Brooklyn Bridge Bicycle Trips Double After New Bike Lane: DOT

NEW YORK CITY — A new Brooklyn Bridge roadway bike lane helped nearly doubled the number of cycling trips across the iconic structure, officials said.

About 4,200 cyclists a day in October used the protected bike lanes — an 88 percent increase over the same month last year, according to the Department of Transportation.

“We have reclaimed space from cars to make cycling over the Brooklyn Bridge safer and easier, while making the pedestrian experience better than ever – and it has been a great success,” Hank Gutman, the city's transportation commissioner, said in a statement.

Gutman may have emphasized the "pedestrian experience," but most New York City cyclists know the bridge was a difficult, dangerous obstacle course pre-roadway bike lane.

Pedestrians and tourists looking to snap Instagram photos and create memories would often stray into the old promenade bike lanes — the actual "scary part" about cycling across the Brooklyn Bridge, as one Twitter user posted.

"Ironically, the scary part about the Brooklyn Bridge before the protected bike lane wasn’t cars, but tourists on the shared elevated promenade walking into the path of a bike," David Ho tweeted, speaking for many cyclists.

Mayor Bill de Blasio officially announced the long-awaited roadway bike lane during his final State of the City address in January.

Construction began over the summer and, despite some gripes that the bike lanes were too narrow, cyclists quickly flocked to the roadway bike when it opened in September.

People made about 3,600 daily bicycle trips in September — an increase over the 2,336 during the same month last year, according to DOT data.

The increase is even more dramatic when October 2020 and October this year are compared:

• October 2020: 2,239 daily trips
• October 2021: 4,206 daily trips