Sunset Park Calls For Fourth Avenue Bike Lane

Sunset Park residents are calling on the Department of Transportation to change its plans for a Fourth Avenue bike lane, activists said.

Activists said the agency has ignored their repeated requests for a lane, meanwhile one in Marine Park was built without people asking for one. We reached out to the DOT for comment but didn’t respond in time for publication.

Fourth Avenue in Sunset Park is already a busy street lane, which would be a difficult task for the DOT to add the bike lane along the corridor. But statistics from the city’s Vision Zero program show that there have been at least seven bicycle injuries this year alone.

The DOT installed pedestrian safety improvements along Fourth Avenue between 65th Street and 15th Street in 2012, and between 15th Street and Atlantic Avenue in 2013, Streets Blog NYC reported.

The projects used temporary materials like paint and plastic posts to expand pedestrian medians and narrow traffic lanes, and pedestrian injuries fell 30 percent in Sunset Park and 61 percent in Park Slope.

Bicyclists say they use Fourth Avenue as a preferred route into Downtown Brooklyn because it’s affordable and healthy for the environment. Unlike, Fifth Avenue, which is a bus route and commercial corridor, adding a lane there would be just as complicated than adding one on Fourth Avenue.