New York City, which earlier this decade ago experienced wild controversy surrounding the addition of bike lanes and bikeshare to city streets, is once again faced with a battle of drivers versus bike lanes.
James Barron reports on an ongoing controversy in in Manhattan, where representatives for a luxury condo are using legal action to block the progress of a bike lane under construction on Central Park West.
Bicycle advocates and city officials want to make the roads more bike friendly — and safer — at a time when the popularity of urban biking is soaring. On the other side are those who accuse the city of becoming ever more hostile toward drivers.
The Central park West bike lane isn’t the only project to raise the ire of drivers in recent years. According to Barron, "the city installed bike lanes along Dyckman Street only to remove them after business owners complained." Then of course there were the bikelash days of the Bloomberg administration, when the city was building new bike lanes under the leadership of Janette Sadik-Khan. The expansion of Citi Bike in Manhattan also produced public vitriol in the middle of the decade.
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