By Phoebe Neidl
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BROOKLYN — Brooklyn bikers have noticed new bike lanes being painted with fair frequency this spring. “I’ve seen three new ones in my neighborhood alone,� said Wiley Norvell, a Greenpoint resident and a spokesman for Transportation Alternatives, a biking advocacy group.

Vanderbilt and DeKalb avenues, Lincoln Place, Berkley Place, Boerum Place, Broadway in Williamsburg and Grand Army Plaza have also been recent beneficiaries of freshly painted lanes.

That’s because beginning in 2006, the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) devised a plan to install 200 miles of bike lanes throughout the city within three years. This third year is the plan’s most ambitious — it is when 110 of those miles are going to be installed. Brooklyn gets its approximate fair share of the pie with 39.6 miles of new bike lanes, 22.4 of which are already completed.

This three-year commitment is part of the larger Bicycle Master Plan hatched by the city in 1997, which identified 1,800 miles of potential bike routes for the city.

With all these new lanes, are Brooklyn bike commuters beginning to feel the difference? Is the bike lane getting more respect?

“It definitely is,� says Norvell. “And Brooklyn is the best case study for that, because it has the most fully developed neighborhood bike networks,� he said, citing Fort Greene, Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights and Carroll Gardens.

“Brownstone Brooklyn is one of the few areas where there is a large enough biking population to keep those lanes traveled in all day long. You hear about bikers waiting for the light at Dean and Bergen streets and they are queued up with four or five other bikers,� he says, adding that a busy bike lane is a more effective bike lane.

“When a lot of bikers are using the lanes, drivers have a higher recognition for what that space means.�

It is the high number of quiet neighborhood streets that draws bike commuters to Brownstone Brooklyn, as does Prospect Park, says Norvell.

“Drivers are getting more used to [bikers],� says Ted Timbers, spokesman for the DOT. “Bikers are more prevalent. When a driver goes to make a turn, and there is a bike lane, more often they are expecting to see a biker there.�

According to the DOT, there is a 46 percent decline in biking fatalities in the city over the last decade, at the same time as bike commuting has grown by an estimated 77 percent in the past eight years. “The idea is to create an interconnected bike network where lanes connect North, South, East, West, and people can get to schools, parks — places they want to go — and be in bike lanes for the entire trip,� says Timbers.

“I do think I’m seeing more respect for the bike lane,� concurred Milton Puryear, director of planning for the 14-mile Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway, which is planned to run from Greenpoint to Bay Ridge. “There is an increasing sensitivity and awareness from drivers, who historically reacted with annoyance to bike riders rather than seeing them as co-commuters,� he added.

Puryear thinks the increased visibility of the lanes, through city measures such as painting them bright colors, is helping to increase drivers’ acknowledgement of bikers’ rightful claim on the road.

Last summer, the DOT launched a pilot project to paint bike lanes bright green or blue to see if it led to better compliance. According to Timbers, the DOT is still assessing the effectiveness of the project. Certainly the nuts and bolts of Brooklyn biking are not yet all sorted out. “It’s just paint on the street unless it’s actually separated by a barrier,� said Paul Hamill, a Clinton Hill resident. “Until bike lanes become actual lanes, you’re still going to have cars and trucks double parked there.�

Lloyd Hicks, a Park Slope resident who commutes year-round on his bike, says, “The problem still exists of cars double-parking in bike lanes, and it makes it dangerous for us to have to veer around them.�

But Hicks was encouraged by a recent ride to north Brooklyn, when he was able to travel a large part of the journey on bike lanes (thanks in part to freshly painted lanes at Grand Army Plaza and DeKalb Avenue), and he noticed police vehicles outside a Clinton Hill precinct were no longer parked in the bike lane, as had been reported on several blogs in June.

Stopping, standing or parking in a designated bicycle lane is a traffic violation and should exact a fine of $115.

Brooklyn’s building boom can also sometimes throw a wrench into the works. “There is so much on-street construction right now, that it does affect the ‘bikeability’ of some streets,� said Norvell.

Norvell would also like to see more protection for bikers on the major traffic arteries, such as at the dangerous Adams and Tillary intersection near the on-ramp to the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. The use of concrete medians, as can be seen on the Hudson River Greenway in Manhattan, are more suitable for these high-traffic spots, says Norvell. “Bike lane design has to reflect the streets they’re being installed on,� he says.

According to Timbers, the DOT is planning a median along Sands Street, another approach to the Brooklyn Bridge. Bids are going out to contractors this summer, and construction of the median could hopefully be completed next year. “It takes a little more planing than re-striping paint,� says Timbers.

So, more physical protections for bike lanes could be on the way. Timbers says the DOT has quickly seen the benefits of a new lane configuration on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan, where the bike path has been protected, or “segregated,� from traffic, and signaling for bikes has been added to traffic lighting between 16th and 23rd streets. They are planning a similar configuration for Eighth Avenue. There are not yet plans for a similar design on any of the main traffic arteries of Brooklyn.

For Norvell, the next crucial step in infrastructure for Brooklyn cyclists is the proposed Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway.

Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez has secured $14.6 million for the Greenway so far, which is estimated to cost $50 million. Construction is already underway in Red Hook, and design work has begun for the Williamsburg portion of the Greenway since Community Board 1 approved the plan this past spring.

The Greenway could give Manhattan’s Hudson River Greenway “a run for its money,� says Norvell, and it would connect the north Brooklyn neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint with Brownstone Brooklyn and the East River bridges on bike paths with physical medians. “This could make bike commuting viable for thousands of more people,� he says.

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