Source: Jaszek Photography via Flickr
City Councilman Lew Fidler is questioning the decision-making behind bike lane implementation in his district and across the boroughs, leading the city to re-evaluate proposed lanes in Canarsie and opening the door for challenges elsewhere.
In a letter to Department of Transportation Brooklyn Commissioner Joseph Palmieri, Fidler said it was “imperative that community feedback be factored into any proposed changes.”
The request came following months of outcry from Canarsie residents to the city’s plan to install bike lanes from Avenue D on East 95th Street to the Canarsie Pier, and from the pier to Ditmas Avenue on East 94th Street. The lanes would connect bicyclists to the Shore Parkway Greenway, which extends from Sheepshead Bay to Queens. Neighbors in Canarsie say the city is bike crazy and it doesn’t suit residents’ needs.
Fidler agrees that the plans, devised more than 10 years ago, are flawed and outdated.
Find out what’s wrong with the city’s bike plan, and what Fidler proposes to help.
Courtesy of LivableStreets.com
A bicycling and public transit advocacy group says that the areas around the Kings Highway B and Q train station needs more bike paths to alleviate stress on the connecting bus lines.
Transportation Alternatives dispatched volunteers to the station in September to survey commuters waiting for the bus home from the train station. After speaking to residents from neighborhoods along the B2, B3K, B31, and B100 bus lines, they found Southern Brooklyn may be an amenable home to new bike routes along the wider, less congested streets.
“My impressions from this survey is that there is some interest in better bike lanes and infrastructure in Mill Basin, Marine Park, Madison, Gerritsen Beach, Sheepshead Bay, etc,” said Murray Latner, a former Mill Basin resident who produced the survey materials.
What do you think? Would more bike lanes and sheltered bike parking locations near subways alleviate congestion on the streets and crowding on buses? Would you use it?
[via LivableStreets.com]
“The damage doesn’t stop the ride completely, but if something isn’t done to fix this problem, the issue won’t be a missing bike path – it will be a missing Belt Parkway. Just another 20 feet or so and the cars will fall into the water,” said a cyclist who frequently uses the path.
Related stories:
Hurricane Ida Batters Plumb Beach
Plumb Beach Destruction Goes Beyond Bike Path
Shore Parkway Greenway Honored By Daily News
Photo courtesy of "Beauty Playin 'Eh" via Flickr
With an estimated 200,000 New Yorkers on bikes each day, the city is rapidly becoming a two-wheel mecca. The 650 miles of bike lanes in the city – which may jump to 1,800 in coming years – were recently rated by the Daily News. The paper tasked its reporters with talking to biking advocates, shop owners, and bikers around the city to spotlight the best paths around.
And it’s (semi-)official – they found that the Shore Parkway Greenway offers the best water views in the five boroughs. The seven-mile path runs along Jamaica Bay to the Verrazano Bridge. Beginning in Queens, it winds through Plumb Beach in Sheepshead Bay, offers sterling views of the city’s wildlife reserve, and goes all the way down to the most beautiful bridge in the tristate area (yeah, I said it. Too bad, Brooklyn Bridge). The honor just goes to reinforce how important it is to get the bike path at Plumb Beach restored after suffering damage from Hurricane Ida, which shut down a quarter-mile of the route.
(Photo of Wonder Woman NYC Marathon 2009 courtesy of Emily Dolan, hosted at Flickr)
Today is the first Sunday in November — the one day a year when thousands of people from all over the world converge in NYC to run in the world’s most-watched marathon — the NYC Marathon. American, Meb Keflizighi, won the men’s race and Derartu Tulu was the best of the women.
While the race does not come anywhere near Sheepshead Bay, it does go from Southern Brooklyn and onward. There’s nothing more exciting than when the fittest people in the world are racing through Southern Brooklyn toward their destination in the greatest city in the world (borough, whatever).
Announcing it as a “Halloween cross-over fact”, the Huffington Post tells us that the founder of the marathon was a native of Transylvania. Yesterday being Halloween, a day of fun, and revelry, it is quite a contrast between the alcohol-flowing with costumed party-goers last night, compared to the adrenaline-flowing, dry-runners from this morning.
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Senator Charles Schumer, a Park Slope resident, wrote an article for Huffington Post about his life-long love affair with biking through our borough.
Starting in Brighton Beach and riding north through Brooklyn, always reminds me what makes this borough so special. As I watch the neighborhood go from predominantly Russian, through a veritable rainbow of ethnicities, to Polish in Greenpoint and the northern tip of Brooklyn, I feel like I’ve been around the world.
But this journey is not one that can be undertaken in a car – you’d miss the details, the human scale, and the pace of life as you fly by. Even walking won’t do – you won’t be able to cover nearly enough ground. To really get to know New York, you’ve got to ride a bicycle.
He mentions the tasty joints where he likes to end his rides, as well as how biking gives him the opportunity to interact with his constituents and see the development – “our inner city neighborhoods come back”. We hope he takes a few rides through Sheepshead Bay and witnesses what development has done here – the good and the bad.
If you feel like reading the good senator’s musings – and perhaps reading the pages of comments ripping him a new one for biking and not working on healthcare reform – check it out here.
