"Court Street merchants suing the city over the new protected bike lane on the Brooklyn thoroughfare want it turned into an unprotected lane so that drivers will have better "maneuverability," meaning they want to restore the double-parking that long plagued the area and made it unsafe before the overhaul, lawyers said in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Monday. If the city had instead installed an unprotected bike lane, "it still would have left some maneuverability,""
"the Court Street Merchants Association lawyer Hartley Bernstein told Justice Inga O'Neale. "This has been a plan solely to satisfy cyclists," the attorney added, claiming that the changes have had "disastrous and negative implications that can already be seen." City officials quickly warned that an unprotected bike lane would jeopardize safety and allow unfettered double-parking, which was rampant before the overhaul and caused congestion and unsafe conditions for all road users."
Merchants on Court Street filed suit seeking to convert a newly installed protected bike lane into an unprotected lane to restore driver maneuverability and allow double-parking. Attorneys claim the protected lane was implemented solely to satisfy cyclists and has already produced negative impacts. City officials counter that removing protection would jeopardize safety and reintroduce rampant double-parking, congestion, and unsafe conditions. Prior removal of a protected lane on Bedford Avenue immediately degraded into extra parking. Before the redesign, commercial drivers frequently double-parked along Court Street, forcing swerves and producing side-swipe crash rates double the borough average.
Read at Streetsblog
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