Protected Gets Popular

Bike lanes with built-in protection are the hot trend on New York City streets, with new lanes installed or soon-to-be on Amsterdam Avenue, Chrystie Street, Jay Street, 6th Avenue and the Pulaski Bridge, and the DOT announcing plans to break the record of protected bike lane miles installed in 2016. Anyone who’s tried the protected lanes — with a path of green asphalt adjacent to the curb and a lane of parked cars separating cyclists from traffic — gets why this is the new go-to design. Since New York City installed the nation’s first protected bike lane in 2008, they’ve been shown to reduce crashes, injuries and sidewalk bicycling, and they make female cyclists more likely to ride.

The protected bike lane trend is national, according to PeopleForBikes’ Green Lane Project; their number in the U.S. quadrupled over the past six years.

Image courtesy NYC DOT.