Pedaling ahead (to Manhattan)
Mayor releases construction timeline for Brooklyn Bridge bike lane
BY BEN VERDE
The city will began work on
the hotly anticipated Brooklyn
Bridge bike lane on 21, with construction
closing the left lane of
the Manhattan-bound roadway
— and the cycling path is slated
for completion next fall.
“When that lane opens up it
will be brand new, it will be for
bikes only,” de Blasio said. “It
will be a beautiful and radical
reimagining of a New York City
icon.”
The existing cycling path on
the Brooklyn Bridge has long
been a mess, with bikers and
pedestrians jammed onto the
same narrow wooden walkway
where tourists often pose for
photos, creating endless confl
ict between commuting cyclists.
City Hall intends to ease
that confl ict with the introduction
of the roadbed-level bike
lane, but some cyclists worry
the lane is too narrow and will
only create further confl icts between
cyclists when they are
jammed into the 8 foot wide
two-way lane.
The Department of Transportation
COURIER L 18 IFE, JUNE 25-JULY 1, 2021
has maintained that
an 8-foot-wide path is the only
possibility, and has rejected
the premise of closing down
another lane on the Brooklynbound
side of the bridge within
the current timeline because of
their need for at least one inner
lane for bridge maintenance
and the need for further traffi c
studies.
The de Blasio administration
has pushed the lane as one
of the mayor’s signature safestreets
achievements as he prepares
to leave offi ce and as his
signature Vision Zero program
falters, with 2021 on track to be
the deadliest year for road fatalities
since the program was
launched.
News of the bike lane was
fi rst broken by Brooklyn Paper
when a Department of Transportation
staffer let the plan
slip during a Brooklyn Community
Board 2 meeting in June
of 2020. Mayor de Blasio and
former Department of Transportation
Construction on the Brooklyn Bridge bike lane will begin June 21. Department of Transportation
Commissioner Polly
Trottenberg denied Brooklyn
Paper’s reporting at the time —
before making the announcement
ahead of de Blasio’s fi nal
state of the city address in January.
The installation of the lane
coincides with an ongoing
boom in bike commuting in
New York spurred by the pandemic,
which inspired some
New Yorkers to ditch the subway
in favor of more open-air
methods of transport. Recent
Department of Transportation
data shows that an average of
21,872 cyclists pedaled over
one of the city’s four East River
bridges on weekdays this past
May — 4,715 more than in May
2019 when thousands more people
were commuting into Manhattan
for work. 4
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