By the way—have you been listening to the Hell Gate Podcast? A new episode drops tomorrow. You can listen to past episodes here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On Tuesday, a Brooklyn judge ruled that, with the paint still (metaphorically) fresh, Mayor Adams can get rid of a three-block stretch of the protected bike lane on Bedford Avenue, replacing it instead with a bike lane right next to car traffic, without undergoing the usual process of notifying the community. In her ruling, Judge Carolyn Walker-Diallo decided that moving the bike lane is merely a "modification" that does not constitute a "major transportation project," and thus does not fall under the City law that requires advance community notice.
"Treating this as a mere ‘modification’ to a bike lane is an insult to decades of work and thousands of pages of research that prove that protected bike lanes save lives," wrote Ben Furnas, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, in a press release. The organization noted that transportation safety data from the Department of Transportation's own reports show a 47 percent reduction in overall injuries post-improvement. Furnas wrote that removing the protected bike lane "all but guarantees that there will be blood on Eric Adams's hands."