Soon, you won’t have to ride in car traffic on the Sands Street approach to the Manhattan Bridge.

The long-awaited Sands Street bike path, a protected approach to the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge which took a few years longer than expected to go through New York City’s construction bureaucracy, looks tantalizingly close to completion these days. It’s not there yet, but you can start to picture how this critical addition to the city’s bike network will appear when finished. The Department of Design and Construction tells us the whole thing should be paved by the end of the week, weather permitting, and the path should officially open to cyclists next week, after some fencing is added.

Above is the view looking toward the bridge entrance from the north side. Here’s how it looked last September:

More pics after the jump.

Here’s the view looking in the opposite direction — toward the BQE overpass — from the same spot. Fencing will be added along the concrete barrier.

The view from Gold Street looking toward the bridge. The path will carry two-way bike traffic from here to the bridge.

Between Gold Street and Navy Street, the path runs between Farragut Houses along both sides of a center median. The surface for bikes is raised above the surface for autos. To allow for free pedestrian movement across the street, there is no concrete barrier.