New York City will begin a street redesign this spring to permanently improve pedestrian and bicycle access to the Brooklyn Bridge at its Manhattan entrance in Manhattan’s Financial District, city officials announced. The project, led by Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani and NYC Department of Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn, will create a new dedicated bike connection along Centre Street and fully separate bike and pedestrian access to the bridge for the first time. Work is expected to begin in the coming weeks and wrap before the FIFA World Cup begins in June.
The redesign targets one of the city’s busiest and most congested public spaces. According to NYC DOT, nearly 30,000 pedestrians and more than 5,600 cyclists use the Brooklyn Bridge on an average day. While the city added a protected two-way bike lane on the bridge’s former Manhattan-bound roadway in 2021, cyclists and pedestrians still merge at the Manhattan approach, creating crowding and safety concerns.
Proposed conditions, via NYC DOT.
As part of the new plan, the city will double the width of the southern crosswalk between the bridge and City Hall Park to give pedestrians more room at the entrance. Officials said the project is part of a broader package of street upgrades planned ahead of the World Cup, including changes to Ninth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen and cycling and sidewalk improvements linking Lower Manhattan and Union Square.
The bridge entrance is near the Brooklyn Bridge–City Hall/Chambers Street subway complex, served by the 4, 5, 6, J, and Z trains, with additional access nearby from Chambers Street for the 1, 2, and 3 trains.
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What ever happened to the bike and pedestrian ways over the GWB? They have been under construction for decades.
I was there in the fall and the pedestrian side was open, quite nice. Seems like the bike would be done by now as well but I cant attest to it.
Red tape & Soviet Era Bureaucracy; r.e. the GWB walkways, look at how long the 2nd Ave Subway extension is taking, 125 yrs in development,(sad), I think we should do some “joint diplomatic construction consulting” with the Chinese 🤔, just to “LEARN” a thing or 2 about how they pull-off some of the most audacious engineering projects humans have ever conceived, while we putz around with 2 crumbling 130 year old train tunnels under the Hudson River @ Penn Station, etc, etc, We really DO NEED! a “refresher course” in how to expedite & better manage & execute crucial/critical infrastructure projects.