A path of least resistance: Manhattan Bridge bikers, walkers seek safer merge
Daily News
By Melissa Grace

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Two years after the bike and foot path across the Manhattan Bridge was opened, getting onto the alternative roadway in Brooklyn remains unsafe, according to a new survey.

The report found that 70% of the 190 cyclists and pedestrians surveyed said getting onto the bridge in Brooklyn is "dangerous" and "intolerable." In Manhattan, 42% of those questioned said getting to the bridge is not safe.

It also found that 53% of path users had a "close call" with a motor vehicle on the Brooklyn side of the bridge, and 22% reported a dangerous incident on the Manhattan side.

About 1,000 people walk and bike across the bridge daily, according to the study's authors, Transportation Alternatives, a bike and pedestrian advocacy group.

"It's dangerous getting on, but more dangerous coming off," cyclist Jennifer Stark-Hernandez, 23, said of the path's Brooklyn end.

While blind spots make it hard for car drivers to see her at the span's Brooklyn edge, Stark-Hernandez, who rides from Clinton Hill to her job in Manhattan five days a week, said the Manhattan side is safe because of a crosswalk.

There, "Everybody sees everybody," she said.

The survey, released Aug. 13, was undertaken to highlight the discrepancies in safety.

City Transportation Department officials had no comment on the survey and said only that the proper access to the path on the Brooklyn side - a detour route - was safe.

Improvements in Manhattan include a crosswalk, stop sign, pedestrian sign and a blinking red light to alert drivers that people are going onto the bridge.

The safety upgrades were made in response to criticism about access shortly after the path - which had been closed for 40 years - was reopened in 2001.

Brooklyn neglect

While calls for improvements at the bridge's other end were just as clear, "They have done nothing to the Brooklyn side," said Noah Budnick of Transportation Alternatives.

Cyclists say they are asking the Transportation Department to install a sign and marking plan it developed in 1996 for the Brooklyn side of the bridge.

The plan calls for a crosswalk at Jay St. and stop sign and pedestrian warning signs, Budnick said.

Transportation officials did not respond to questions about the 1996 plan or the apparent discrepancies, saying only that both sides are safe when path users are aware and cautious.

In a prepared statement, Lori Ardito, the Transportation Department's Brooklyn borough commissioner, said proper access to the bridge is not via Jay St. - the way most walkers and cyclist get to it - but by the Adams and Clinton Sts. bike lanes.

That detour requires people to turn off Jay St. onto Tillary St. and Adams St. and finally Sands St., where they cross an intersection to the path.

Ardito said that route adds only 800 feet to trips made by path users and that it is "the safest, most convenient route that was possible, given some of the more unique geometric and access constraints which exist at this location."

Cyclists, however, say the detour is inconvenient.

"Out of the 150 cyclists we surveyed, zero people used that route to get to the bridge," Budnick said.