Street revamp to be OKd in a walk
Hundreds of miles of new bike lanes, bus lanes and pedestrian plazas are on the way to New York thanks to a law that’s set to be passed by the City Council.
Council Speaker Corey Johnson said Tuesday his legislation to form a “master plan” for city streets has the support of the majority of the chamber, as well as Mayor de Blasio.
The law will require the city Department of Transportation to implement 150 miles of new bus lanes, 250 miles of new protected bike lanes and thousands of pedestrian-oriented spaces over a five-year span beginning in 2022.
“For decades, New York has prioritized the movement and storage of vehicles over the safety and possibility of its residents,” said Danny Harris, executive director of street safety advocacy group Transportation Alternatives. “The streets master plan will usher in a new era of opportunity for New Yorkers”
The bill was unanimously passed by the Council Transportation Committee on Tuesday, and is expected to be approved by the whole chamber Wednesday.
Johnson (D-Manhattan) introduced the bill in May, and has given it several tweaks since. The law now requires the DOT to form its “master plan” to hit the aggressive benchmarks by December 2021 instead of 2020. The delay pushes the plan’s due date to the very end of de Blasio’s final term as mayor.
“It was pushed back because … what we are going to do with this legislation is totally reshape the Department of Transportation, totally reorient the Department of Transportation,” Johnson said Tuesday. “They’re going to have to hire more staff, they’re going to have to build whole new facilities.”
The bill has also been updated to heighten the standards for protected bike lanes. The legislation previously defined protected bike lanes as those that are “separated from traffic by vertical delineation or physical barrier,” meaning that the city would only need to install flimsy plastic poles along the edge of the lanes.
Johnson said he updated the lane definition in the bill after he was questioned about it by the Daily News in
September. The definition now includes “off-road or raised pathway.” That means that some of the lanes could be raised to the same level as the sidewalk, giving cyclists more space away from drivers and keeping up with standards set by other bikefriendly cities.
The law also requires the DOT to add safety features to 2,000 new intersections over the five-year plan and add 23 acres of new pedestrian areas by the end of 2023. Officials will be required to come up with a new “master plan” in 2026 that includes “the completion of a connected bike lane network.”
“This will be the law of the land. This will be what a future mayor has to go by,” said Johnson. “For too long, things have been stacked in car drivers’ favor.”