New York DOT Status Report Shows Slow Progress on Bus, Bike Lanes

The New York City Department of Transportation quietly released its status report on the city’s Streets Plan, which calls for building 80 miles of protected bike lanes and 50 miles of dedicated bus lanes in the first two years of Eric Adams’ term as mayor, reports Gersh Kuntzman in Streetsblog NYC.

According to the report, the agency only built 58.2 miles of bike lanes and 9.6 miles of bus lanes, failing its goals by a wide margin. “The agency was also required to upgrade 1,000 bus stops, but has done 68, or 6.8 percent. Even including 320 bus stops that got seating, that only brings the percentage up to 39 percent,” Kuntzman adds.

The agency did meet the requirements for new accessible signals and new pedestrian space, claiming that it added 1,083,725 square feet of new public space.

Kuntzman notes that “The DOT's failure will likely be of minor concern to Mayor Adams, who emphasized last year that he would not be bound by the legal benchmarks of the Streets Plan, and created an entirely new office inside City Hall to oversee and stall DOT projects.”