The Good, the Bad and the Deadly

Due to a cable rehabilitation on the Manhattan Bridge, bike commuters swapped sides with pedestrians on Monday and won’t switch back until January 2012. So, how did it go the first day out? Well, some parts were better than expected, some could have been better, and some were downright deadly. Below, the photographic evidence. (Click photos to enlarge.)

It was initially reported that cyclists would be required to dismount and use a set of stairs on the Brooklyn side of the bridge. That’s definitely an option:

The two sets of stairs have channels along side them so that cyclists can guide their bikes with ease.

The good news is that there’s a small turn-around that allows commuters to stay on their bikes and keep riding:

It’s a tight squeeze and DOT had someone standing at this opening guiding people through since it’s impossible to see around the bend. I can’t imagine this guy will stand around twenty-four-hours a day for the next six months, so hopefully DOT will install a mirror to help cyclists avoid collisions. (It would be great if DOT could open the gate you see along the road, but that would put cyclists directly in the path of an off-ramp and would require additional signalization in order to make it safe.)

After that, it’s smooth sailing. DOT had staffers on hand to pass out maps in the pedestrian plaza, which is now the main throughput for cyclists as they go up to the bridge.

The pedestrian side is less steep than the normal bike approach, making for an easy climb, and since it’s on the southern side of the bridge it now offers commuters perhaps the most beautiful view east of San Francisco:

As I rode this morning, I was pleasantly surprised. The new Brooklyn-side approach offers only the most minor of inconveniences, and as long as cyclists take things slowly on that tight switchback it shouldn’t be much of a problem.

But then I got to the Manhattan side. I believe DOT has turned what used to be one of the safest, most pleasant commutes in the city into one of the most dangerous. Cyclists are dumped onto the Bowery, just under Canal, with little separating them from traffic. There is a bike lane for only the first few meters; the rest is dotted lines and sharrows. (You’ll never appreciate how much drivers actually do, in fact, respect painted, buffered bike lanes until you rely on sharrows to guide your commute.)

The first hazard to cross is a wide lane of turning cars trying to get onto the Manhattan Bridge:

There’s a bike lane over there, but first you have to watch for this:

Not surprisingly, most of the trucks I saw turning onto the bridge approach did not yield for cyclists. And what greeted cyclists after they got onto the freshly painted Bowery bike lane? An NYPD van, of course! If ever there was evidence of the chasm between DOT and the NYPD, this picture is it:

To be fair, I wanted to chant ma nishtana as I saw this, but an NYPD van at this location on this day seemed like salt in the wound on this first day out.

Once bike commuters cross Canal Street they have to ride up Bowery. And that’s when things go from merely inconvenient to downright deadly. I simply can not believe that DOT will allow cyclists to continue to ride this way, although one DOT staffer I spoke to on my way home admitted that they are hoping cyclists will find other safer routes. (“I probably shouldn’t be saying this,” she said.) I don’t see how it’s possible to avoid the Bowery, at least for a block or two, and if you want to go uptown there’s no way around crossing Canal.

Below, you can see a cyclist across the street trying to avoid a truck pulling away from the curb:

The Bowery may as well have not been marked at all, given the frequency with which the bike symbols, dotted lines, and sharrows were ignored. And without enforcement or barriers to standing, the problem is only going to get worse as this new configuration becomes routine within a few weeks.

This Fung Wah bus was parked, its driver loading luggage, when the woman on the bike rode out into traffic to try to get around:

As in a Road Runner cartoon, it’s almost as if the sharrows in the picture below are directing cyclists into the back of the van. You can also make out a row of parked cars in front of it, as well as the SUVs and trucks that sped by in the left-hand lanes:

Here’s a similar, but different van, just a block ahead. You can see a line of cyclists having to ride between the parked vans and moving traffic — which, curiously was also made of a lot of vans. It’s a dooring accident waiting to happen.

Eventually I started to think that these weren’t bike symbols, but chalk outlines of the cyclists who are bound to get killed riding this speedway:

If this truck had had its back open, someone could have pulled a Casey Neistat:

What greeted cyclists at Delancy and Bowery? Another NYPD van, of course:

Not long before I got to the left onto Prince Street, I saw this piece of street construction which may or may not be related to the new bike route. Either way, I’m not sure how this set-up helped anyone on their ride. You can see that the construction forced cyclists into one of the two available car lanes. With northbound traffic moving at a rapid clip, this woman would need more than a tote bag to protect her if she were hit by a truck:

I believe the planning for this new route represents a major failure of DOT’s primary responsibility, which is to keep people safe as they move around the city. An inconvenient route borne of the necessity of a bridge repair is one thing, but a dangerous one is something completely different. I understand that the department was tasked with finding an uptown route for cyclists that connects to various crosstown bike lanes, but the cycling infrastructure provided — if you can call what DOT provided infrastructure — is woefully insufficient. Tiny orange signs affixed below traffic signs tell drivers “No standing,” but signs aren’t enough to keep New York City drivers out of no standing zones.

What is needed along the Bowery is a mix of bollards, jersey barriers, and other features that will keep cars and bikes separate from each other. I am sympathetic to the reality that many of the businesses along the Bowery need the curb space to make deliveries, so perhaps DOT could place designated loading areas every block or two. If business owners complain, DOT can tell them what they’re telling cyclists: it’s only temporary.

Sadly, I am almost certain that a major injury or death will occur on this route. I can’t imagine that a new cyclist — someone who may have only started commuting by bike this summer — will be all that encouraged to keep riding if this is what greets him in Manhattan every workday. Whatever gains the city has made in ridership over the Manhattan Bridge in recent months are likely to be erased until next spring.

And that’s just the ride in. Later, I’ll post about the ride back to Brooklyn, which was fraught with its own host of dangers, including more discount buses.