It will protect and serve — bicyclists traveling from Queens to Greenpoint.
The city will finally begin construction on the long-delayed Pulaski Bridge protected bike lane in late April, which will give cyclists and pedestrians a safer route between the counties of Kings and Queens a year after the Department of Transportation originally planned to start work.
City officials refused to say why the project had been pushed back for so long, but local pols said they were happy construction is finally getting underway on the bridge that connects McGuinness Boulevard to some other road on the other side of the water.
“It is better late than never,” said Assemblyman Joe Lentol (D–Greenpoint), who pushed to get the city to agree to the bike lane in 2013. “It was hard enough to get them to do it at all.”
The lane was sorely needed as bike traffic on the bridge increased dramatically during the last few years and bicyclists and pedestrians were dangerously vying for space on the bridge’s sidewalk, riders and politicians said. Daily bicycle traffic on the bridge more than doubled between 2009 and 2013, shooting from 487 to 1,004 bikes per day, according to city stats.
The city said it expects to open the bike lane by the end of the year.
The Pulaski Bridge isn’t the only Brooklyn bridge to get a new, protected bicycle lane. City and state agencies are also planning a lane for the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge and on the new Kosciuzsko Bridge.
