Fresh kermit in Brooklyn. (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
During my time in New York City last month, I soaked up a lot of different bike infrastructure. You might have seen it make cameos in some of my previous videos or photos. But there were a bunch of images that I hadn’t shared until now. This post has 60 or so photos of the various types of bikeways you’ll find in Manhattan (with a smattering of images from Brooklyn).
Overall, I was impressed at the quantity of bike infrastructure and the clear priority NYC’s DOT is giving bikes (and buses for that matter). But the quality of the bikeways was often unpredictable and navigating most parts of the network still demands a level of riding ability and risk-aversion that unfortunately puts a ceiling on the number (and demographics) of folks who will ride. As I look through the images below and think back to my time there, I think what’s hurting NYC from a cycling perspective is less about the quality and volume of bike-specific infrastructure and more about the fact that — despite laudable efforts at traffic calming, large-scale pedestrianization, transit priority lanes, daylighting, and so on — there are still simply way too many drivers and cars.
The big lesson from NYC (which holds true in Portland and every American city), is that until you reach a certain tipping point in street design and network permeability that forcibly keeps drivers and cars out of the system, almost no amount of bike infrastructure will feel safe for the majority of people.
Scroll down to see how bikeways are looking in NYC these days. I think you’ll be simultaneously jealous and appalled. (Read captions for more information about each image.)
An east-west connection to the Hudson River in the Washington Heights area (W 157th or so). And no… the cop did not stop.These next several shots are from the Hudson River Greenway path. The path is very popular and has good separation between bike/ped.Another cool thing is how long it is. You can ride it for about 12 miles in both directions along the riverfront.The further north you get, the worse it gets. The path is older up near the George Washington Bridge and is narrower.George Washington Bridge.A few narrow spots are tricky on weekends.Looking south at tip of Manhattan skyline.This decision by NYC Parks is really bad. Thankfully, no one obeys it. But still. Love this group of e-boarders right next to the sign!I agree! It’s “bullshit” to prohibit e-bikes. We should legislate behavior, not vehicle type.Pretty dang nice!Parking protected designs like this are very common. This is lower Manhattan.Another common design. It’s nice to have, but too narrow. And the left-turning drivers are sketchy! Very generous width in Brooklyn.Nice to have, but not good enough.Love this! NYC is better at putting barriers in the street than Portland is.Bike parking as daylighting is my jam.I loved this use of jersey barriers to claim space for a two-way bikeway in Upper Manhattan (Sugar Hill). Reminds me of N Greeley Ave.Shot of East River Greenway from Manhattan Bridge.People are biking in Brooklyn. Even families.It’s amazing what you can do when you’re willing to use tall concrete curbs.Lower East Side. The only cure for this is cultural change and/or very comprehensive enforcement.Manhattan streets are so busy that even this type of bikeway feels inadequate.Typical Manhattan treatment for a low-volume, narrow road.Lack of physical protection might seem bad, but it allows people to pass easier when it’s crowded.Up near Times Square, things get really busy in the bike lane. I’m just thrilled they exist at all! Was ready to be mad at this driver, but then realized it was a Citi Bike worker (see next photo).It’s all good man!I mean. Love the crowds. This is what I want in a city. But it’s not easy to bike in.Sucks that so many people still drive when the bike lanes never get congested.Couldn’t resist this shot of an evening in Central Park! A newer installation near E 75th. Great to see DOT striping wider bike lanes when they can.State of the art cross-section on newly paved Manhattan street. Still way too much space for cars and drivers IMO.Traffic calming feature on Underhill St. on a bike boulevard in Brooklyn.Residential street in Brooklyn with door-zone bike lane and three lanes for cars/drivers.Loved seeing this open street in Brooklyn. Two-way, grade-separation in Brooklyn. Nice design, but it’s too narrow.Love this very protected, two-way bikeway in middle of Sands St. in Brooklyn.Kinda felt like Portland.I found wayfinding to be very good overall.This is a very popular, two-way protected bike lane that needs to be wider.Newer grade-separated in Brooklyn.Love that they’ve separated bike path from upper deck of Brooklyn Bridge. 100% mode separation (see next image).Only bummer is that it feels too narrow for bikes and people ride very very fast in relatively tight quarters.Lower Manhattan jersey barrier-protected bike lanes. I love how visible this makes cyclists!Terrible to the point of almost worse than nothing…… see what I mean?!If you don’t know where the best bike routes are, you can easily find yourself in this position in Manhattan.Just look at how dominant the presence of cars is.If you yell at everyone blocking bike lanes in Manhattan (this is Chinatown) you’ll go hoarse in an hour.Trans Alt’s Kathy Park Price hanging tough in a dangerous Brooklyn bike lane.Not great. (Brooklyn)This would have been fine in 1990. (Chinatown)Almost funny.Absolute flex-post decimation in Brooklyn!Sketchy narrow bike path in Upper Manhattan (Sugar Hill).Not very welcoming, but glad it’s there.I admire their commitment to connecting the network, but this is borderline criminal.
Hope you appreciated this little tour. For more stories and content from my New York City trip, see more coverage here.
Founder of BikePortland (in 2005). Father of three. North Portlander. Basketball lover. Car driver. If you have questions or feedback about this site or my work, contact me via email at maus.jonathan@gmail.com, or phone/text at 503-706-8804. Also, if you read and appreciate this site, please become a paying subscriber.
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South Hylan Boulevard in Staten Island needs a street buffet (road diet). It was not pleasant walking in the soaked grass when I lived there. I enjoyed using the trails, though.
Sorry you had to live in Staten Island. Did JM go there? I didn’t see any photos from there.
dw
1 year ago
I think you did a really good job capturing the range of designs and level of safety of NYC bike lanes.
Every time I’ve visited, I’ve felt like if you live in New York, as soon as you loosen up, so to speak, the whole place is just waiting to swallow you whole. I think part of that is the grind culture and astoundingly high cost of living.
As I’ve thought about it more, I’ve realized that a lot of that anxious feeling I get comes from the streets themselves. Loud vehicles, constant honking, overly aggressive drivers, and a minuscule amount of space leftover for people outside of cars. It feels like the second you stop paying attention when crossing the street, you’ll just get swept away under some investment banker’s SUV, never to see another day.
I’m really surprised – but not all that surprised given political context – that NYC doesn’t already have world-class bike infrastructure. If there’s one place where everyone should be in agreement that biking and walking are healthier and more efficient means of getting around, it should be New York.
Great series of pics that captures the changing streetscape of NYC. Definitely some of the same old issues of car encroachment and delivery driver issues, but I’ve been blown away by the amount of actual separated and protected lanes there. We just don’t have that here.
One mid Oct 2011 ride on a folding bike from Amtrak station north past Central Park to a hostel, a glorious blue sky Friday. That night a storm blew NYC with blowing rain with snow that remained til late Saturday. Sunday morning, no traffic! Just enough snow left to stop mooselike motorists at their doorstep. Bike ride return to station a little chilly but dry and invigorating along the Hudson.
mc
1 year ago
As a former upstate NY’er who grew up with no, zero, nada bike infrastructure save the shoulder of any given road, I’m far more impressed than appalled. In some areas, they’ve outdone PBOT. Admittedly, not a very high bar recently.
In some places, in a massive city like NYC, you’ve only got so much space and land to work with. Everyone just has to slow down, share, take turns and navigate those tight, crappy, dangerous areas safely.
Which can be a tall order, with so many people, trying to get some place on time. However, I’m very encouraged by what I saw.
Great reporting! Thanks Jonathon! =)
Watts
1 year ago
Great photos! Some great facilities, a lot of awful ones, and hardly the low-car nirvana some folks here make NYC out to be. Glad I’m here and not there.
This doesn’t surprise any urbanists. Everyone knows about induced demand, people will drive as much as the roads and infrastructure allow them to, and beyond that they’ll use alternatives. More people live without a car and even more commute without a car than, say, Portland. https://edc.nyc/article/new-yorkers-and-their-cars
NYC is silly with cars. What may be surprising to people who haven’t lived in a big, dense city, is that even the people who own cars don’t drive them much compared to people who live in less dense cities, like Portland.
People in Manhattan who own cars use them, for example, to get to their weekend place outside of the city. Or to drive to the Costco in Queens every couple of weeks. Nobody uses their car to get around within Manhattan. (Except weekend mornings when, if you time the lights right, you can cover about 20 blocks without hitting a red.)
People wealthy enough to own a car in Manhattan walk and take transit just like everyone else (or cabs).
Fred
1 year ago
Did you mean “precincts”? (not “precedents”). When you live in NYC, you can be sure that NYPD are the ones not following the law.
Fred
1 year ago
I had to laugh about the “So 1990” comment. I cycled there in the 90s and it was every cyclist for himself – almost no protected infrastructure but wild and even fun, in a crazy way. I was almost killed on a weekly basis.
My point was that dangerous, thrill-seeking activities are more fun if you’re young and strong. That shouldn’t be controversial.
But yes, health is definitely a social privilege as long as medicine and healthy food cost money, and healthy sleep depends on your work schedule and whether your home environment is chaotic or peaceful, among other factors that are largely outside your control.
Correction: East River ESPLANADE on the east side,
Hudson River GREENWAY on the west side.
Ken
1 year ago
Id say your photos show more of the good than bad (we have a lot more bad). In an ideal world, every few streets would have protected lanes. Other than in manhattan, theyre pretty uncommon.
Stephen Scarich
1 year ago
Really good point about sheer volume of traffic being a major culprit for cycling safety. In addition to the points made, volume and its resultant driver frustration leads drivers to make much more risky driving decisions. Example: in Bend, for over six months the major east/west arterial in NE Bend (Neff Rd.) has been closed to install a roundabout (don’t get me started about roundabouts). As a result, traffic as been shunted to two parallel streets, Butler Market and Hwy 20. Hwy 20 in particular has seen a dramatic increase in congestion, because it does directly Downtown. As a result, drivers who don’t want to go Downtown now head into residential districts to get away from Hwy 20. The result is, based on my unscientific survey, a tripling of back-street driving, usually way over the 25 mph speed limit.
Thanks for reading.
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Please subscribe today to strengthen and expand our work.
South Hylan Boulevard in Staten Island needs a street buffet (road diet). It was not pleasant walking in the soaked grass when I lived there. I enjoyed using the trails, though.
Sorry you had to live in Staten Island. Did JM go there? I didn’t see any photos from there.
I think you did a really good job capturing the range of designs and level of safety of NYC bike lanes.
Every time I’ve visited, I’ve felt like if you live in New York, as soon as you loosen up, so to speak, the whole place is just waiting to swallow you whole. I think part of that is the grind culture and astoundingly high cost of living.
As I’ve thought about it more, I’ve realized that a lot of that anxious feeling I get comes from the streets themselves. Loud vehicles, constant honking, overly aggressive drivers, and a minuscule amount of space leftover for people outside of cars. It feels like the second you stop paying attention when crossing the street, you’ll just get swept away under some investment banker’s SUV, never to see another day.
I’m really surprised – but not all that surprised given political context – that NYC doesn’t already have world-class bike infrastructure. If there’s one place where everyone should be in agreement that biking and walking are healthier and more efficient means of getting around, it should be New York.
Reminds me of Chicago.
Great series of pics that captures the changing streetscape of NYC. Definitely some of the same old issues of car encroachment and delivery driver issues, but I’ve been blown away by the amount of actual separated and protected lanes there. We just don’t have that here.
Hard not to agree with that assessment.
I’ve not been there since ‘98.
One mid Oct 2011 ride on a folding bike from Amtrak station north past Central Park to a hostel, a glorious blue sky Friday. That night a storm blew NYC with blowing rain with snow that remained til late Saturday. Sunday morning, no traffic! Just enough snow left to stop mooselike motorists at their doorstep. Bike ride return to station a little chilly but dry and invigorating along the Hudson.
As a former upstate NY’er who grew up with no, zero, nada bike infrastructure save the shoulder of any given road, I’m far more impressed than appalled. In some areas, they’ve outdone PBOT. Admittedly, not a very high bar recently.
In some places, in a massive city like NYC, you’ve only got so much space and land to work with. Everyone just has to slow down, share, take turns and navigate those tight, crappy, dangerous areas safely.
Which can be a tall order, with so many people, trying to get some place on time. However, I’m very encouraged by what I saw.
Great reporting! Thanks Jonathon! =)
Great photos! Some great facilities, a lot of awful ones, and hardly the low-car nirvana some folks here make NYC out to be. Glad I’m here and not there.
Agreed. Urbanists always pretend like all roads lead to NYC but when you actually go there it’s just cars all the way down.
This doesn’t surprise any urbanists. Everyone knows about induced demand, people will drive as much as the roads and infrastructure allow them to, and beyond that they’ll use alternatives. More people live without a car and even more commute without a car than, say, Portland. https://edc.nyc/article/new-yorkers-and-their-cars
NYC is silly with cars. What may be surprising to people who haven’t lived in a big, dense city, is that even the people who own cars don’t drive them much compared to people who live in less dense cities, like Portland.
People in Manhattan who own cars use them, for example, to get to their weekend place outside of the city. Or to drive to the Costco in Queens every couple of weeks. Nobody uses their car to get around within Manhattan. (Except weekend mornings when, if you time the lights right, you can cover about 20 blocks without hitting a red.)
People wealthy enough to own a car in Manhattan walk and take transit just like everyone else (or cabs).
Did you mean “precincts”? (not “precedents”). When you live in NYC, you can be sure that NYPD are the ones not following the law.
I had to laugh about the “So 1990” comment. I cycled there in the 90s and it was every cyclist for himself – almost no protected infrastructure but wild and even fun, in a crazy way. I was almost killed on a weekly basis.
“Fun…” If you’re young, able-bodied, and have nothing to lose, that is.
Are you saying that youth and health are privileges?
My point was that dangerous, thrill-seeking activities are more fun if you’re young and strong. That shouldn’t be controversial.
But yes, health is definitely a social privilege as long as medicine and healthy food cost money, and healthy sleep depends on your work schedule and whether your home environment is chaotic or peaceful, among other factors that are largely outside your control.
The biggest social privilege is probably luck. It’s entirely out of your control, and it does more to shape your life than any other factor.
Some of us have it, some don’t, and I sure know in which group I’d rather be.
Correction: East River ESPLANADE on the east side,
Hudson River GREENWAY on the west side.
Id say your photos show more of the good than bad (we have a lot more bad). In an ideal world, every few streets would have protected lanes. Other than in manhattan, theyre pretty uncommon.
Really good point about sheer volume of traffic being a major culprit for cycling safety. In addition to the points made, volume and its resultant driver frustration leads drivers to make much more risky driving decisions. Example: in Bend, for over six months the major east/west arterial in NE Bend (Neff Rd.) has been closed to install a roundabout (don’t get me started about roundabouts). As a result, traffic as been shunted to two parallel streets, Butler Market and Hwy 20. Hwy 20 in particular has seen a dramatic increase in congestion, because it does directly Downtown. As a result, drivers who don’t want to go Downtown now head into residential districts to get away from Hwy 20. The result is, based on my unscientific survey, a tripling of back-street driving, usually way over the 25 mph speed limit.