The Pulaski Bridge Bike Lane Is Open. It's A Victory--Almost

One sure way to elicit chuckles or groans, or both, from a longtime New Yorker is to mention the Second Avenue Subway.  It has been planned for nearly a century, and construction on it began in 1972, only to be halted by the city's near-bankruptcy in 1975.  

The tunnels were dug in three non-contiguous sections.  By the time new construction on the line began eight years ago, those tunnels were unusable.  So, the whole line has to be built from scratch.  It was supposed to open last year; now the city's Metropolitan Transit Authority is saying, in effect, "maybe next year, or the year after."

On this blog, I have also mentioned the Randall's Island Connector, which seemed to take nearly as long to build and open as it took for the island--and neighboring Manhattan, Long Island and the Bronx--to form during the Taconic and Acadian orogenies.  Finally, in spite of the snark and cynicism (entirely warranted!) of people like me, it opened late last year, and is actually a good, well-designed bike route.  My only complaint is that the Bronx entrance, while not difficult to access, is easy to miss if you're not familiar with the area.

Speaking of difficulty in access:  That has always been one of my complaints about the Pulaski Bridge pedestrian path.  That difficulty in entering it--especially if you're coming from the east on 49th Avenue or the north on 11th Street, which just happen to be the two ways I usually access the bridge--is one of the reasons I usually ride in the traffic lane.  Another reason is that the pedestrian path is so narrow--actually, there are signs telling cyclists to walk their bikes across the span--and heavily used by pedestrians (some with dogs), skateboarders, skaters and others, that it's actually easier and safer to ride the traffic line, where visibility is pretty good.

 

I get the feeling that when the bridge--which connects Long Island City in Queens with Greenpoint in Brooklyn--opened in 1954, nobody anticipated that so many pedestrians and cyclists use it.  As I've mentioned in other posts, I can recall riding over it, and through the neighborhoods it joins, twenty or thirty years ago and not seeing another cyclist.  Then, most of the people who lived on either side of the bridge were longtime blue-collar residents who stopped riding bikes as soon as they got their drivers' licenses--if, indeed, they ever rode bikes in the first place.  Now, of course, Greenpoint and Long Island City--as well as nearby neighborhoods like Astoria (where I live) and Sunnyside in Queens, or Williamsburg and DUMBO in Brooklyn, are full of young people who've discovered that it's OK to ride a bike even though they're old enough to drive.

Someone in the city's Department of Transportation no doubt noticed the changes I've described.  So, that person reasoned, a dedicated bike lane was in order.  A plan to create one was first proposed about four years ago. Then, we were told, it would take about two years to complete.

Now, I understand there were challenges in creating that particular lane.  For one, the bridge carried six lanes of traffic over the entrance to the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and near entrances to I-278, and is located near industrial areas.  Thus, the bridge receives a fair number of vehicles, some of which are trucks and vans.  Surely, the drivers of those vehicles--who, in some cases, are independent contractors and businesspeople of one sort and another--would not be happy about losing traffic lanes.

Another difficulty in creating the bike lane is that the Pulaski is a drawbridge.  So, anything used to separate the bike lanes from traffic would have to be sturdy enough to do the job yet could be separated when the bridge is opened for a ship. 

Then, of course, there are the usual causes of delays, such as obtaining funds and working with contractors.  Those wrinkles were ironed out and, when I rode down 11th Street the other day, I saw--yes!--cyclists using the lane.  That, even though the path is not officially open:  ribbon cutting is supposed to take place today.

While I am glad for the lane, I think it doesn't resolve one problem of the pedestrian path:  access.  On the Long Island City side, one still has to make awkward turns across lanes of traffic, and on the Brooklyn side, the "merge" with the traffic lane is fairly smooth for cyclists coming off the bridge, but makes it difficult to enter the lane.

So--we got our lane, better late than never.  But, as with too many other bike lanes, the person who planned it probably isn't a cyclist and therefore doesn't realize that simply providing a separate lane for cyclists does not ensure our safety.

 

If Speed Doesn't Kill

Today I'm going to talk about one of those topics about which none of us wants to think:  accidents.

Specifically, I'm thinking about motorists hitting or, worse, running down cyclists.

One reason it's on my mind is that last night, I had one of the closest calls I've had in a while.  

I had just traversed the Pulaski Bridge from McGuiness Boulevard in Greeenpoint, Brooklyn to Jackson Avenue in Long Island City, Queens--a crossing I've made hundreds of times.  On Jackson, I turned left and followed it to 50th Avenue.  Then I turned right on Vernon Boulevard, which skirts the East River and takes me within a few blocks of my apartment.

Daylight, such as it was, fell into night.  Showers were turning into a downpour.  Even that, in itself, is not so unusual, especially at this time of year.  I exercised my usual caution:  I rode a little bit slower and gave myself extra time and distance to brake.  I expected nothing more inconvenient than wet clothes (I was riding Vera, which has full fenders and a flap, but I had not brought any rain gear.) on the rest of my trip home.  

But as I approached the "Y" shaped intersection of Vernon with 45th Avenue and 10th Street, a car shot out from behind me and seemed to miss my front wheel by inches.  A quick turn of my handlebars saved me.

The intersection was well-lit, so my "blinky" lights and reflective vest should have been sufficient for the driver to see me.  There was no light or "stop" sign in the intersection, and I proceeded as far to the right as I could without making a turn.  

However, that driver had to be going at least twice the speed limit for that street.  And, given that it was early on Saturday night, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that his blood-alcohol level was over the legal limit.

In thinking about the incident, I realize that in every one of my close encounters with automobiles in which road conditions or inadequate signals or signage weren't the cause, the driver was speeding.  And, I would suspect that there was a better-than-even chance that the driver was drinking.

Then, just a little while ago, in doing some research (i.e., surfing the web), I came across this account of a 70-year-old cyclist in India who was mowed down by a speeding mini-bus. As it turns out, the driver has a record of speeding and recklessness.

That got me to wondering whether speeding is the main cause of accidents between cars and bikes in which the motorist is at fault. 

Waiting At The Bridge

What do you do when you're riding and have an unexpected roadblock?


Normally, you go around it by taking a slightly different route.  But, sometimes that's just not possible, or feasible. Such was the case when I was crossing back into Queens on the Pulaski Bridge:

Just as I got onto the bike lane, the gate swung shut and warning bells clanged.  This meant, of course, that the drawbridge was about to open.  


It's far from the first time I've encountered a bridge opening when I wanted or needed to ride across it.  At least, today I wasn't really in a hurry. I had moderate time constraints: I'd had to attend to a few things later in the day, so I had to get home, shower and prepare myself.  But I'd budgeted more time than I thought I would need.


The wait for the bridge didn't seem particularly long.  At least, the weather was nearly perfect, and even the normally turbid (and sometimes rancid) waters of the Gowanus Canal were nearly a reflection of serenity as the boat churned through it.


What was interesting about this wait, though, is something you may have noticed in the photo:  I was far from the only cyclist there.  In fact, I can scarcely recall seeing so many other bikes and riders at any other opening of a drawbridge.  As it turned out, there were just as many cyclists, if not more, waiting on the other side of the opening. 


That there were so many cyclists makes sense when you realize that the Pulaski connects what have become two of the greatest concentrations of cyclists in the NYC Metropolitan Area: the neighborhoods of Greenpoint, in Brooklyn and Long Island City in Queens.  I can remember when both of those communities were blue-collar enclaves in which almost nobody rode two wheels.   It seemed that the only time I saw other cyclists, besides myself, in those neighborhoods or on that bridge was when the Five Borough Bike Tour transversed them.


Some of the cyclists I saw today weren't even born then.