November 25, 2019 Community News

For those of us who often get around on two wheels, this will be a welcome addition for getting to the way downtown. While there are routes from Tribeca to Bowling Green and The Battery on the edges, there are no central-island routes through Fidi. And when the DOT did a 12-hour, midweek count, there were 1241 cyclists on Broadway between Cortlandt and Liberty. The plan: by removing one of the four vehicle lanes (one is for buses only) on Broadway between Barclay and Morris, the DOT can add a dedicated bike lane and a narrower metered commercial loading lane (bigger sidewalks would also be great, especially near the transit hub). See the PDF presentation for yourself here.

But wait! There’s more! The notion to make Fidi more pedestrian friendly has some action items in this plan as well:

Dedicated left turn for John Street. You can see the PDF presentation here.

A tidying up of the left turn off Broadway at Vesey and onto Park Row and Ann with signal timing and lane signage (good luck with that one)

Additional painted sidewalk at the Wall Street station, between Wall and Rector

Another eight feet of painted sidewalk on both sides of the street between Beaver and Pearl

Another nine feet of painted sidewalk between Pearl and Water

But while we are on the topic, I’d like to rant for a minute about some gaps to be filled downtown, albeit a bit north of this study area. Seventh Avenue has a bike lane north of Houston, but it is abandoned once it becomes Varick south of Houston until you cross Canal. I assume this is because no one at DOT can hash out how to make the tunnel entrance work with a bike lane, but there has to be a way to make a downtown-bound bike lane work there, across five lanes with no street parking.

Similarly if you are biking down Thompson, which works pretty well to get through Soho, there’s no good way to continue downtown once it dead-ends at Duarte Square. Riding west on Canal is a deathwish; riding against traffic on 6th and through Tribeca Park is my favorite option, but it is, of course, illegal. Riding against traffic on St. John’s Lane behind the American Thread works pretty well, since there is no traffic, but a rider still has to get down the little stretch of Laight– usually on the sidewalk — to get to it.

Comment here if you know of other spots that leave a cyclist hanging.