NYC’s Department of Transportation is making moves to make McGuinness Boulevard safer for all, with a special emphasis on bikers.
Brooklyn’s four-lane McGuinness Boulevard is infamously dangers for pedestrians, bikers, and drivers alike. Three people have lost their lives due to crashes on the boulevard within the past ten years, and there were 217 crashes with injuries between 2015 and 2019.
Now, to make the road safer for all, the DOT is planning to remove one car lane in either direction and install new protected bike lanes on both sides of the road.
The reconfiguration of the road, which comes after years of advocacy by locals and activists, will stretch 1.1 miles between Meeker Avenue and the Pulaski Bridge in Greenpoint.
The final proposed design will:
- Increase pedestrian crossing time
- Improve bus operations on lines crossing McGuinness Blvd (B24, B48)
- Minimize increase in congestion and neighborhood cut-through traffic
- Maintain most overnight and weekend parking
- Discourage nighttime speeding
- Create a barrier-protected bicycle lane
The car lane removals makes this one of, if not the most ambitious redesigns yet under Mayor Adams.
“We’ve seen some bold DOT proposals during the Adams administration, but I think this is the boldest yet. If you can road diet McGuinness Boulevard, you could probably road diet any street in the city, which makes it an interesting case,” said Jon Orcutt, the advocacy director of Bike New York according to StreetsBlog.
After gathering community feedback, the DOT plans to finalize their design and begin work this summer.
Moreover, McGuinness Boulevard isn’t the only road expecting a bike lane in NYC. Other roads that have either recently received bike lanes or will in the future include:
- Two-way bike boulevard on Broadway
- Two-way bike lane on the West Side Highway
- Two-way bike lane on downtown Brooklyn’s Schermerhorn Street (recently opened)
- Newly renovated bike and pedestrian path on the George Washington Bridge (recently opened)
Between NYC’s headache-inducing traffic, paired with the fact that NYC is the most congested city in the U.S., it’s no wonder many people choose biking as their go-to mode of transportation–especially when it’s so easy to grab yourself a Citi Bike!
So it’s definitely a breath of fresh air to see all the safety improvements being implemented for NYC cyclists!