9th St. Bike Lane Blocked With Cars, Needs Barrier, Cyclists Say

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — Cyclists in Brooklyn say the bike lane on Ninth Street — essentially two lines of paint that divide street parking from car traffic — is constantly blocked by vehicles, creating unsafe conditions for bikers forced to weave in and out of moving traffic as they ride down the major neighborhood connector.

They say the positions of the bike lane and the parking lane should be switched, creating a "parking-protected" corridor that puts a barrier between cyclists and moving vehicles and would give riders a safe and unobstructed way to move freely between Prospect Park, Gowanus, Carroll Gardens and Red Hook.

"Right now, it’s pretty scary," Michael Drinkard, a Park Slope resident who rides his bike to work in Fort Greene every day, told Patch. "It's scary even for me, and I've been hit and I’ve got thousands of miles of experience."

A Patch reporter walked up Ninth Street from Fourth Avenue to the park and saw vehicles sitting in the designated bike lane — private cars waiting as passengers run into the drug store and delivery trucks and UPS vehicles stopped while drivers make a dropoff.

"It creates a little bit of danger having to leave the bike lane to enter a traffic lane and then back, and then several times back and forth, in and out, over the stretch of a block," said Eric McClure, a Park Slope resident and executive director of StreetsPAC, a group campaigning for safer streets.

"Having to look over your shoulder and merge into moving traffic is certainly a less-than-ideal situation."

Police cars are also a frequent bike lane-blocker, Drinkard says, along with the near-daily security detail of Mayor Bill de Blasio waiting for him as he attends the YMCA gym near Sixth Avenue.

"And then the mayor comes down to the Y, and that’s just a total mess," Drinkard said. "And even that would be all right with me if the rest of the lane was usable the rest of the time, if that was the exception not the rule."

Drinkard, who is involved with the safe streets advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, said he has been told that the Department of Transportation couldn't make the bike lane protected because it would interfere with some left turn lanes on the neighborhood thoroughfare.

"I think that’s bulls---. 100 percent bulls---," he said.

"If your priority is street safety and multi-use, you find a way around the constraints. I think it's totally doable. It just depends on priorities."

A DOT spokesperson did not provide Patch with figures about bike and car traffic on the street but said it is always evaluating the current configuration

"We are always looking to upgrade existing infrastructure, and we will note the issue with our partners at the Police Department," the spokesperson said in an email to Patch.

A bike path on nearby Prospect Park West is similar to the one cyclists are asking for. It creates a safe and unobstructed route for cyclists because a barrier of parked vehicles stops cars getting into it.

And the DOT's past experience with protected bike lanes has shown improvements in both pedestrian and cyclist safety.

A 2014 DOT study on protected bike lanes in Manhattan, for example, found a 22 percent drop in pedestrian injuries and a "minor" decrease in cycling injuries as bike traffic increased "dramatically" in areas after a protected bike lane was installed.

A protected bike lane on Ninth Street would also create a reliable connector in Brooklyn's bike network from Prospect Park West down to a planned protected lane on Fourth Avenue that would stretch from Bay Ridge to Downtown Brooklyn.

"Assuming the Fourth Avenue project moves forward, it will be an important connection to some major protected cycling facilities," said McClure, who also heads Community Board 6's transportation committee. "I do think it’s a place that’s ripe for a protected bike lane. It's a wide street, it would seem to have the room."

He said if DOT came to the board with a proposal to swap the parking and bike lane on Ninth Street, he would push to approve it.

"For sure," he said. "I think it’s something that a lot of people have been interested in for awhile."

Lead photos by Marc Torrence, Patch; and Michael Drinkard, used with permission