Ninth Avenue Gets a Physically Separated Bike Lane

Woo, Au Revoir Simone!

Oh, and nice video Clarence.

Sweet!

I was riding my bike down 9th Avenue the other day, along the right side of the street, and actually pulled over, waited for the light to change, and then crossed over so I could ride in the bike lane.

Great video Clarence -- this is proof positive that it can be done and it doesn't have to hurt!

Go NYC!!!!

I live at 23rd and 9th Ave. and was taken by surprise by this sudden change on the street. I read on another blog what was going on and was impressed. I gotta get my bike out this weekend and give it a go! Great idea, I hope it gets extended up Ninth Ave. Great video too!

Wow! And I love this music selection. The video is not bad...want to see more when finished

John S. Allen,

Your ideological opposition to separated bike paths is tiresome, selfish and irresponsible. The literature you cite is not at all conclusive. We are only at the very beginning of building and testing these types of bike facilities in the US.

I ride a young child to school on the back of a bike every day in NYC. I want and need this type of bike facility on our busy avenues or I simply can not use them. I am not a vehicular cyclist. I do not have the expectation of being able to ride fast and straight and unobstructed for long stretches. I expect every intersection to have cars turning in front of me, behind me and potentially into me. As long as I'm given a parking space or two of daylight at the intersections, I'm very happy to have physical separation from traffic. It helps me as a cyclist on NYC avenues. It prevents cars from double parking in my bike path and forcing me out into fast moving traffic. It enables me to stay off of our city's crowded sidewalks.

Is physical separation wanted or needed on every NYC street? Of course not. On some? Of course. Nothing in the video above suggests that cycle tracks need to be on every street. That is your own interpretation.

Why don't you wait until DOT is done building this out then come down to NYC and ride on it and then let us hear your first-hand observations of the new facility instead of harping away with tired assumptions, theories and hardened ideological positions that have no basis in the day-to-day reality of many many NYC cyclists who want to see cycling normalized.

Dear Street Films,

Why do you make your videos so hard to reuse? A few of your videos are at YouTube, but not many, and not this excellent video which I'd like to put on my blog. It would be simple for you to put embedding code, but the code you have, as you probably know, can't simply be cut and pasted.

These are exciting times for New Yorkers. For fifty years we've allowed traffic engineers to turn our streets into auto sewers, and now we are finally taking back the streets.

The streets are the public realm, where we come together as citizens. They are the physical manifestation of the common good. For that reason, it is all for the best that we are reintroducing bikes and reintroducing balance.

I have some problems with the physical form of the experiments going on today, and not just in bike lanes. Separated bike lanes are great. Big white stripes and plastic barriers in the middle of the public realm are not good, unless they are temporary experiments on the way to something better. The stripes on 9th Avenue are very ugly, and visually degrade and already degraded environment. Ninth Avenue needs separated bike lanes, and wider sidewalks, and trees that visually support the division of the space, and probably two-way traffic again. Ninth Avenue could be as beautiful as the streets in Paris and Munich that have all these elements, making safe bike riding just one element in the design of great streets.

Love the concept, also love that song. But really, the lanes are kind of ugly. and there's an excessive buffer between the parked cars and the bike lane. that could easily be cut in half (you still need something to prevent an opening door from clotheslining a cyclist.) It's funny how little road is left when you add a bike lane plus all the extra buffer required. Maybe as the concept evolves it will become a little more efficient.
All in all i think it's a step (perhaps too far?) in the right direction.

I ride almost everyday in NYC or SF. I rode the 9th ave lane yesterday and agree with a previous comment that the buffer between the lane and parked cars is excessive. I also think that it's dangerous to have pedestrians and truck delivery people crossing the bike lane. I clearly see how some people find it safer, but I did not like and hope we don't have more than one or two. Nor do I look forward to cyclist signals. The best difference can be made by ensuring better paved streets and employing public transportation, i.e. trains, to have bike cars during rush hour.

Wonderful! I'm so glad to see this experiment so well executed and documented. Now, how about convincing NY cyclists to wear HELMETS, eh?

My lovely wife Alice and I have just been in Paris where we cycled up and down the Seine on bicycle paths using the municipal bicycles.
At some points the bicycle paths are two-way. Why not make the Ninth Avenue bicycle paths go both directions? The width of the path could take two lanes.
John

Thanks for posting my comment.

I have attended Josh Benson's presentation at the 2008 Pro Walk-Pro-Bike conference. I also have now ridden the 9th Avenue bike lane and find that it is by far the best separated bike lane I have ever ridden -- for the very reasons I gave.

I still hold to my opinion that it would work better if bicyclists were encouraged and legally permitted (as in most other states) to merge out of the bike lane into the left turn lane so as to continue moving on the left-turn signal phase -- rather than having to wait through most of a cycle for the next cyclists' green in order to comply with the law and avoid conflicts. There is no physical impedimant to ththe merge. The left-turning vehicles don't move any faster than a bicyclist, and often the lane is empty.

No blanket statement can be correct, and I don't back down from my distaste with blanket statements about separated, "protected" bike lanes. They are not all the same. Example: I also rode the Broadway separated bike lane, and found it almost unusable due to sight line obstructions and encroachment by pedestrians.

As to "Wrong S. Allen" who responded to my comment, I would appreciate it if he or she would use his or her real name instead of calling me names, so we could have a real dialog. As to whose opinions are ideological, or flexible and based on experience and study, judge for yourselves.

I need to hear exactly what has to say about this?!?

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