The city installed the first 18 blocks of the protected Central Park West bike lane, from 59th to 77th Streets, in a matter of days this summer. But the rest of the project — extending it to 110th Street — is likely to wait until the Spring, according to the Department of Transportation.
“The Central Park West bike lane up to 77th Street is substantially complete,” a DOT spokesperson wrote. “We plan to finish installing lanes up to 110th Street in Spring 2020.”
The project, which won support from Community Board 7 at a contentious meeting in July, is also being challenged in court by the co-op board of 25 Central Park West at 61st Street. A resident of that building, meanwhile, is challenging the co-op board’s right to fund the lawsuit.
Asked why it would take months to complete the rest of the project when the first phase was completed so quickly, a DOT spokesperson said it had to do with the agency’s project schedule.
“The project was phased in order to be able to begin implementation this year, within a very tight schedule and an extensive work program of other previously planned projects,” the spokesperson added. The second phase will be one of the first projects started when the implementation season begins in the spring.”
Transportation Alternatives organized a rally and ride up Central Park West last week to urge the DOT to finish the job.
“Protected bike lanes save lives!” Large group out to celebrate the new #CentralParkWest protected bike lane and demand @NYC_DOT finish the job all the way up to 110th! pic.twitter.com/nybNewGYH9
— 12stTales (@12stTales) September 25, 2019
Central Park West Bike Lane pic.twitter.com/6Ywi8E2199
— Bman (@BarmanNYC) September 25, 2019
The DOT bringing us one bad idea after another since 2001
Can Transportation Alternatives stop pretending they care about safety? They’re anti-helmet and anti-education. All they care about is eliminating cars. What they don’t seem to understand is that the cars they’re so desperate to eliminate, those belonging to UWS residents, are not used in the city. They are used to leave the city. There needs to be a moratorium on elimination of parking and of bike lane installation until Neighborhood Parking can be put into effect.
Why don’t you pay for parking rather than free-ride on the public’s right-of-way? The city should prioritize people over cars.
Incredible. We shouldn’t provide safe spaces for local cycling trips, but we should provide free storage for people who make long-distance car trips. Perfect encapsulation of motorist entitlement!
Perhaps Laura means that a fair amount of the cars taking up city street parking are those with out of state licenses Or people who do not live in the neighborhood. If the DOT would institute a policy of street parking for residents that required out of state motorists to use the metered parking & garage it would be a step in the right direction. This might cut down on the number of cars coming in to the city & make public transport into the city more appealing while opening up spots for those city residents who pay the taxes & fees associated with cars. It would also decrease the amount of time, gas, pollution & additional traffic associated with circling to find parking. This would benefit both the bike riders, pedestrians & car owners & hopefully not pit one group against the other.
Why not make a video showing the use the lane gets on an average day?
The bike lane didn’t replace a lane for traffic, it replaced parking. You should compare how many people are using the bike lane to how many people used the parking lane. People sat in those lanes for hours and hours without moving. I guarantee that if you sit and watch the bike lane and the parking lane across the street, more people will move through the bike lane than move through the parking lane.
Gets far more use than parking for private vehicles.
Exactly! All those entitled car-owners don’t understand that an idle parked car is beneficial for one person only, the owner-driver. A bike lane is good for everyone who uses it throughout the day and night.
Use? Has anyone watched how many people actually use the bike lane. It’s sad. For every 100 cars that pass, maybe 2 bikers will ride by. So if the bike lane ends on 77th, why did DOT rush to get this small section completed? What was the point? Nothing but a knee-jerk reaction and as always, knee-jerk reactions don’t fix problems. If the city really cared, maybe they wouldn’t allow or ticket the constant parking of tourist buses dropping off tourists at Strawberry Fields. Every day these buses take over the “dedicated” bike lanes. Causing bikers to have to bike into traffic lanes like the lady that was killed. But wait?! Wasn’t that what they were trying to fix with this ill conceived knee-jerk reaction. So we are right back to square one DOT. Time to make weed legal in NYC, so the DOT can keep smoking it thinking they have actually accomplished something.
I bike north on CPW everyday and it is SO much safer. I don’t constantly think I’m going to get hit from behind by a distracted or speeding driver and I don’t think I am going to get doored by every parked car, as I did before. Plus, I can see pedestrians much more clearly now at intersections and they can see me. It’s infinitely better.
Yeah. Totally weird that a new bike lane that isn’t complete yet isn’t getting as much use as the nearby roadway which has been around for a long time.
The existing bike lanes on Columbus and Amsterdam aren’t getting the use they should.
How is build more the answer when underused lanes inevitably become misused lanes (people going the wrong way, delivery people pushing hand trucks, etc)
The bike lanes get plenty of use. Do you think there should be the same amount of bikes in the bike lanes as there are cars in the car lanes to justify it. That is absurd.
Also, do you understand that it takes a safe street to get many people onto their bikes? It doesn’t happen overnight. The culture of car-only streets in NYC needs to change and those bike lanes are initiating that change.
They seem pretty crowded to me. Try riding it during rush hour.
Congestion pricing is coming and bike lanes are the primary way to increase congestion and thus increase revenues. Expect the increased inconvenience and cost of doing business to be ignored along with the already increase in deaths of bike riders. Government greed is the virtue at play here.
Not true!
Congestion pricing will NOT measure congestion, even if such a thing were possible.
According to an April 24th NYTimes story:
“A congestion zone will be drawn around Manhattan from 60th Street south to the Battery. The fee will be charged electronically, (probably) through … E-ZPass….”
Try Googling “How Will NYC Congestion Pricing Work” to get many explanations.
As for your “Government greed….”:
Do you live or work in Manhattan, or are you a troll from elsewhere?
We Manhattan-ites KNOW that this boro is choking on vehicular traffic, esp. since the rise of Uber, Lyft, etc. and that something MUST be done to return sanity to our street-grid.
And the revenue from Congestion Pricing will be used to help fund the subways and buses. If that’s “government greed” (your term) Bring-it-On !
Isn’t congestion pricing already here? If not, what is the congestion fee I’m paying in a cab that goes from let’s say, 90th to 68th Street?
Yes, congestion pricing is already here for Cabs, Ubers, Vias and the like. Is there any data on if this congestion pricing tax has decreased the number of rides in these hired cars?
You drip with arrogance, the worst kind of New Yorker. I was born in Brooklyn and now live in Manhattan and have lived here all my life. I will not be lectured to by the likes of you who like many New Yorkers cannot handle an alternative point of view. And the money stolen from congestion pricing will end up in the bloated pensions of government workers who came up with the idea to begin with after exhausting all other forms of taxation. You are naive to think subways and buses will improve. You are a lemming to fall for that line. And you can insult me again calling me a troll, enjoy yourself. I know you need to to feel good about yourself.
I don’t think you understand what congestion pricing means.Get out of the car and get your blood flowing before it is too late.
You are the one who needs to relax. I do not even have a car.
Looking forward to a car-free Manhattan! (Someday)
Looking forward to watching you take your elderly mother and her walker to the endocrinologist on your bicycle.
An endocrinologist (or really any doctor) with an office in a pedestrian-only zone isn’t going to get an awful lot of business.
And the call to action should be “car free midtown”, just like many other cities with similar densities.
How do the elderly and disabled get around in these car free zones in other cities?
seems suspicious. the future of manhattan will be less and less and less cars on the streets. face it. resistance is useless. it’s useless to resist it. but i respect those who want to prolong the process for their personal reasons… them having a car. i dig it.
I love this new bike lane and use it frequently. It’s great that parked private cars are no longer taking up so much public space in this city. Now if only we could so something about cops parking in bikes lanes (or otherwise parking illegally).
Here’s a thought … If bicyclists want the same rights as motorists, they should be subject to the same responsibilities. They should be required to: Pass a test to get a license; have registered plates for their vehicles; be required to carry insurance; required to wear a helmet (like motorcyclists). If they insist that bicycles are recreational vehicles, then they should ride them only in parks.
Thank you – I have been saying this for months
UWSers belong in NJ if they so desperately want their cars and free parking spots
I’m sad to hear that the rest of the lane will take so long to finish. The part that is completed is amazing – I feel a thousand times safer now than I did before. It’s a stark change when you get above 77th Street.
We have the video. On CPW, during rush hour, there is a bicycle every couple of minutes. Very low use. Also, about a third of the bicyclists are NOT using the lane, a third are traveling in the wrong direction and absolutely none stop at the traffic lights. It’s chaos. And a huge step backwards in terms of safety and civility. Particularly for any pedestrian trying to cross the street.
What video?
The DOT does official bike counts. They will release the data once the count and analysis is complete.
Anecdotes does not equal facts.
Maybe they will enforce bikers riding in same and proper
direction. On Amsterdam Ave bikers ride uptown in this
downtown Ave bike lane. This dangerous for both cyclists and pedestrians. This is also the case in other bike lane areas in the city. Now that cyclists have their lanes and bikes they should have license plates as well along with the NYPD’s ability to issue tickets.
Amsterdam Ave runs northbound, so the correct direction to be riding in the bike lane would be uptown.
Did you ever notice how many cars speed on Columbus, Amsterdam and CPW(city speed limit is 25mph btw)? I would guess over 75% of them. Why not enforce that? It’s much more dangerous. Stand at a light for 5 minutes, and you’ll see several cars blowing the yellow and red lights. Why not enforce that? I’m all for enforcing bikes going the wrong way, but start with the more dangerous elements first. Cars!
Jez Louise! Ban The Bikes and put the money into
schools.
It’s either traffic or bikes. NOT both! 30 people have lost
their life this year, how many more must there be before our
City removes the bikes and the bike lane!!
I don’t think it’s feasible to ban traffic SO the bikes MUST GO
When will our City wake up and see what’s happening!!!!!!!
Restore our grand City to order and safety.
Jan, STOP with the alternative “facts”. Cars have killed 20 cyclists and 73 pedestrians this year through August 31st. Please go to http://www.crashmapper.org for exact details for any time frame and for locations of all crashes.
If you want to “restore” our city, I assume you support bringing back the horses and banning the cars.
Crashmapper is a tool of Transportation Alternatives (read through the “About” section of the website), so it is not unbiased in their quest to report accurate information…
The CPW bike lane is a great improvement. It’s finally starting to feel safe to ride a bike around the city. The city should put a bike lane like that on every New York street.
“Protected”?? By a line of paint!!! Perhaps we should paint the line around the entire Manhattan island to save us all.
Bus riders are essentially ignored here.
The CPW bike lane impacts on bus transportation. The bike lane slows traffic for buses in two ways.
1. Reduction of lane slows traffic overall.
2. Buses cannot pull into bus stops as cyclists are in the bike lane/on the right.
And regarding passenger safety, when passengers are getting off, if bus is not at the curb, not unusual to see cyclists go through to the right of the bus.
Have observed several near misses, cyclists nearly hitting bus passenger….
You are sorely mistaken. Have you been on CPW? There wasn’t a reduction of a traffic lane. The bus stops have stayed the same, actually they have more room now. The only people who block the bus lanes are usually parked/idle cars. Bikes have every right to go through the bus lane. It’s painted (with arrows not green paint) right on the street. Both buses and bikes need to yield to each other.
Regarding the Century and their suit to call for additional impact studies. These studies examine the impact of whatever on the local flora and fauna. I submit that actual human beings are part of the fauna and therefore the impact on people losing the right to park their cars is a legitimate reason to take pause. The PC crowd, as usual, have an opinion based on mostly the way they feel but fail to examine the facts. Take for instance,the Century. One reason they are involved is that many of their building employees drive to work and play the alternate side game. You may say they should take the train to work as they mostly live in the city but they drive because they cannot afford a garage where they live and certainly cannot afford one near the Century where a monthly is approaching $800. The effect on just these people is great and they deserve to have the impact on their lives as part of any study. There are many viable answers, as shown in the comments prior to this. When a person is killed getting off a northbound bus on CPW because of the bike lane things may not change but the reason will be clear.
This comment made me laugh.
I know a number of residents at the Century. I can assure you that not one of them ever mentioned their employees’ inconvenience as a reason for filing suit.