A safe and well-tested redesign for West 72nd Street.
For everyone — including the neighbors who need it most.

We are residents, buildings, and businesses on West 72nd Street. We support safer cycling in New York City — but not by putting our most vulnerable neighbors, including the elderly, disabled, and children, in harm's way with an untested and unsafe bike lane design.

Pro-bike. Pro-safety. Pro-neighborhood.
Illustration of West 72nd Street under the proposed DOT plan. An elderly man with a cane, a young man in a wheelchair, and a mother pushing a stroller with a baby stand on the north sidewalk, looking out at heavy traffic. Immediately in front of them, two green-painted bike lanes run in opposite directions with multiple e-bike riders speeding past. Beyond the bike lanes, a tightly parked row of cars fills the curb lane. A dark grey van waits in the travel lane on the far side to pick them up. Pre-war Upper West Side buildings and trees line the block.
Under the proposed DOT plan, our elderly, disabled, and youngest neighbors stand on the north sidewalk. Between them and their waiting pickup: two green bike lanes with e-bikes in both directions, a jam-packed row of parked cars with no gap, and an active travel lane.
Email decision makers See why this plan fails
9 ft
of e-bike lanes directly against our lobby doors
0
dedicated pickup or ambulette zones on the block
1 lane
each way for every ambulance, fire truck, delivery
Pre-war residential buildings on the Upper West Side of Manhattan

"Standard bike lane designs have been implemented safely across thousands of streets and avenues in NYC. Implementing a new, untested, and unsafe design on one of the most densely populated streets, with one of the largest populations of elderly and disabled people, is dangerous and puts people at risk."

We are not opposed to bike lanes.
We are opposed to implementing a new and untested bike lane design.

— Residents, buildings, and businesses of West 72nd Street

Why we're speaking up

Three ways this new bike lane design fails our most vulnerable neighbors.

The proposal places a new and untested 9-foot bidirectional bike and e-bike lane directly against the north sidewalk, reducing traffic down to two lanes, and creating critical safety and accessibility issues:

Illustration of an elderly woman being struck by a speeding e-bike rider in a green bike lane. Her cane has fallen to the ground. Neighbors on the sidewalk — a mother with a baby in a stroller, a young man holding a phone, and an older man — watch in horror.
Issue 01

Bidirectional high-speed e-bike lanes are extremely dangerous.

Elderly residents, people with mobility needs, and families with strollers will step out of their buildings directly into the path of e-bikes and e-scooters moving in both directions. This will almost certainly result in some catastrophic and fatal injuries to our neighbors.

Illustration of West 72nd Street: an elderly man with a cane, a young man in a wheelchair, and a parent pushing a stroller wait on the north sidewalk while e-bikes speed past in green bike lanes and a grey van waits across the street to pick them up.
Issue 02

Eliminating Uber, Lyft, and vehicle pickups makes our block inaccessible for children, elderly, and disabled residents.

Every Uber, Lyft, taxi, ambulette, and Access-A-Ride loading on the south side will require crossing two bike lanes running in opposite directions and a row of tightly packed parked cars. A 92-year-old with a walker can't make that trip. And drivers stopping to pick up will stop nearly a mile of traffic.

Illustration of an FDNY or EMS vehicle stuck behind a double-parked delivery truck or idling rideshare on West 72nd Street, unable to pass on a narrow single-lane roadway.
Issue 03

Emergency vehicles will lose critical minutes.

One lane each way, no shoulder. A single double-parked delivery or idling rideshare becomes a wall between FDNY or EMS and the resident waiting for them. On a block with this many medically vulnerable neighbors, that is a life-safety issue.

See the full breakdown
For the record

We want better bike infrastructure. This isn't it.

Many of us are cyclists. We want Vision Zero. We want fewer cars. We want protected lanes.

What we don't want is a plan that achieves those goals by trading safety on one side for unsafety on the other — particularly when the people absorbing the new risk are the neighbors least able to bear it. Safer streets and accessible streets are the same goal. The current proposal delivers neither on 72nd.

We've outlined two alternate designs that achieve the DOT's east-west bike corridor policy goals while keeping 72nd Street fully accessible. They deserve a serious look before this proposal is finalized.

Read the alternate plans

What we believe

A short list of principles this coalition shares.

  • Every street redesign must preserve ADA-level accessibility for disabled and elderly residents.
  • High-speed e-bike traffic and frail pedestrians should not share an unprotected crossing.
  • Bike infrastructure is good policy — when it is designed with the whole block in mind.
  • Residents, building owners, and businesses on the affected block deserve real dialog, not a briefing after the fact.
  • Emergency vehicle access is non-negotiable.
A precedent exists

Astoria paused a very similar plan. So can we.

The DOT recently stepped back from a closely parallel proposal in Astoria after residents raised many of the same safety and accessibility concerns we're raising now. That was the right call there. It's the right call here.

The fact that the concerns on our block have not been publicly addressed — much less resolved — suggests this proposal was rushed forward without the kind of dialog a plan of this magnitude demands.

"We learned about the design from a flyer. Not a single building on the block had been asked what its residents actually need. The people who would live with this every day — especially the most vulnerable — were never at the table." — A 72nd Street co-op board member
"I use an ambulette three times a week. Under this plan, I would have no safe way to reach it from my lobby. The design treats me like I don't exist." — A 72nd Street resident, 81
Better designs already exist

Two widely implemented and thoroughly tested alternate plans that work.

Both preserve east-west cycling continuity, both improve safety for cyclists and pedestrians, and — critically — both keep 72nd Street fully accessible to its residents.

Existing Design A · Recommended

One-way protected lanes on 71st & 73rd.

Remove a parking lane on each of 71st and 73rd — streets with far fewer residential entrances and far less curbside demand — and install a single one-way protected bike lane on each. Two one-way lanes are objectively safer for cyclists than a bidirectional lane, and 72nd remains fully accessible.

Existing Design B

72nd with standing zones instead of parking.

Keep bike lanes on 72nd Street, but replace the car-storage parking lane with a flexible standing zone — pickup/drop-off curb space, planters, and seating. This preserves curbside access for rideshares and ambulettes and adds real public space.

Compare both alternatives
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