Anyone who’s ever tried to bike from Brooklyn to Long Island City can tell you about the awkwardness of trying to get over the Pulaski Bridge. With the pedestrian path and bike lane crammed together on one side of the bridge, you had the great walker v. cyclist fight perfectly encapsulated in a tiny area. But now cyclists and pedestrians can again join hands and then unjoin them to point and laugh at cars stuck in traffic, because the Pulaski Bridge is getting a protected bike lane next year.
According to the Brooklyn Paper, the city’s planning commission gave the go-ahead to a protected bike lane that would replace one of the car lanes on the bridge. Assemblyman Joseph Lentol was happy about it, noting that not only will it make life easier for pedestrians and cyclists both, but the reduction in car lanes might stop cars from speeding over the bridge into Brooklyn. The final design of the lane still has to be approved by Community Board 1, which should debate the idea by the end of the year. If they approve it, construction will start in spring of 2014, and by the summer, the bike lobby will have felled yet another poor lane that’s so out of fashion now.