A Bike Lane Grows Uptown

If there is one thing we love to hear about, that would be the creation of more dedicated bike lanes in the city. So how happy were we when we found this article in this weeks Villager? Pretty happy. We won't be ecstatic till everything is final, but things are definitely looking optimistic.

The deal: Last week the Transportation Committee of Community Board 4 voted 8-0 to send the full board a proposal for an extended bike lane from the Village to Midtown up Eighth Avenue. Where the bike lane on Eighth currently stops at 14th, if the full board passes the proposal in December it will continue all the way up to 57th Street only breaking for the Port Authority from 39th to 42nd.

How fast can all of this happen? Since the lane has been in the works for quite some time (it was first envisioned in the city's 1997 Bicycle Master Plan), within the next year. The Department of Transportation is fully behind the idea, so now it just comes down to the C. B. 4 vote on December 7th. In the meantime, the Villager article also mentions some ideas for differentiating bike lanes from regular lanes so cars would stay out of them. One solution was painting them blue, which strikes us as a smart and seemingly obvious idea. Apparently there are a few of these blue bike lanes already in Brooklyn, anybody dealt with them?

Photograph by Jefferson Siegel for the Villager.

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By Garth Johnston in News on November 27, 2005 3:45 PM

Comments [rss]

teb

Blue paint sounds expensive and it seems like it would wear off. Obviously a divided median is possible (unlike spikes). Still leaves the problems of parallel parking for cars and turning for bikes. If there's a median there can't be parallel parking unless the bicycler is going to to be divided from the main traffic by parallel parking and a median (And talk about pedestrians, it would probably just become an extension of the sidewalk). And the more seperated the bikes are from traffic the more problems will happen at the intersections unless there's some sort of special provision (e.g. bike turn lights but can you see bike messengers sitting through that light cycle?).

Brightliner

"dude," if there's no damage, then many drivers won't give a second thought to driving right over traffic cones. If drivers aren't the assholes I think they are, then parking lot spikes never would have been successful on the market.

funky lc

commeting from chicago! we have a lot of bike lanes these days and a lot of cars in the city. SUV's and cabs still seem to think that bike lanes are their personal lanes, but we got a new rule that apparently if a motor vehicle gets caught driving or standing in one, they can recieve a $100 ticket by police or traffic enforcers.

perhaps ya'll can try that. i like them blue though...that's cute!

dude

They should put up those rubber "cones" that bend when a car or bike bumps them. It's an abvious visual deterrant but does no physical harm (like spikes), but they are still not a good idea to hit.

The blue bike lanes in Brooklyn are okay, and they help more than you think but mostly because people think they are official NYPD lanes.

monkeyone

The problem is not only cars in bike lanes, but pedestrians at crossings. Until the public recognizes that bike lanes are for bikes and not cars or people, they will be useless for bicycling. Other places have workable bike lanes. It's a pity that we can't have them here.

Why do people need to have that lead off the curb like a lead off first base before the ball is hit? That's what ruins bike lane use here, that and drivers who think they own the road.

hippiecrusher02

Mow the bikers down. Smash those hippies. Let their waxy dreadlocks line the streets.

Chung-chieh Shan

How about painting the bicyclists blue? That'd really make them stand out.

I bike up 8th Ave all the time, and wouldn't want to be constrained to a bike lane by spikes.

Brightliner

Blue paint won't do anything. Drivers will park and drive on the lanes anyway. The only thing that will deter NYC drivers is the threat of costly damage. How about some nice spikes dividing the bike lane from traffic lanes? Any jackass who tries to drive over to a forbidden lane suddenly finds he needs a whole, new set of tires.

Or at least some hefty fines and serious enforcement. How about it, NYPD? If you spent as much time and effort ticketing double-parkers and people driving in bike lanes as you did hassling cyclists, the city would have a record budget surplus.