New York City Now Has Over 1,000 Miles of Bike Lanes!
1,010.2 miles to be exact. Yesterday morning, NYC reached the milestone figure with the painting of its latest lane in the Lower East Side along Clinton Street. In addition to this, the Department of Transportation announced that yet another 12 miles of protected lanes would be completed by the year’s end between West 14th Street and West 33rd Street. The number is above the city’s five-mile annual target, and the highest amount ever installed in any year. The news, a blessing to cyclists citywide, certainly supports the fact that New York is set on strengthening the cycling culture of the city—which has already been named by Bicycling Magazine as 2015’s best American city for bikes.
Chart via DOT
“Expanding and updating the bicycle network is an important step to achieving Mayor de Blasio’s goal of doubling bicycling in the city by 2020,” Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg, who took over the position just nine months ago, said at a press conference yesterday.
The initiative to add more lanes came under the Bloomberg administration, which aggressively sought to bring them throughout all of the boroughs. Since 2007, according to the Post, 485 miles of lanes have been installed, or about 50 miles a year. Under de Blasio, the city has gotten another 77 miles of lane. The agency has a 50-mile annual goal, which includes both protected and unprotected lanes. Overall, more than one-third are protected lanes, using either concrete barriers or parked vehicles, and the highest concentration of lanes can be found in Manhattan.
You can get a closer look at where the lanes run using this map here (opens to pdf) >>
[Via NYP]
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