News Date: Thursday, April 26, 2007 – 10:41pm

Time’s Up! encourages cyclists and pedestrians to continue to support and demand safe passage across the entire breadth of Southern Manhattan via Houston Street. A protected bikeway on Houston Street is both technically feasible and urgently needed. The exclusion of such facilities will only result in more unnecessary deaths.

Its been one year:
June 26th is the one-year anniversary of the death of Derek Lake, age 23 who was hit and killed by a tractor-trailor truck at Houston and Laguardia. This was the third cyclist’s death on Houston Street in 18 months–we need bike infrastructure now to be sure it never happens again!  Derek, Brandie and Andrew, are remembered with ghost bikes at the scene of each Houston Street crash.

For more on the ghost-bike project see: /index.php?page=ghost-bike-memorials

More Information:

You have the right to travel safely on Houston Street!—This is a big issue for us and many others; Speak Up!

The city’s Department of Transportation bureaucrats now say that moving bike lanes to narrow, congested side streets will somehow address the safety problems on Houston Street. Such a plan prioritizes Houston Street for cars and trucks rather than non-polluting cyclists and pedestrians, and is clearly not in the best interests of a city afflicted with staggeringly high rates of asthma and concerned about the effects of climate change and resource depletion. If you thought Houston Street was bad already, get ready for something far worse! Time’s Up! supports any expansion of the city’s bicycle network, but the community will not settle for lesser routes at the expense of long-overdue Houston Street facilities.

Despite the fact that Houston Street has been a proposed/designated bike route since 1997, nothing has been done to prevent ongoing injuries and deaths to cyclists. In 2005-2006 3 cyclists were killed on this street, and from 2002 to 2004 82 cyclists were struck. At a press conference in August, 2006, CB 2 Transportation Committee members, community groups and elected officials took a step in the right direction demanding safe bike lanes be worked into the DOT plan for Houston Street. That was a great start.

Unfortunately, measures to protect cyclists on Houston have now been suddenly deemed unfeasible. Abandoning the call for protection on this ‘boulevard of death,’ the new DOT plan calls for ‘alternative routes’ on narrow unprotected bike lanes, mainly on Bleecker and Prince Streets that zigzag through narrow, congested streets and do not provide continuous transit. As much as this may be the goal, the new plan does little to advance safety.

The reality is that cyclists will continue to travel on Houston Street even if it remains life-threatening for them and pedestrians. Houston Street already is known as one of the most dangerous streets in NYC. Nevertheless, it remains a preferred route for cyclists because in contrast to most other cross-town streets, it is wide, sunny, direct, and completely traverses a very wide section of Manhattan from river to river. It is also the most efficient route to a wide range of destinations, bridges and avenues on the east and west sides of Southern Manhattan, and in many cases the only viable route from one place to another.

Given the facts, it seems obvious that a protected bike lane should be the highest priority for NYC potentially providing a safe, non-polluting way to travel to shopping entertainment, and work in the East and West Villages, SoHo, the Lower East Side and East River Bridges as well as East and West side Greenways. Abruptly reneging on the 10-year promise for safe bike lanes on a newly paved 8 lane Houston Streets is quite literally, a life-or-death decision.

It is clear that this is not a question of technical feasibility, but rather a question of political priorities. Some of the D.O.T. engineers who would be involved in this project are commuter cyclists themselves, but these engineers have sadly been directed by their D.O.T. supervisors to propose mediocre “alternatives” on account of unproved claims regarding the technical feasibility of a Houston Street bikeway. We know that a safe, protected bikeway can be implemented on Houston Street and we know that D.O.T. engineers have the know-how and imagination to provide the community with what it really needs.

The Facts:

• Bleecker Street is a favored route for double decker tour buses and charter buses while Prince Street is congested daily with street vendors, automobiles and pedestrians, all of which would impede bicycle through-traffic.
• A major construction project for water-main replacement is currently underway along Houston Street and a redesign of the roadway, medians and sidewalks is slated to follow. This is best chance in decades the community is going to get to demand proper cyclist and pedestrian safety measures. So far, D.O.T. bureaucrats have been ignoring community pleas on this issue for years, but it’s time to take a stand.
• A bikeway can integrated with a system of traffic calming measures to create a safer, cleaner and more attractive Houston Street for pedestrians, businesses and residents. A median bikeway would allow for flexible travel both east and west, and a combination of electronic sensors and dynamic automobile turning restrictions could tame this Robert Moses playground that has historically been such a people-unfriendly thoroughfare.
• The lanes on Prince and Bleecker wouldn’t be physically-protected from automobiles, allowing police patrol cars, delivery trucks, and private cars to illegally park in the way of cyclists.

Some Links:

• Houston St. is becoming bikers’ boulevard of death, the Villager
• Rally for Houston St. Bike Lane, Streetsblog, August 2006.
• Additional coverage of the Rally, The Villager, September 2006.
• The DOT plan for the Prince/Bleeker Bike lane and to ignore and even encourage unsafe conditions on Houston Street.