The Department of Transportation will present plans for a redesigned Amsterdam Avenue to the community board for the second time on Tuesday, including any changes they’ve made since the initial meeting.
The meeting will be held at Fordham University, 113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue starting at 6:30 p.m.
The new design is meant to reduce crashes on the avenue; it would add a protected bike lane and pedestrian islands on the West side of the block, while narrowing Amsterdam to three driving lanes from four.
We posted the initial plan and an article about the meeting here.
I’ll be there supporting the plan — with bells on!
Oh god no, those protected bike lanes are death traps. If you cross from the other side you almost get taken out because you can barely see up the bike lane until you’re standing in it. As long as they don’t change the timed lights hopefully traffic won’t slow to a crawl on Amsterdam. They make a lot of deliveries with double parked trucks on Amsterdam too, oh well. I miss the days when you had to have cajones to ride a bike in Manhattan so only the bike messengers (who know how to actually bike around NYC) were the ones on the street. Now it’s an idiot tourist wonderland and Michael Bluth types biking to work on those god awful citi bikes. Kvetch over, but really, those bike lanes are terrible. Wear a helmet, unless you want to be an organ donor!
The Amsterdam bike lane is vital. Delivery trucks quad-park all day, reducing traffic flow to one or two lanes, and causing near-fatal collision ops for those who need to get uptown for doctors, work, appointments, school, kids, etc. Save lives! Make the trucks go a few more feet to a side street! (It ain’t rocket science, folks.)
By my count, two separate curb-jumping sidewalk crashes on Amsterdam, at 79th and 82nd, have hospitalized a bodega worker and a driver in the time since DOT presented their initial plan two months ago.
I don’t know a better way to show how serious is the need for safe street improvements and the consequences of blocking them. Thank you to everyone who’s supporting this redesign. We desperately need this – we needed it last year, we need it now, we will need it next year if obstructionists continue to overlook everyone except for leadfoot drivers. The sooner we prioritize safety for everyone who uses Amsterdam Ave and fix the neighborhood’s atrocious six-lane speedway, the better.
When cyclists (delivery people and regular folk) prove they can obey all traffic laws (staying within the speed limit, stopping at red lights, yielding to pedestrians, traveling with the flow of traffic- not against it, etc), then will I go along with conctruction of bike lanes. So far, I haven’t seen this
Do you hold the same standards for Motorists? (Close the roads until motorists can “prove they can obey all traffic laws”, i.e. no speeding, texting, failure to yield, illegal u-turns, merge without signaling, etc etc?)
And bicyclists “staying within the speed limit”? really? lol
Last night some opponents asked whether the expense of providing a safe bike lane and pedestrian refuges on Amsterdam Avenue was wasteful.
Here’s how NYC funds bike lanes as part of the citywide transportation network. There’s $6.7 million in completely federally funded money, 0.75% of the annual $840 million Department of Transportation budget. I wish I could include a pie chart. And I definitely wish some of my city taxes could also support a way to bike on the street where I live.
Bicycle Network Development. As laid out in PlaNYC 2030, the City is committed to having 1,800 bike-lane miles (on street, in parks, and along paths) by the year 2030, with the goal to install 50 lane miles each year until the Citywide Bicycle Network is complete. The Preliminary Budget includes $6.7 million, all federal funding, for bicycle network expansion.
https://council.nyc.gov/html/budget/2016/Pre/dot.pdf
NYC DOT is grossly underestimating their costs. Seattle is and will be paying a lot more for their bike lanes.
https://mynorthwest.com/11/2627551/Miles-of-new-protected-bike-lanes-highlight-185-million-Seattle-plans-for-2015
According to the article they project $20 million a year for 474 total miles and this will probably go up. Their average cost will be close to $1 million dollars per mile for all type of lanes. The cost of Seattle’s Second Avenue protected bike lane upgrade was about $1.5 million for .71 miles in 2014.
https://crosscut.com/2014/07/2nd-avenue-bike-lane-protection-cars-drivers/
To put that $6.7 million in federal funding for 50 miles of bike lanes per year in perspective (NYC has 6000 miles of streets to maintain for cars), we have $55 million in the city budget for building out ferry routes. The pricetag for reconstruction of the Rockaway Beach boardwalk after hurricane Sandy swept it away is $340 million. We just approved a $25 million additional payment to the boardwalk contractor.
I’m not arguing against those projects, just saying what they cost. Bike lanes are incredibly cost effective.