Behold: The DOT Plan for Protected Bike Lanes on Dyckman Street

The project would bring parking-protected lanes to Dyckman from Broadway to 10th Avenue, which Inwood residents have asked for since 2008.

DOT's new proposal for protected lanes anticipates -- and enables -- double parking on Dyckman Street. Image: DOT
DOT's new proposal for protected lanes anticipates -- and enables -- double parking on Dyckman Street. Image: DOT

It took nearly a decade, but DOT has a plan for protected bike lanes on Dyckman Street in Inwood.

Rather than a painted median with a through-lane for motorized traffic and painted bike lane in either direction, as previously proposed, the updated plan [PDF] would put parking-protected bike lanes along both sides of the street between Nagle Avenue and Broadway.

A two-way protected lane between Nagle and 10th Avenue is already in the works. If the updated DOT plan comes to fruition, Dyckman will have a bikeway from Broadway to its eastern terminus, where it connects to the greenway.

Because it’s Inwood, the latest plan includes extra-wide parking lanes to maintain space for people to illegally double-park.

DOT has been back and forth with Community Board 12 since 2008 regarding Dyckman bike lane upgrades. When DOT finally put forward a plan last June, CB 12 continued to delay implementation by requesting more meetings.

The board endorsed a protected bike lane segment between 10th and Nagle avenues in March, but rejected the DOT plan for painted lanes between Nagle and Broadway. DOT held yet another community workshop in April at CB 12’s request.

The updated plan, presented to the CB 12 transportation committee this month, addresses unenforced double-parking as inevitable. The wide outside lanes are meant to keep double-parked drivers out of the way of car and bike through-traffic, but it abandons the traffic-calming goals of the previous redesign plan.

“Bicycle safety in New York City at present pretty much depends on the goodwill and careful driving of motor vehicle operators,” Upper Manhattan bike advocate Jonathan Rabinowitz told Streetsblog. “This plan, with the ‘extra wide’ parking lanes, does nothing to tame the aggressiveness of that population.”

Neither CB 12 nor DOT could tell us whether or not the transportation committee endorsed the plan. We’ll update this post when we find out.

Update: A CB 12 member, who is not on the transportation committee, told Streetsblog the committee endorsed the DOT plan.

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