Mayor's Bike Plan Calls For Dyckman Street Protected Lane

INWOOD, NY — The city will move forward with a second attempt to redesign Inwood's Dyckman Street that will include a two-way protected bike lane as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio's $58 million "Green Wave" bike safety plan.

The city Department of Transportation will install a two-way protected lane on the north side of Dyckman Street between Broadway and Nagle Avenue sometime this year, de Blasio announced Thursday. The city installed two protected bike lanes on the stretch in December 2017 but removed them last year after businesses and local elected officials complained about traffic flow on the busy commercial corridor.

City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez introduced a plan in 2018 for a two-way lane on the street as an attempt to compromise between cyclists who had been advocating for the lanes for years and businesses owners who said the lanes could hurt their sales. Community Board 12 eventually endorsed the plan, and the city re-paved Dyckman street to restore its original car-friendly design.

City transportation at first stood firm in the face of opposition to the bike lanes, but eventually capitulated after less than one year. Borough President Gale Brewer, Congressman Adriano Espaillat and ousted State Senator Marisol Alcantara put pressure on the city to reverse course on the redesign.

Representatives of both Espaillat and Alcantara implied that the bike lanes were not built for Inwood's existing community, making statements such as "

Cyclists argue that a two-way lane on Dyckman's north side is less safe than both two one-way lanes on each side and a two-way lane on the street's south side, which presents fewer conflicts with turning drivers. Dyckman street can play a key role in Manhattan's bike network by providing a link between major bike paths on the Hudson and East rivers.

Bike lane opponents claimed that Dyckman Street became more congested after the lanes were installed in December 2017, which has hurt sales and is preventing emergency vehicles from accessing the street. Those claims were initially disputed by the city. Department of Transportation officials said during a public hearing in 2018 that traffic times got worse on Dyckman Street immediately after the bike lanes were implemented, but data showed that times actually improved when motorists became used to the new street layout.

Double parking, a common occurrence on Dyckman Street, was identified as the real culprit of the increased congestion on the street. With fewer lanes for cars, problems and congestion caused by double parking were exacerbated.

There were 242 traffic-related injuries on Dyckman Street between 2012 and 2016, officials said. Of those injuries, eight pedestrians, one cyclist and three motor vehicle passengers were seriously hurt. Protected bike lanes have proved to reduce traffic injuries to all street users by as much as 15 percent, according to city presentations on the Dyckman redesign.

Read Patch's full coverage on the mayor's new bike safety plan here.