The bike and pedestrian paths on Manhattan’s West Side Highway provide beautiful river views for runners and cyclists, together with electrical bike customers and scooter riders, who’re at present not allowed to trip.
That means competitors for road house intensifies — significantly on a sunny day.
“I’m very surprised that an accident, a serious accident, hasn’t happened already,” stated Jerry Macari, a runner on Hudson River Greenway. “There’s a lot of chatter, like some profanity. You know, ‘get the eff out of the way’ and all that type of stuff. And, in fact, many of these people who come at me are people who are on the e-bikes.”
Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine has an concept to calm down everybody who makes use of the greenway — take a visitors lane from the West Side Highway and hand it over to cyclists of every kind for their very own path, separate from visitors.
“This is most heavily used greenway in the country, and at peak hours during the morning and evening commute times, on the weekends, when the weather is nice, it is incredibly crowded,” Levine stated.
This would be a four-mile lengthy bike lane working between 57th Street and Chambers Street alongside the West Side Highway, formally referred to as New York State Route 9A.
He pitched this plan in letters to the state and metropolis transportation commissioners.
“This would alleviate the crowding on the main path and create much safer opportunity for people who are on bicycles or e-bikes or cargo bikes,” Levine stated. “The status quo is not working.”
It’s an concept an analogous to town creating a motorcycle lane on a lane of visitors on the Brooklyn Bridge at a time of a biking increase through the years, significantly through the pandemic as New Yorkers regarded to journey within the recent air, in contrast to subways or taxis.
According to town’s Department of Transportation, there have been almost 4,000 cyclists pedaling alongside the greenway over a single 12-hour interval through the day this summer time.
“I think it’s fabulous idea. It would encourage more people to exercise. There are a lot of confrontations with bikers and pedestrians and runners, and that can be avoided as well,” Macari stated.
“I think it would just be a lot more relaxing and you’d also get where you’re going faster, as well. I think a lot of people are using it to commute or using it to make deliveries, so it would just make things go a lot smoother,” added Nick McKelvie, a greenway bicycle owner.
This is a state-owned freeway so to flip this concept into actuality the state’s Department of Transportation would have to log off.
The Manhattan Borough President stated he’d just like the bike lane to open when congestion pricing — a payment on driving into Manhattan — is in place, so drivers who determine to go away the automotive at house could have a snug bike commute.