BRIDGING THE GAP
Pols push MTA to open more bridges to bikes and pedestrians
COURIER LIFE, MARCH 12-18, 2021 3
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
As COVID-wary Brooklynites
take up biking en
masse to avoid crowded public
transportation, a cadre of New
York State legislators are looking
to open the Verrazzano
Bridge and other city spans
to pedal-pushers — including
by introducing legislation in
Albany that would push the
Metropolitan Transportation
Authority to create cycling
spaces on bridges overseen by
the state agency.
“Despite the rapid growth
of bicycling in New York City
over the last decade, the MTA
has done little to improve bicycle
access at its stations and
prohibits cycling on its bridges
altogether,” said Bronx state
Sen. Alessandra Biaggi in a
Monday statement. “As more
New Yorkers have turned to
cycling and outdoor spaces
throughout the pandemic, we
must continue to make our
communities welcoming to cyclists
and pedestrians and encourage
residents to use clean
forms of transportation.”
The bill, which was simultaneously
introduced in
the state’s lower chamber by
Queens Assemblymember
Jessica González-Rojas, would
create an advisory committee
within the MTA tasked with
drawing up a plan for better
bike and pedestrian access on
bridges and at public transportation
stations.
The potential 13-member
panel would be appointed by
the governor and legislative
leaders, and would also weigh
in on the Authority’s capital
projects and planning.
One southern Brooklyn
bike advocate hailed the move
as an important fi rst step in
getting transit honchos to the
table, after years of MTA bigs
resisting bike access on the
agency’s overpasses.
“For Brooklynites looking
to bike over the Verrazzano
to Staten Island or the Marine
Parkway Bridge to the Rockaways,
MTA leadership has
been more than indifferent —
they’ve been aggressively hostile,
using arbitrary and false
safety claims to obscure their
own failures and last-place status,”
said Brian Hedden, a cofounder
of the advocacy group
Bike South Brooklyn. “This
bill will be an important fi rst
step in catching the MTA up
with its peers, and ending the
leadership’s pointless obstruction.”
The group has lobbied the
MTA since 2019 to close one of
the Verrazzano Bridge’s 13 car
lanes and turn it into a cycling
and pedestrian path. In 2015,
MTA offi cials proposed an almost
$400 million bike path expansion
that included new 20-
foot lanes on either side of the
bridge and elaborate ramps rising
from the waterfront greenway
up to the bridge.
Howeever, a recent Streetsblog
report showed how the
agency might have purposefully
pitched the bloated project
while ignoring cheaper
proposals that use existing
roadway and street-level approaches
to get onto the bridge,
effectively killing their own
plans on arrival.
An MTA spokesman declined
to provide further comment.
The Verrazzano has remained
off limits to cyclists
since its construction by
power broker Robert Moses in
the 1960s, except for rare occasions
like the Five Borough
Bike Tour.
The Verrazzano Bridge. File photo by Steve Solomonson