Community Board Unanimously Supports Prospect Park West Bike Lane, With Changes

(Andrea Bernstein, Transportation Nation)  Park Slope's community board six voted unanimously yesterday evening to support the bike lane along Prospect Park West, with modifications.

This is now the third local community board vote supporting the bike lane. In New York, community boards are elected to advise the city, mostly on community planning issues.  Though they have little direct authority, their decisions are meant to express community will to city government.

The board voted to support modifications  to the lane recommended by the NYC DOT: including creating additional parking spaces, raised pedestrian islands, bike rumble strips and clearer signage.

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The lane has drawn opposition from some prominent local residents, including the former City Transportation Commissioner, Iris Weinshall, and her husband, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, who live along Prospect Park West.  A group formed to file a lawsuit to remove the lane, Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes, is charging the city manipulated safety data.

Jim Walden, the attorney for the plaintiffs, isn't backing down in his dismissal of the community boards recommendation.

"The Community Board's failure to respond to our request for a meeting about alternative configurations, and its apparent decision to accept DOT's flawed and misleading study and abide the DOT-led blog-attack against community members, is sad.  This Community Board obviously is not acting for the whole community.  Thankfully, in our system of government, Courts are the great levelers.  If the Community Board will not protect the significant number of people who feel (and who are) at risk, we are confident the Courts will."

A court hearing on that is scheduled for May 18.

The board also voted to call for a three year time horizon to continue studying the project.

City Councilmember Brad Lander said of the vote:  "I urge DOT to move quickly to implement these recommendations, allowing us to move on to other issues (thereby opening up valuable newspaper column inches and freeing up more of Park Slope's internet bandwidth!)"