Aaron M. Renn

All Things Aaron

The Brooklyn Bridge Bike Lane Is a Disaster

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brooklyn-bridge-pedestrian-bike-lane-crazy

The explosion of tourism in New York is something to behold. Back in October of 2002 or 2003 I took a vacation to New York and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. While there were people on it, there weren’t many of them. I in fact remember it as it a bit wind-swept and forlorn.

Fast forward to today and epic tourist hordes jam the walkway up completely. The picture at the top of this post was taken a couple weeks ago and gives a feel for what it’s like.

You’ll notice people crammed onto only half the walkway, one partially obstructed by an NYPD cart. That’s because the other half is given over to a bike lane that every time I’ve been there has been lightly used.

It makes no sense to allocate 50% of this space to bicycles when pedestrians outnumber bicycles 50 to 1.   It’s unpleasant and unsafe for everyone involved. With people constantly stopping to take selfies, it can be hard to even move.

Fortunately there’s a simple solution to this problem.

  1. Eliminate the bike lane on the promenade.
  2. Carve out a lane using some construction zone type Jersey barriers and give one of the current traffic lanes over as a new bike lane.

This could be done in a day or two, easy.   The city make it happen stat. It’s only a matter of time until somebody gets hurt. And the current setup creates a terrible impression for visitors.

Comments

  1. I think your suggestion highlights the “taint” (pun intended for hard core cyclists, sorry) nature of transportation cycling. It always get squeezed between walking and driving, where each side thinks it belongs with the other. But in reality it isn’t either and when it comes to limited right of way, this very efficient mode of transportation get short shrift because it does not have the numbers. I am sure driving advocates would make your same argument about your suggestion of taking an auto lane for bicycles saying “look at all the cars and just a handful of bikes”. I guess this will be a long running discussion until – or if – bikes ever get the mindshare that exists in other parts of the world.

  2. I find the headline to be rather hyperbolic. It’s like car drivers calling a bus lane a disaster because “look at all these poor working stiffs stuck in traffic while only one bus per minute gets to fly by while the riders sip wine and eat caviar paid for by MY taxes!” If people were getting hurt left and right, then that could be considered a disaster, but as it is the crowd of walkers really isn’t as bad as the angle of the photo would suggest (police blockade aside…what is it with the NYPD anyway?). I bet many people levied similar criticisms to newly opened segments of urban and rural freeways that were as yet unconnected and rather useless compared to the preexisting street network, but look how that changed over time.

  3. Jeffrey, your analogy doesn’t work. The one you use with buses is generally used to illustrate moving people vs. moving vehicles. Those few buses are carrying a lot of people compared to single occupancy vehicles. One of the standard arguments used for reallocating street real estate away from cars is that the majority of the users are pedestrians, bikes, transit riders, etc.

    In this case, pedestrians outnumber bicyclists 50 to 1 (at least), but half the space is given to bikes.

    Congestion is chronic in the narrow pedestrian space because of the large number of people stopped to take pictures.

    • When did you take your walk on the bridge? Because my guess is that the bike lane is much more heavily used during commuting hours, whereas tourists are generally present at other times of the day, and if you encountered a large group of tourists traveling together like on a tour, your sample would be biased as well.

  4. Also, why the hell are they driving police “carts” here…? Are the police unable to walk (or bike)?