W 29th Avenue Bikeway watered down at last minute

In Spring of 2024 DOTI announced they would be installing a protected bike lane on West 29th Avenue when the street was to be repaved. This was supposed to be "part of its coordinated bike lane striping and installation program".

DOTI did community outreach and found in July of 2024 that a majority of survey respondents were in favor of removing parking for more bike safety. However after DOTI announced the design was final they continued to take meetings with angry neighbors that were not announced publicly. This was the beginning of a trend for the department of listening to input outside of the public process and watering down designs.

It does seem that DOTI was going to stick to their guns however they screwed up and emailed a neighbor their advance response before they were set to meet. It appears that they embarrassed themselves enough to remove safety for people to seem as if they were listening. This type of clown show would start to become more and more common for DOTI moving forward.

Half a mile of protected bike lane was removed in a weak reaction to these complaints. Some of which came from neighbors with garages and driveways. DOTI still failed at their own promise to consider safety above all else.

The mayor should have instructed Director Amy Ford of DOTI to go with their plan they had finalized and asked that they allow the project time after install. This would have allowed people to get used to the installation and perhaps realize it was not the inconvenience they had imagined and it would have allowed DOTI time to watch and make any necessary tweaks.

Hysterical backlash happens in nearly every project. It plays out in nearly every bike lane fight. The introduction of CitiBike in New York brought some memorable cranks. Exclamations of why something won't happen find willing listeners in junior reporters looking for conflict, city councilors hoping to minimize the impact to their inbox and city mayors hoping to one day climb further up the ladder. But the best thing they can do is complete the public engagement process, finish the design with the greatest safety in mind, install it, and then wait.