The block was removed from the 2023 redesign by former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, reportedly at the behest of a local real estate developer. The firm got the ear of Adams’ former chief adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin, who had been indicted for allegedly being involved in a pay-to-play scheme to kill a similar bike lane project along Greenpoint’s McGuinness Boulevard.
“pay-to-play scheme to kill a similar bike lane project” – stay frosty everyone
I left NYC about a year before Adams became mayor, but my bike commute used to go down Lafayette right past Hanson Place, and I remember back then I referred to it as the “chaos zone” because even the old bike lanes there ended for several blocks for no apparent reason. I once got cut off very deliberately by an SUV with a Police Benevolent Association sticker on it’s window right there, like the driver was clearly waiting for my lane to end and for me to take the lane so he could bully me over it. The fact that there was a random carveout both back then and in the new design speaks to the fact that private interests, often just single private individuals with connections and too much time on their hands, are often to blame for huge dangerous gaps in our mobility infrastructure.
Cool. Adams really was a piece of shit.
