Unfinished Grand St. Bike Lanes Will Become Permanent, City Says

WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN — Unfinished bike lanes that have been in a state of limbo for months will finally be finished along Grand Street, answering a years-long call from activists to improve safety on the corridor.

The city announced this week that it will make protected bike lanes from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to Waterbury Street permanent as part of a package of street improvements meant to help with the upcoming L train repairs, which will slow down the subway line on weekends and weeknights until next year.

The announcement likely came as a relief to activists and elected officials who have been requesting the lanes since a cyclist was killed on the street in 2016.

Transportation officials started putting in the bike lanes several months ago as part of a plan to help with the L train shutdown, but they had been left half-painted since January, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the MTA called off shutting down the subway line.

Councilman Antonio Reynoso told Streetsblog that his office had been pushing for the bike lanes to be finished even after the L trains plans changed.

“I’ve been in close dialogue with the department and continuously pressured the agency to move ahead with plans for the Grand Street redesign,” Reynoso said in a statement. “I am relieved to see that our efforts have been fruitful and our community will finally get what it needs: a permanent bike lane that is designed with the safety of cyclists in mind.”

The unfinished bike lanes had been a hot topic of conversation in the community since they were partly put in, including at several meetings Community Board 1's Transportation Committee held on the topic.

Residents told board members that the street's safety was worsened by the half-finished bike lanes, including two cyclists who said they were injured when riding on Grand Street, according to Streetsblog's coverage of the meeting.

But not everybody was a fan of making the lanes permanent. Business owners along Grand Street also told Streetsblog that the lanes had started to hinder business because of a loss of parking.

In the permanent bike lane plans, the city has said it will modify the lanes between Waterbury Street and Vandervoot Avenue to "help accommodate the needs of industrial businesses along this section of the corridor."

The project will include additional metered parking and new loading zones around the corners from Grand Street, according to an announcement from the mayor's office.

The Grand Street bike lanes were part of a larger announcement for the L train repairs, including a new program that will ban private cars on a section of 14th Street.

Most traffic will be banned on the street between Third and Ninth avenues starting in June to speed up bus routes along the corridor, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced. The bus priority upgrades will come more than a month after the L train 'slowdown' begins on Apr. 26— when the L will only run every 20 or so minutes on weeknights and weekends.

Here are the other changes included in the plan:

• Bike lanes along 12th and 13th streets in Manhattan will be made permanent. More delineators and loading zones will be added.
• University Place will become a "shared-street" between West 13th and 14th streets.
• Union Square West between West 14th and 15th streets and West 16th and 17th streets will remain closed to traffic.