The Departement of Transportation shared with CB4 their plans to continue the sidewalk widening south to W31st Street . The first section is already installed from W43rd to W38th Street. 20% more of the avenue will be dedicated to pedestrians , an additional 19′ , with split phase signals and neck downs at nearly all intersections. Bike share station and bike corrals will be installed adjacent to the current pedestrian refuges, which will remain in place with the trees. This spectacular initiative will be implemented this summer.
The pedestrian unit continues to shine with its super safe and logical street design. However we will be fighting against DOT installing a dangerous mixing zone for cyclists at W35th street where a sever injuries resulted from a crash in the last 5 years. We had hoped that this type of design was now obsolete, but it looks like some engineer at DOT did not get the memo .
I’m really happy for the pedestrians getting so much more space, but the cyclist appear to still only get 10% of the road to use. There isn’t adequate, safe biking infrastructure as it is. I just wish some of that space being reallocated from cars could towards better infrastructure for bikes and other forms of micromobility.
Yes , there could be a bit more for bikes. would have required to take another lane of traffic and you kwon how DOT is… at least I am really pleased that the bicyclist are super protected.
One more thing (and then I promise I’m done): Better biking infrastructure creates safer spaces for cyclist to ride by having less points of conflict between the bikes and cars, and the bikes and pedestrians. By building better and safer infrastructure, it creates a safer environment for pedestrians, too!
Agreed in general. Here the bike lane will be fully protected adn of much better quality … and in this instance the volumes of peds/bikes justifies larger space for peds..
and eventually with increased volumes at Port Authority and Penn Station we will need this all space to be a busway…