Mud-Covered Bike Lane Is Latest In Williamsburg's Grand St. Woes

WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN — Slippery mud or wet cement that covered a long-awaited new bike lane on Grand Street this week is just the latest in a series of safety issues since it was first installed months ago, local cyclists said.

The bike lane, which was made permanent this spring after it had been left unfinished for months, was covered between Graham and Manhattan avenues with what appeared to be mud from construction on Thursday, Philip Leff, chair of Transportation Alternatives North Brooklyn Committee, told Patch. The lane was still mostly covered when he returned on Friday, creating a slippery hazard for cyclists and making it difficult to see the green-painted lane underneath.

But Leff said aside from being a safety issue, the covered spot is also an example of a larger problem with the Grand Street lane and bike lane maintenance all over the city.

"It's more of a general phenomenon where...it seems like from the moment the plan was approved the execution is sometimes sloppy and the maintenance is even worse," Leff said. "The kind of care needed to sustain a safe cycling network just isn’t there."

The mud, which Leff first thought was wet cement, was especially concerning given that cement dripping onto the bike lanes has become a common problem in the area.

Council Member Antonio Reynoso, another advocate of the Grand Street lane, just recently spoke out about cement drippings that have long plagued a section of Bushwick Avenue where a cyclist was killed by a cement truck earlier this month. The cyclist, Devra Freelander, was the 15th cyclist to lose her life in the city this year.

Like Bushwick Avenue, Reynoso and activists like Leff have contended that Grand Street has become a dangerous truck corridor. They have been pushing for the bike lane on the street since a cyclist was killed on the Graham-Manhattan avenue block in 2016.

Transportation officials started putting in the lanes last year as part of a plan to help with the L train shutdown, but they were then left half-painted for months after Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the MTA called off shutting down the subway line. The Department of Transportation announced in April that they would become permanent, along with a list of other upgrades to the street.

Leff contends, though, that DOT hasn't fully lived up to their long-awaited promise of finishing the lanes.

"We were promised the more physical protection would be forthcoming," Leff said about when the lanes were made permanent. "We haven’t seen anything in two months."

The lack of protection from the traffic, such as bollards or a curb, means that cyclists still feel unsafe riding on that street, he said. It also has made it easier for cars to illegally park in the bike lane or block it with construction, like a ConEd project did in the same Graham-Manhattan avenue block just a few months ago, Leff said.

"What every cyclist in the city knows, is that if there is space for a car to drive into it, they will drive into it," he said.

Leff said cyclists will try to send in 311 complaints about these safety issues, but if they were to do so for every problem they would be stopping every few feet. The onus to make sure the lanes are maintained also shouldn't be on the cyclists themselves, but on the officials that put them in, Leff said.

He added that the next round of upgrades to the street, set to begin next week, might help with the problem, though.

DOT will be adding mid-block commercial loading zones on the North side of Grand Street and putting in parking meters to where Grand crosses with Union, Lorimer, Manhattan, Humboldt, and Bushwick avenues.

A representative with DOT looking into the protections for the bike lane did not provide comments in time for publication.

Update: The city's Department of Sanitation said the section of the bike lane covered in mud was cleaned by its staff on Friday evening. DOT had referred Patch to the sanitation department about the mud.