The mayor announced last week that the Department of Transportation will start work on the plans announced in 2024 for a new bike path approach to the Brooklyn Bridge. This mayor is using the June start of the World Cup as a deadline.

You may recall that DOT announced changes two years ago that would alleviate the chaos at the combined pedestrian crossing right next to the halal vendors on the east side of City Hall Park — from what I can tell in the renderings, this is the exact same plan. It’s a welcome change — and also a necessary one now that the bike path is busier than ever. There was a 150 percent increase in Brooklyn Bridge riders between 2020 and 2023.

But bikers coming from City Hall Park will still have to cross Centre along with the pedestrians coming on and off the bridge promenade. What they will avoid is the crazy 180-degree turn on and off the bike path (see image below).

IMO moving the halal trucks back to the park fence — or limiting the number or taking them out of the park altogether — would help more than any of these plans. The route from the park to the bridge entrance is a shared path for pedestrians and bikes and almost impossible to navigate, even if you are just biking south through the Civic Center.

The images describe it better, but to summarize: the DOT will remove one of two southbound lanes (image below) on Centre immediately south of Chambers and convert it into a two-way bike lane (see image at top). Riders heading from Tribeca through City Hall Park over the bridge will cross Centre and make a left just *before* they hit the base of the promenade. Then they will bike north for a few feet before they make the right turn onto the path. This separates the bike traffic from the pedestrian traffic.

The city added the dedicated cycling path by taking a Manhattan-bound car lane in 2021. Bike ridership over the bridge then nearly doubled from an average of 2,652 daily trips in 2021 to an average of 4,769 in 2023. More than 25,000 cyclists cross the East River bridges daily.