Bike Advocates Demand More Sixth Avenue Protected Lanes

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — Bike advocates took to Sixth Avenue early Tuesday morning to make some noise and demand that the city follow through on a plan to extend protected bike infrastructure all the way to Central Park.

Members of Transportation Alternatives led a procession with the Rude Mechanical Orchestra up Sixth Avenue from 35th Street to 42nd Street, two key intersections that bike advocates say represent danger for cyclists in Midtown. Protected bike lanes on Sixth Avenue currently end at West 33rd Street.

Transportation Alternatives Manhattan organizer Chelsea Yamada described the city's efforts on Sixth Avenue north of 33rd Street as "embarrassing." The avenue becomes significantly unsafe for cyclists on 35th Street after navigating Herald Square, where cyclists are funneled from protected lanes to unprotected ones. At 42nd Street, the bike infrastructures cuts off completely.

"It's really embarrassing that the city has let one of Midtown major dangerous Vision Zero priority corridors go unattended. In 2017, we were looking at presentations for Sixth Avenue below 33rd Street. Herald Square got a little bit of a redesign, but we've been waiting on this part of Sixth Avenue for about six years now," Yamada said Tuesday.

Midtown Manhattan is especially dangerous for commercial cyclists such as delivery workers and bike messengers who have to traverse the unsafe and highly-congested streets for as many as 12 hours a day, Yamada said. The Transportation Alternatives organizer added that car lanes on Sixth Avenue are highway-regulation width, allowing drivers more space to perform dangerous maneuvers.

Midtown City Councilmember Keith Powers supports the extension of the Sixth Avenue bike lane up to Central Park, and said that the current conditions in Midtown Manhattan are "chaos" for bikers following Tuesday's press conference. Powers understands why Manhattan's Sixth Avenue is a complicated stretch to redesign, but said the city needs to act with a sense of urgency.

"We've been asking them to act with some urgency here. We saw here last year when there were so many either fatalities or injuries [to cyclists], and we know that these really heavily-congested areas are particularly unsafe for people," Powers said.

The local lawmaker said he has held conversations with the city Department of Transportation coming into 2020 and hopes that the city presents a plan for Sixth Avenue sometime this year.

A city Department of Transportation spokesman said that the department is currently developing a plan for Sixth Avenue and plans to present in front of local community boards in the spring.