NY Times.
Summary
Grayways calls on the NYC Departments of Transportation and Parks & Recreation to designate 500 miles of recreational urban bike routes. See draft Council Resolution.
Beneficiaries include NYC’s 800,000 cyclists who have few recreational facilities not crowded with runners and walkers, and neighborhood food shops who’d see a surge in customers.
Route Characteristics
- The fifteen (15) examples cited below extend through the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Many begin and end in Manhattan.
- The routes aggregate separated paths, on-road bike lanes, quiet secondary streets and industrial areas that get little traffic on weekends.
- They avoid already overcrowded facilities like Central-and-Prospect Park Drives, Coney Island-and-FDR Boardwalks and Hudson Greenway
- The routes incorporate city parks to provide frequent rest stops and provide opportunities for outdoor dining.
- Local food stops are highlighted encourage neighborhood tourism.
- This proposal does not close streets, take parking spots nor involve the NYPD.
- Grayways can be implemented quickly and cheaply by hosting GPS data on the DOT website. As routes gain acceptance, they can be upgraded with safety improvements and signage.
- The routes will initially attract cyclists with experience riding in traffic. Over time, as improvements are made, increasing numbers of the cycling community will take advantage
Precedents
1997 NYC Bicycle Master Plan, Somerset Walk-Bike-Hike, Bergen Parks Master Plan, U.S. Bicycle Route System, Connecticut Scenic Roads, Transport for London’s Strategic Cycling Analysis, East Coast Greenway, Old Croton Aqueduct State Park, Regional Plan Association Five Borough Bikeway, New York State Scenic Byways, Suffolk County Hike And Bike Master Plan
Hamilton Beach
Benefits—as prioritized in the proposed Restore Mother Nature Bond Act:
Extend Access to Green Space
- Like DOPR’s Walk to a Park program, Grayways enhance resident access to green space. And, by mitigating distances traveled they make available all city facilities, even those only accessible by car—Shirley Chisholm Park.
- By re-envisioning the act of travel as a recreational activity, and select roadways as recreational space, grayways blur the border between parks and their environs—which is the objective of Parks Without Borders.
- Grayways will showcase the $130 million invested in the Community Parks Initiative. And it will help reduce disparities in future capital funding by broadening the constituency for each facility.
A survey commissioned by People for Bikes found that seven times as many bike for recreation than transportation. Therefore, dual-use projects should grow the constituency considerably faster than those intended solely for commuting.
Image People for Bikes.
Benefit Underserved Constituencies
- Extend opportunities for exercise and recreation to residents across NYC, particularly to communities with limited access to green space.
- Bridge transportation deserts. Reduce household spending on travel.
- Create a compelling rationale for bike share providers to extend service to outer boroughs—and a literal road map for where to site dock stations.
- Enhance the health benefits of existing bikeways by extending trip distances, increasing use and enhancing the safety of numbers.
Create Jobs, Develop Local Economies
Cycle tourism added $97 billion to the U.S. economy in 2017. Per capita, that’s $248 million per year in NYC—but that doesn’t factor the City’s 1300 mile bike grid, 20 million bike share trips and that 10% of adult residents regularly ride.
- Leverage the billions of dollars invested in bike paths and city parks as a vehicle to drive tourism and support the trend toward staycations.
- Support Business Improvement Districts’ promotion of local business and special events—Bronx Night Market.
- Draw cycle tourists from Long Island, Westchester, Connecticut, New Jersey.
- Support neighborhood home values.
Multiple smart growth studies by the National Association of Realtors correlate a 5-10% increase in property values to their proximity to bikeways.
Have a Positive Effect on Climate Change
- Promote cycling as a preferred mode of recreational travel, thereby reducing vehicle miles traveled.
- Grow multi-modal trips by increasing catchment and capacity of neighborhood transit hubs. Create the safe connectors for bike share providers to site facilities.
Image Warren J. Wells
Invest in Resilient Infrastructure
- Supplement mass transit during periods of peak use—particularly with the advent of E-Bikes which can cut travel times in half.
- Enhance resilience to widespread transport outage resulting from extreme weather events, structural failure or global pandemic.
- Spur bridge operators to enhance access on arterial crossings—Henry Hudson, Cross Bay, Marine Parkway, Tri-Boro and Outerbridge.
Marine Parkway Bridge. Photo by John T. Chiarella.
Routes
Examples below comprise a map (red is outbound), a GPS file (requires free account), printout of the turn directions (“cue sheet”) and a featured food stop.
Bronx #1 – Pelham Bay, 28.1 miles – GPS, cue sheet, Barino’s Market
Bronx #2 – Van Cortlandt, 23.7 miles – GPS, cue sheet, Kingsbridge Social Club
Brooklyn #1 – Marine Park, 35.4 – GPS, cue sheet, FalafaLafa
Brooklyn #2 – Shirley Chisholm, 34.8 miles – GPS, cue sheet, TBA
Brooklyn #3 – Manhattan Beach, 19.5 miles – GPS, cue sheet, Brighton Beach (misc)
Queens #5 – Richmond Hill, 34.0 miles – GPS, cue sheet, Singh’s Roti
Staten Island #3 – Bocce! (Bloomingdale), 35.5 miles – GPS, cue sheet, Pio’s Bagels
Staten Island #4 – Latourette, 38.3 miles – GPS, cue sheet, Artisan Bakers
Misc
• London prepares for 10-fold increase in cycling-walking, Smart Cities, 5/20
• How Paris’ cycling success built a roadmap for others, Curbed, 1/20
• Deaths Expose Chaos of Central Park Loop, NY Times, 9/28/14
• A6235B/S04943B calling on MTA to expand bike access across its seven bridges
MTA’s seven toll bridges—none of which support bike access. Image NYCDOT.
Elizabeth to Whitehall, 11.1 miles – 1 hour, 17 minutes cycling vs. 1 hour, 3 minutes for NJ Transit and MTA subway
Bio
Neile Weissman organizes a hundred group rides per year for New York Cycle Club and is its Public Relations Director. He also heads up Complete George—two hundred organizations and communities calling for expanded bike capacity across the George Washington Bridge.
Westchester North County Trailway. Image Alex Lektchinov.
Complete George 