It looks like a real bike lane now.
Last week, I mentioned the construction I saw on the Queens side of the Edward Koch/Queensborough/59th Street Bridge. (At the rate it's going, the bridge'll have more names than God has in the Old Testament!) Well, I don't know whether they've finished it. But at least now the path is useful, and takes you to a practical destination.
More important, it doesn't force cyclists into this:
This is where the lane from the bridge used to end. Just beyond the orange barrels, 27th Street dead-ends under the elevated tracks of the #7 and N lines of the New York subways. Most of the traffic on 27th (which is one-way in the direction of the truck in the rear of the photo) merges onto the bridge ramp; a few vehicles turn right onto Queens Plaza North, where you see the black sedan. Sometimes those streets are completely full of vehicles, and their drivers aren't known for patience.
So, when a cyclist coming off the bridge can turn left onto the lane, which intersects with 23rd, 22nd and 21st Streets. All of them continue underneath the tracks. Or one can take 23rd in the other direction to go to Astoria. That street passes through an industrial area and the traffic on it is usually light. Twenty-Second is one-way in the opposite direction from 23rd, and 21st is a major artery that serves as part of the route for several bus lines.
I would love it if the path were extended to Vernon Boulevard, which skirts the Queens bank of the East River. That would offer cyclists relatively easy and safe access to PS 1, Socrates Sculpture Park and the Noguchi Museum, among other things.
One can always hope. For now, I'll suspend my cynicism and be grateful for something that's better than what we had.
