Crews will begin construction next week on a bike- and bus-lane redesign for 1.9 miles of Third Ave., Department of Transportation officials announced Monday.
The project involves augmenting the East Side thoroughfare with a camera-enforced bus lane and new, wide bike lanes.
“This nearly 2-mile project will make a busy stretch of Manhattan smoother and safer for bus riders, pedestrians and cyclists, including many hardworking delivery workers,” Mayor Adams said in a statement.
Following the installation earlier this year of several blocks of wide bike lanes on Ninth Ave., the planned Third Ave. lane will be 9 feet wide, according to a DOT release, and will be protected from traffic by the parking lane.
Typical city protected bike lanes measure some 6 feet wide.
The lane will widen further, to 11 ft., at two uphill sections — from 64th to 66th Sts. as well as from 80th to 82nd Sts. — to create room for faster e-bikes to pass traditional bikes without needing to veer into a car lane.
The DOT is also planning two “layover areas” for delivery cyclists between 84th and 87th Sts. The midblock zones are meant to keep cyclists off of the sidewalk, and will be separated from the main pedestrian zone with granite blocks, planters and bicycle corrals.
The project’s camera-enforced bus lanes are intended to speed up the M98, M101, M102 and M103 buses that travel uptown along Third Ave., where the DOT estimates rush-hour bus speeds currently average under 6 mph.
The first phase of the redesign, which will begin next Monday, will take place from 59th to 96th Sts., department officials said, citing high numbers of traffic fatalities in recent years.
The work is expected to continue through the end of the year.
