Marty Markowitz Shamefully Opposes PPW Bike Lane

Back in September, Community Board 6 voted to recommend approval of the DOT's proposal to construct a two-lane bike path along PPW. The plan was to simply remove one travel lane, shift all of the parking over, and use the space taken away from the travel lane for the bike lane. The benefits of this are obvious, and it would have reduced the rampant speeding on Prospect Park West. Instead, the Community Board was primarily concerned with parking spaces. Now, it looks like our Borough President is lacking vision as well. From the Brooklyn Paper:

"But just as the city was about to start building, Markowitz wrote to the city’s top transportation official that called the Prospect Park West lane an “ill-advised proposal that would cause incredible congestion and reduce the number of available parking spaces in Park Slope.” 

The Beep’s letter also argued that the bike lane would be especially problematic during the summer surge in foot traffic, when park-goers are barbecuing, attending concerts and participating in many other activities.

Markowitz claimed that there is ample space for bikers in the loop within Prospect Park — though it only goes in one direction — and called for further research into traffic solutions."

The comments from the Mayor's office seem to echo the amazingly short-sited sentiment that bicyclists are actually to blame for pedestrian deaths and accidents, which has been perpetuated by some sensationalist news reports in recent years. I wonder who lobbied him to opposed this beneficial proposal? Hopefully DOT Commissioner Sadik-Khan will do the right thing.

For more info on who is really under duress, check out CrashStat. Any rational person can see that the vehicles are the menace not the bikes.

Additional coverage over at StreetsBlog.