Law streamlining process to improve bike lanes applauded

December 7, 2023 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

The Brooklyn Bridge dedicated two-way bike lane, with a high barrier separating it from car traffic. Photo courtesy of NYC DOT

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Bike use in New York City, at least in many parts of it, is booming. According to the city Department of Transportation, 30 percent of all New Yorkers, or 2 million, ride a bike, and of those, 902,000 ride regularly.

Moreover, the number of New Yorkers who commute to work via bicycle has risen steadily. In Brooklyn, approximately 8,000 people biked to work in 2005. By last year, this figure reached 26,000, DOT statistics showed.

More bicyclists mean more demand for bike lanes. Protected bike lane projects for Brooklyn that are in the pipeline include Ashland Place, Flushing Avenue, Meeker Avenue, Bedford Avenue, Cozine Avenue and Fountain Avenue — an area stretching from Greenpoint to Flatbush to East New York.

“Protected bike lanes” mean those that are either raised or protected by barriers — the older type of bike lanes, which were not separated from street traffic except for white lines or colored paint, have proved insufficient from a safety point of view.

However, until now, proposals for new bike lanes were slowed down by a cumbersome procedure enacted in the wake of a bitter controversy surrounding the implementation of a two-way bike path along Prospect Park West about 12 years ago.

That’s why officials and bicycling advocates were happy when new city legislation, sponsored by Councilmember Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn Heights-DUMBO-Greenpoint) and designed to expedite installation of new bike lanes by streamlining public notice requirements. passed the City Council earlier this week.

Restler’s legislation, introduced in conjunction with Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, will preserve input from Council members and community boards in major Department of Transportation projects, but will no longer impose excessive multi-month delays on new bike lane projects, according to Restler’s office.

Specifically, this legislation will eliminate the mandatory 90-day period before bike lanes can be installed and create a process that takes two to six weeks for the substantial majority of the year.

Lengthy wait times in projects sometimes resulted in the Department of Transportation not being able to complete vital safety enhancements before the end of their weather-dependent construction season, effectively delaying them to the next calendar year, according to Restler’s office.

“Every day, New Yorkers make more than 550,000 bike trips,” said Restler. “Each trip helps us reduce the number of cars on the road and combat the climate crisis. The best way to encourage more biking is to make it safer by building a truly protected network of bike lanes.”

“Building a world-class transportation system in New York City requires a well-connected and well-established bike lane network across the five boroughs. But this task is impossible if we hold up creating new bike lanes with excessive and unnecessary red tape,” said Councilmember Shahana Hanif (D-Park Slope-Windsor Terrace-Kensington).

“I proudly co-sponsored Intro 417 to make it easier for our city to build urgently needed cycling infrastructure. By streamlining processes and removing red tape, we can ensure our city is leading the way in building new bike lanes and making our city even more accessible,” she added.

“To combat the rising levels of bike riders killed in traffic crashes, achieve the legal mandates of the NYC Streets Plan, and meet our climate goals, New York City needs to build more protected bike lanes. Yet, current law makes it harder to build a protected bike lane than other street safety projects. New Yorkers cannot afford delays,” said Elizabeth Adams, deputy executive director for public affairs at Transportation Alternatives, the city’s main advocacy organization for cycling and other non-automobile transit.

“We applaud Council Member Restler and the City Council for passing Intro 417 so bike lane projects are no longer singled out with arbitrary delays and waiting periods that other street projects don’t face,” she said.

“If the city is serious about reducing air pollution and tackling the climate crisis, then we need to do more to get people out of their cars and onto bicycles and other clean transportation modes, and we can only do that by creating a safe and robust network of protected bike lanes across the city,” said Alia Soomro, deputy director of NYC policy for the New York League of Conservation Voters.