A judge paused Mayor Eric Adams’ recent announcement that the city’s Department of Transportation would scrap bike lane protections on a three-block stretch of Bedford Avenue.
Gothamist reports that Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Carolyn Walker-Diallo directed the city to wait until the results of an August hearing before taking further action. The judge’s decision resulted from a lawsuit that the street safety group Transportation Alternatives brought against the city. The group said that Adams’ plan to remove the bike lane was decided “improperly, irrationally, without proper legal notice and in an abuse of discretion.”
City council member Lincoln Restler submitted an affidavit in support of the lawsuit. Transportation Alternatives said the mayor shirked his legal requirement to alert local council members of plans to change bike lane projects.
The Bedford Avenue bike lane was first installed in 2007. Last year, the DOT added extra protections to a section spanning from Willoughby to Flushing avenues, in response to what many cyclists felt were hazardous conditions.
Adams announced his intention to remove the bike lane protections last Friday, citing community pushback. The mayor had hosted a little-publicized town hall on the issue in Williamsburg last month.
The section runs through a largely Hasidic Jewish area of the neighborhood. Many community members disapproved of the bike lane, especially in light of recent incidents involving crashes between cyclists and children. The crashes often stemmed from children exiting double-parked cars or school buses; the DOT added loading zones to mitigate the midblock crossings.