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Broadway bike lanes going green as promised
The bike lanes planned a few months back for Broadway are being formalized this month by the city. (Thanks to Charlie Komanoff who got the painting in action last week.) And just in time: bike ridership is up across the city by 55 percent since 2012, growing to 49,000 commuters, with Citi Bike reporting more than a 50 percent increase in rides compared to last year at this time.
The Downtown Alliance released a report last week about ridership here, and noted that more than 20 percent of Lower Manhattan’s workforce already either walks or bikes to work. And 30 percent of the residential population bikes or walks to work. (It also notes that 58 percent of workers downtown are younger than 40.) (And icymi, The Times has a story about other city crises where New Yorkers have taken to two wheels.)
The alliance also crunched some Citi Bike data from last year to see who is coming to downtown by bike — since one out of every five commuting trips ended south of Chambers. Folks mostly came from the Lower East Side. Seven out of the top 10 most frequented origin stations were from the LES.
The alliance also made some proposals to encourage biking downtown. Their plan:
• Grow capacity at existing Citi Bike stations and add additional stations near transit stops
• Add bike racks to publicly-owned private space (POPS)
• Utilize vacant retail storefronts for protected bike parking
• Improve bike infrastructure on the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges
• Encourage use of bikes for deliveries instead of vans
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This is great, but why not have this from SoHo to FiDi? Why leave the huge gap between Houston and City Hall? Do people start biking to FiDI at the Southern tip of City Hall? DOT continues to amaze at doing the bare minimum (this should have been done YEARS ago) that they can point to and smile and nod.
Agreed! And this bike lane should start at 14th street, which would protect riders from UWS all the way to the tip of the island (and let’s convert lower Bway to a busway and commercial auto-only, while we’re at it).
Now maybe the bike riders will get the hell off the sidewalks.
Also it amazes me that there is parking on both sides of Varick Street that leads into the Holland Tunnel. With the parking on both sides of the street delivery trucks must double park, causing more delays. With a protected bike lane (no car parking on either side) deliveries could be made and we could have a usable bike lane all the way downtown.
Yes to delivery zones and fewer parking spots! Any time, any where, and definitely there.
I want less cars and more bikes…HOWEVER…I want the following along with that:
– No bikeriding on sidewalks. SideWALK not sideBIKE. You want drivers to respect your presence and practice safety around you, you do the same for pedestrians.
– No bikes running red lights. You want to treated as equals to drivers, you stop at red lights like lawful drivers do.
– Every Citi Bike and non-CB bike should have a license plate so people can report bikes doing both. Deliverypeople have to wear an ID vest, why should you be able to ride without ID?
With more bike infrastructure and bike classes instead of only driver Ed. You may get your wish. But I doubt drivers of cars would stop running lights, and speeding.
I forgot to add that bicylists should be required to make turn signals with their hands like I saw a lady do the other day on Greenwich Street. And slow down when they see a yellow light.
Again if they want to be on equal footing with drivers then they should abide by the same laws.
Drivers will do what they do.
Agree with your comments!
Ebikes do not belong on sidewalks or bike paths
Most of the Chinese restaurant drivers drive ebikes in sidewalks in BPC
One Chinese restaurant driver even rides his motorized bike through the garden pathway of Gateway Plaza
This is basically a pathway for kids playing in the garden
One nearly squashed a 2 year old to death last week
If I had a plate I would have called the restaurant
Good points about delivery zones. The city somehow allows delivery trucks (what seem to be mostly Amazon contractors) to run free distribution centers on the streets and sidewalk — taking up entire areas with packages, carts, and workers for hours of the day. The sidewalk on our street is often impassable a good part of the day. You have to either walk out into the street traffic to get around, or cross the street. Sometimes it’s even blocking the entrance to our building and we have to ask them to move the carts just to get inside. The final insult is the left-behind litter: food trash, plastic wrapping, abandoned boxes. Our building has even received tickets for the litter even though super cleans every day; I’ve never seen the trucks get ticketed. Is this the price to pay for “convenience”? There must be a better way.
Motorized bikes should not be in bike lanes
yes, the handlebar throttle style electric bikes favored by delivery people are a major menace. i’ve had/seen several close calls.
i don’t care what color they are painted, unprotected bike lanes are very dangerous.
So are bicyclists who ride on sidewalks (not sidebikes), sometimes whizzing past people, and run red lights. And motorized bikes which should use the car lanes.
And this is coming from someone who thinks we should have a commuter tax as I am SICK of people driving into NYC just for work and spending little or no money in it (zero if they brownbag their lunches and bring their own coffee or get free coffee.) You want to drive from Bedford, NY into an indoor parking space, go right up to your office, eat a sandwich and salad your spouse made you, and go home right after work, cool, more power to you, but you will pay $10 a day or the cost of the lunch you didn’t buy from the deli two blocks away to do it. You are using my city to make your money and not putting dollars into the city’s local economy, especially if your parking is free/included with the job.