City renews push for Emmons bike lane
Advocates say plan would be crucial connector of Jamaica Bay Greenway
COURIER LIFE, OCT. 29-NOV. 4, 2021 3
BY BEN BRACHFELD
The city is renewing a push
to build a bike lane on Emmons
Avenue in Sheepshead
Bay, which the city and advocates
say is a crucial section
needed to connect the Jamaica
Bay Greenway with the
neighborhood and the rest of
the borough’s bike lane network,
but the path will likely
still face friction in the community
input process.
The Department of Transportation
presented its current
proposal for the bike lane,
which runs along the waterfront
thoroughfare between
Shore Boulevard and Brigham
Street, to Community Board
15’s Transportation Committee
on Oct. 25
The committee voted it
down, according to board
chair Theresa Scavo, who was
present at the meeting; the full
board did not take up the measure
at its general meeting the
next night, and likely won’t
until next month, Scavo said.
Even in the unlikely event the
proposal sweeps through the
community board, fi nal approval
and implementation
likely wouldn’t go through until
the arrival of the new administration
next year.
The new proposal is largely
the same as the old proposal,
and includes three separate
components: from Shore Boulevard
to Ocean Avenue, the
DOT would shift the central
painted median on Emmons
to allow for a two-way, parking
protected bike lane on the
waterfront side. For the bulk
of the path, from Ocean Avenue
to Coyle Street, the plan
would convert angled parking
on the eastbound side of
Emmons to parallel parking,
establish a parking lane opposite
the roadway, and build a
protected bike lane adjacent to
the parking lane. For the fi nal
two blocks before hitting the
greenway, from Coyle Street
to Brigham Street, the lane
would take over an existing
parking lane.
DOT says that the new proposal
would not reduce the
number of automobile travel
lanes nor the amount of parking
on Emmons, noting that
converting angled parking on
one side of the street to parallel
parking on both sides
would both protect cyclists
and maintain the current
number of spots.
Scavo and other board members,
however, were not convinced,
and the proposal was
rejected 7-1 by the committee.
“They claim we’re getting
14 parking spots,” Scavo said.
“Personally, I’m not believing
it, but this is what they’re saying.”
Scavo, who couldn’t identify
any appreciable differences
in Monday’s presentation
from previous ones, also
said that she and fellow committee
members believe Emmons
is too busy and dangerous
to install a bike lane.
“Most on the committee
feel as though this will be extremely
dangerous down such
a busy avenue as Emmons,”
said Scavo. “With all the restaurants,
with people being
picked up, dropped off, that
this will be causing a lot of
traffi c problems.”
In contrast, Brian Hedden,
co-founder of Bike South
Brooklyn, said the DOT’s data
has settled the question of
whether protected bike lanes
make the streets safer.
“I appreciate the concern,”
Hedden said. “But the DOT has
studied this and they’ve been
able to demonstrate that this
makes the street safer, and
that any gut feeling that says
otherwise is not grounded in
reality.”
The city’s presentation
cites data from 2007 to 2017,
showing that on streets where
protected bike lanes were installed,
crashes with injuries
dropped 15 percent, and pedestrian
injuries dropped 21 percent.
Injuries to cyclists actually
went up by 3 percent, but
that was in conjunction with a
61 percent increase in bike volume
along those stretches.
In 2017, Community District
15 was declared a “priority
bicycle district” by DOT
for having a “low density bicycle
network coverage” and
a corresponding high number
of cyclist deaths and injuries.
Since 2011, three cyclists have
died and 716 have been injured
in the community district’s
boundaries, according to NYC
Crash Mapper. That includes
33 injuries on the section of
Emmons where the bike lane
would be. DOT surveys suggest
bike traffi c has more than doubled
on Emmons since 2015.
Hedden, who lives in Bay
Ridge, said that he is a regular
cyclist on Emmons, especially
during the summer, but that
there’s a clear dip in bike traffi
c on Emmons compared to the
adjacent Jamaica Greenway.
He said he doesn’t blame those
who wish to avoid it, either.
“It’s a high-stress experience,”
Hedden said. “Everyone
has their own risk tolerance,
and for most people biking on
Emmons exceeds that risk tolerance.”
An Emmons Avenue bike
lane has been proposed numerous
times and has brewed
for years; DOT’s presentation
included a City Planning Department
schematic from 1993
with a bike lane on Emmons
proposed as a means to connect
Brooklyn’s waterfront
greenway.
Most recently, the path was
proposed by DOT and the Regional
Plan Association in
2017, again as part of a larger,
connected greenway. The city
declared to CB15 its intentions
to move forward on the
path in 2019, part of the mayor’s
“Green Wave” program
released amid a rash of cyclist
deaths that year. But it
ran into opposition from the
local councilmember, Chaim
Deutsch, who felt the lane
would increase congestion on
Emmons and cause hazards
for parents dropping off their
kids at school, according to
The City.
After the thoroughfare was
left off of a list of streets where
the city intended to install
bike lanes, Deutsch did something
of an about-face in early
2020, declaring to then-DOT
head honcho Polly Trottenberg
that he wants to see the
Emmons lane completed, and
that protected bike lanes are
the “way to go.” Trottenberg
said that she intended to get
the lane completed in 2020, but
as with many things the work
was scuttled by the pandemic.
Deutsch was expelled from
the Council earlier this year,
after pleading guilty to tax
fraud. He was sentenced to
three months in prison, a year
of supervised release, and over
$100,000 in fi nes; he is due to report
to prison later this week.
The mayor’s Green Wave
plan called for building 75
miles of bike infrastructure
in Community District 15 and
nine other priority bicycle districts
by 2022.
Installing the Emmons lane
would go a long way towards
fi nishing the fully-connected
greenway cyclists have long
dreamt of. The fi nal stages
would most likely include
protected paths on Neptune
and Cropsey avenues, Hedden
said; both already have unprotected
bike lanes along much
of their length, home to many
a double-parked car.
City offi cials want to install a protected bike lane on Emmons Avenue. Google Maps
“Everyone has their
own risk tolerance,
and for most people
biking on Emmons
exceeds that risk
tolerance.”