough slated
for construction in 2020 —
but notably left off the Emmons
Avenue from that
timeline.
Those 10 proposed miles
came as part of Mayor Bill
de Blasio’s Green Wave
plan to install 80 miles of
green-painted paths by the
time the city’s lame duck
chief executive leaves offi
ce in 2021.
With that announcement
— which delayed
many southern Brooklyn
bike lanes until the following
year — some residents
of the transit-starved
neighborhoods accused
the department of shutting
them out in favor of northern
brownstone Brooklyn.
“It’s great that they’re
expanding but it looks like
they’re only going after
the low-hanging fruit and
those communities already
suffer an embarrassment of
riches of bike lanes,” said
former Park Slope civic
guru Craig Hammerman,
who recently moved to
Brighton Beach. “Whereas
in southern Brooklyn, bicyclists
and pedestrians
are taking their lives into
their own hands — we’re
the slaughter capital of
Brooklyn.”
As Hammerman noted,
southern Brooklyn neighborhoods
accounted for
many of cyclist deaths last
year in Brooklyn — where
18 bikers died boroughwide.
The area suffers in particular
from not having a
decent east-west route for
bikes, according to Hammerman,
who pointed
out that one of the few
safe routes for bikers, the
Riegelmann Boardwalk,
only provides limited mobility
— and is only open at
select times.
The new bike lane plans
make one Bay Ridgite biker
cautiously optimistic that
city’s transit honchos will
implement more bike lanes
in the southern parts of the
borough than they have in
the past — largely due to resistance
from community
boards there.
“Traditionally, it’s been
diffi cult for DOT to propose
any bike lanes for southern
Brooklyn, because community
boards tend to deny
the existence or legitimacy
of resident cyclists,” said
Brian Hedden, a co-founder
of the advocacy group Bike
South Brooklyn. “It’s also
not only about who lives
in that place — nobody has
made that claim about the
Belt Parkway.”
Fast tracked
City offi cials want to install a protected bike lane on Emmons Avenue
by the end of the year. Google
Emmons Ave bike lane could happen this year: DOT
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