Bicycle Lane on the Verrazano!

October 18, 11am at the Alice Austen House on Staten Island - come out and give some support to provide a bicycle lane over the Verrazano Bridge.  Event organized by the Harbor Ring.  Visit their website or on Facebook for more information.

Where Cyclists Ride

Here's an interesting tidbit: GPS heatmaps showing where cyclist ride.   Screenshot below is of the NYC area taken today, March 2, 2014 as mapped on the Strava Global Heatmap. .

The most striking element is the concentration of red.  Central Park and Prospect Park are burning red, linked by a network of fine red and blue arteries between the two.  But take a closer look - the entire south shoreline of Brooklyn is also burning red from Bay Ridge to Coney Island and eastward to the loop around Jamaica Bay.  There are some fine blue veins connecting to central and northern Brooklyn.

Heatmap for Brooklyn and NYC

Spring is Near (sorta)

Last summer, the bicycle lanes around Owl's Head Park were fading into oblivion.  In case you missed it under this winter's slushy wrath, those lanes were repainted and refreshed around October 2013.  Thanks, DOT!

The re-painting of Wakeman Place

Who is the Bike Candidate?

This story from Brooklyn Magazine compares the crop of NYC mayoral candidates on their attitudes and stance for bicycling in the city, meaning all of the city, not just Manhattan. Who is their pick?  Sal Albanese. 

Disappearing Lanes near Owls Head Park

It has been 2 years since any of the bicycle lanes in Bay Ridge were repainted.  Shore Road and Colonial Road were repainted back in the summer of 2011.  However, it has been longer since other lanes were restriped in the area.

These pictures show the current conditions of Wakeman Place and 68th Street.  At both, the outer marking of the bicycle lane has been worn away and vanished.  Both of these routes provide access to and from Owl's Head Park and the greenway surrounding the north side of the park.  These roads are also the final connector streets in the neighborhood for traffic entering and exiting the Belt Parkway, meaning vehicles are frequent and fast along these roads.

These lanes need to be repainted for safety and traffic calming around the Owls Head Park area.

The Disappearing Bicycle Lane of Wakeman PLace

Wakeman Place Bicycle Lane Vanishes

The Disappearing Bicycle Lane of 68th Street

5th Avenue Shared Bicycle Lane

Here it is, the unbelievable and amazing appearance of the 5th Avenue bicycle route, extending from 50th Street to 23rd Street.  Within a 15 minute time span, we saw at least 20 northbound and southbound commuters riding along this road just before 8am.  Men and women, families with children were out on this morning using the freshly painted bicycle route!

This newly designated route doesn't quite extend all the way south to 65th Street and into Bay Ridge, but it is very close.  Perhaps it will be extended when the roadway repairs between 50th and 65th are completed?

The southern-most section of the route between 49th and 50th Street

Along Greenwood Cemetery, a woman passes a man pulling a child-carrier

Continuing northbound near 27th Street

At 23rd Street, the new lane connects with the existing 5th Ave route.

Call Stephen Hawking! 5th Ave Bicycle Route Emerges from the Ether!

There is a new connection developing across the space-time continuum where none existed before - a marked bicycle route along 5th Avenue in Sunset Park.  BRBR saw it this morning, extending from 36th Street to 50th Street as a freshly painted line of sharrows along this commercial corridor in Sunset Park.  It looks like it will extend farther north, along the edge of Greenwood Cemetery.  Maybe it will extend all the way to 23rd St, where the 5th Avenue Bicycle lane currently ends?

Physicist Stephen Hawking in 2007 inside of a zero-gravity jet airplane.