Today, Transportation Alternatives (T.A.) released the report “A Bridge To Scar” showing that the 26 two-inch high metal bumps, which cover expansion joints and span the width of the bridge’s biking and walking path, pose serious danger to bridge users. The survey results are available on-line at transalt.org. Transportation Alternatives is calling on the City of New York to remove the dangerous bumps.

Over the summer and fall of 2004, T.A. surveyed 254 people walking and biking over the Williamsburg Bridge. The survey reveals that the two-inch high bumps caused:

• 23% of bridge users to crash their bicycles or trip and fall
• 64% of bridge users to lose control of their bicycles or trip
• 74% of bridge users to suffer damages to their bikes and other property
• 32% of bridge users to avoid crossing the Williamsburg Bridge

The bumps have caused walkers and bikers to fracture clavicles, ribs, jaws, noses, cheekbones, pelvises and suffer facial injuries requiring surgery, stitches in the scalp and painful hematomas.

90% of respondents said that the bumps make the bridge path more dangerous, not safer. The bumps do little to slow fast cyclists, who jump over them, making conditions more dangerous for everyone. Williamsburg Bridge path users can continue to take the survey on-line.

Bridge users and advocates have been asking the NYC Department of Transportation to remove the bumps since shortly after the bridge path opened in December 2002. United Spinal, the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, El Puente, Manhattan Community Board 3, Brooklyn Community Board 1 and State Senator Martin Malave Dilan have also asked the City to remove the dangerous bumps.

“This is a problem that the City can’t ignore. The bumps need to go,” said Noah Budnick, Projects Director for Transportation Alternatives. “Bikers and walkers are being seriously injured on a regular basis. If a pothole was causing this much damage to cars, the City’d be out there fixing it ASAP.”

Advocates say that the City must improve path safety for the 3,000 people who walk and bike across the bridge each day by removing the 26 dangerous bumps and replacing them with smoother and safer expansion joint covers. The Williamsburg Bridge will be under rehabilitation until 2006, so the City has ample time to install a smoother design.

Williamsburg Bridge bicycle and pedestrian use has steadily increased over the past two decades. Based on NYC Department of Transportation daytime counts, Transportation Alternatives estimates that on an average weekday in 2004, 3,000 people biked and walked across the bridge path, compared to 1,300 daily path users in 1994 and 450 in 1980.

Read the latest news on the Williamsburg Bridge.