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A proposed bike land installation is ruffling feathers again in North Brooklyn. As part of a $5.8 million renovation of the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, the city is planning to install two bike lines, each with a nine-foot buffer. The result: Two fewer lanes to accommodate the many trucks that use the Brooklyn-Queens connector on a daily basis. The proposed change comes on the heels of a new bike lane installation on Greenpoint Avenue that local industrialists blame for big back-ups. “They’ve really made Greenpoint Avenue a mess,” said Paul Pullo of Metroenergy. The bike lobby insists more buffered lanes are necessary in the area: “Those narrow sidewalks [on Greenpoint Avenue] currently make it pretty hazardous for two cyclists, let alone two pedestrians, to comfortably pass one another,” said Wiley Norvell of Transportation Alternatives. “Separating bike and pedestrian traffic would do a lot to improve safety.” And so it goes.
It’s Trucks vs. Bikes on Greenpoint Avenue [Brooklyn Paper]


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  1. So, my 2 cents….

    Maybe we could reserve the knee-jerk “this will destroy the ability to conduct commercial activities” reactions until after you find out what the actual volume is. Will traffic actually get “backed up”?

    Rush hours are rush hours and could be fixed by reducing the number of commuters in single-occupancy vehicles. Rush hour back ups are NOT the same as commercial traffic making deliveries at 11:00am.

    It’s like the ‘controversy’ over reducing the number of lanes on Prospect Park West for the purposes of a 2-way bike lane. Just because the traffic may have to be (slightly) slower than the Indy 500 doesn’t mean it’s going to disrupt traffic.

  2. “Kent ave bike lane sucks? i wanna marry that bike lane.”

    haha – it was better when the road was two way and the bike lane ran southbound. You could really fly. The whole new one way kent ave, 2 way bike lane is hairy IMO. Can’t go as fast. 🙁

  3. Lincolnlimestone;

    Could be – I haven’t studied the issue enough to say one way or the other. What I can say is that drivers do follow the rules of the road more often today then when I was a kid.

  4. Getting back to a substantive discussion…..

    ….I don’t know how old Vinca is, but I am a 52 years old Brooklyn native, and have no recollection of a time in NYC when drivers were more courteous and 10 year-old bicyclists were able to ride to the far reaches of the borough.

    My gut feeling is that drivers are actually more courteous today because there has been a concerted effort to make them aware that they are sharing the road with others. Fear of sky-high insurance rates AND better enforcement by the NYPD have also contributed.

    The statistics bear me out. NYC in recent years has had the lowest number of vehicle-related fatalities since records were kept in 1910, and those statistics include pedestrians and bicyclists killed. See this web-site:

    http://www.newyorkinjuries.com/blog/?p=891

  5. Greenpoint Avenue bridge is a major truck route between Greenpoint and LIC, and it does get crowded, particularly during business hours (usually more so going towards LIC). From my (anecdotal) experience, it is less heavily used by bikes and peds than is the Pulaski, which connects to Hunters Point. Which isn’t to say that bicycles and peds don’t need to cross the Greenpoint Avenue bridge – they do, and they should be able to do so safely.

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