City Fills Second Ave Bike Lane Gap Near Queensboro Bridge

UPPER EAST SIDE-MIDTOWN, NY — One of the last remaining gaps in the bike lane network on Manhattan's Second Avenue has been filled, bringing some order to one of the borough's most dangerous stretches of road for cyclists.

The city Department of Transportation painted a new bike lane this week on Second Avenue spanning East 68th Street to East 59th Street. The new lane includes the stretch of Second Avenue that's used by motorists coming off and onto the Queensboro Bridge.

Bikers now have a dedicated lane and a set of safety islands that provide safe passage through the sea of cars connecting to the bridge, which is almost always busy because there are no tolls to access it, city officials said. The new design moves bicyclists across the bridge approach on the eastern side of Second Avenue by using a three-phase crossing system. The first phase involves cyclists and pedestrians crossing East 60th Street to an island in the middle of the approach, the second phase involves crossing to yet another island — nicknamed "the pork chop" by DOT presenters — and the third phase involves crossing from the second island to East 59th Street.

The new avenue design was endorsed by local Community Board 8 after long discussions regarding the plan and was touted by local city Councilman Ben Kallos.

"So you had bikes going up on the sidewalk conflicting with pedestrians. You had the cars conflicting with each other and the cyclists. It was pandemonium. Now there’s a place for folks to go," Kallos told CBS New York this week.

While the new lane offers cyclists added protections on the previously free-for-all stretch, ardent biking advocates aren't without criticisms. During "peak" hours the hovering lane that serves as a physical buffer between bikers and cars becomes a regular travel lane, forcing bikers to once again navigate the road with motorists close by. The peak hours are between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.

Between 2012 and 2016 there were 363 injuries involving pedestrians, bicyclists and motor vehicle occupants on the stretch of Second Avenue, 26 of which are considered serious injuries, according to a DOT statistics.