Long-Awaited Fourth Ave. Bike Lane Coming This Year, City Says

SUNSET PARK, BROOKLYN — Just hours before activists planned to take to the streets to demand it get done, the city announced that a long-awaited portion of the Fourth Avenue bike lane will be completed by the end of the year.

The Department of Transportation and a group of elected officials revealed that instead of finishing just the 15th to 38th street portion of the bike path, they will instead install lanes all the way to 57th Street by the fall. The announcement is part of Mayor Bill de Blasio's $58 million plan to respond to a spike in cyclist deaths across the city, officials said.

It also comes a week after elected officials and advocates condemned the city's delay in putting in the bike path, which was originally supposed to stretch from Atlantic Avenue to 64th Street by last year. The lane, they said, would have provided a safer alternative for riders like Em Samolewicz, who became the 18th cyclist to lose her life this year when she was hit on Third Avenue.

“As a biker myself, I live the dangers of our streets almost daily. And I can attest that protected bike lanes aren’t just safer, they save lives,” City Council Member Carlos Menchaca said about the Fourth Avenue announcement. “We’ve needed a protected bike lane on Fourth Avenue for a long time, and I am proud to stand beside the Department of Transportation to announce its arrival by year’s end. This is a victory for our neighbors and members of the cycling community who live and work in and around Sunset Park.”

The Fourth Avenue bike lanes, originally promised in 2017, were stalled largely because of MTA work in the same area. It seems that work will still stall a few blocks of the path, between 57th and 60th streets, which are marked to be completed by 2020 instead of 2019 in the announcement.

Transportation officials had already put in the 1st to 15th streets and 60th to 64th streets portions of the path and had planned to install the lane down to 38th Street by the end of the summer.

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Altogether, the bike path will give a four mile north-and-south connecter between Bay Ridge, Sunset Park and Park Slope by the end of the year.

“For decades, Fourth Avenue was seen more as a local highway," she said. "With protected bike lanes this year and Citi Bike coming soon to Sunset Park, we will continue its extraordinary transformation into a neighborhood boulevard."

The agency also revealed that it will evaluate safety on Third Avenue, where Samolewicz and another cyclist, Hugo Garcia, were both killed this year. Projects to connect Red Hook and Sunset Park with bike lanes are also in the works and will be finished by 2022, officials said.

While elected officials praised this work and the Fourth Avenue path, they also said it is not the end of the city's work protecting cyclists.

“The heartbreaking deaths of cyclists this year has resulted in the community rightfully demanding meaningful change and the announcement that the 4th Avenue Protected Bike Lane is nearing completion is an important, positive step in that direction,” said U.S. Rep. Nydia Velázquez. “Still, we cannot rest and must use every tool available to us to prevent these tragic crashes...I hope the City can work to educate truckers and motorists about how to stay safe and prevent future accidents with cyclists.”