The Bowery: Still a Shit Show

We’re now into week two of the detour off of the Manhattan Bridge and, wouldn’t you know, it’s still a shit show.  In the picture above, you can make out the very tip of a set of sharrows under the white van parked on the right.

The Bowery isn’t the only street in New York where cyclists have to watch out for buses pulling into stops, of course, but given the fast traffic in the other lanes, it means cyclists find themselves choosing between waiting for a bus to load passengers and taking their chances in traffic.

There’s still no word from the DOT on how they are going to make this route safer for the thousands of cyclists who will use it every day between now and early 2012, and I can only imagine the road will get more dangerous as summer vacation ends and more people fill the city with car traffic.

I’d like to make it clear that the actual bridge detour on the southern side is really not bad at all.  It’s actually quite nice.  But the conditions on the Bowery just suck.