A LETTER FROM YDANIS RODRIGUEZ

New York City Department Of Transportation Commissioner

Welcome to Bike New York’s TD Five Boro Bike Tour!

I am so excited to again join Bike NY in hosting this year’s ride, my second as New York City’s Transportation Commissioner. Whether you are joining us for the first time or are returning to savor 40 miles of car-free New York City streets at the height of spring, you will today get to enjoy the unique experience of cycling in New York City.

We have much to celebrate today, including the fact that after a successful pilot last year, cyclists will once again have more time to complete the ride than they ever had before. Many of the roads on which you will find yourself riding today provide a special treat: the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, FDR Drive and Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge offer tremendous waterfront views that cyclists don’t often get to take in.

I am proud to say that New York City strongly supports cycling on our streets all of the remaining days of the year. Under Mayor Eric Adams, who himself cycles throughout our City’s streets, cycling is continuing to expand dramatically, aided by the pace of growth that grew even more exponentially during COVID as hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers sought a healthy and socially-distant way to get around and enjoy their city.

In just the last year, and with the strong support and effective advocacy of groups like Bike New York, we have made enormous progress in expanding access and making streets safer for cycling, including by: Delivering on our commitments, creating nearly 30 miles of new protected bike lanes across New York City. New lanes in 2022 could be found on Emmons Avenue and Schermerhorn Street in Brooklyn, 44th Drive in Queens, University Avenue in the Bronx and East Houston Street in Manhattan. We are also fortifying our existing protected lanes across the city, making it harder for other vehicles to obstruct those lanes; we have already installed concrete Jersey barriers and other “better barriers” along ten miles of those lanes, with another ten miles planned for this year.

The expansion of bike share. Over the last several years, Citi Bike – the continent’s largest bike-share program – powered through the pandemic as it kept up an ambitious pace to double its service area and triple the number of blue bikes on the City’s streets. Citi Bike stations can now be found across all of Manhattan, and this year will arrive in new neighborhoods across the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. By the end of this year, more than half the City’s population will have easy access to Citi Bike, with further expansion being discussed.

Continued on next page wish everyone a safe and enjoyable ride and hope that you will see firsthand why more and more New Yorkers are selecting cycling as their preferred way to get around this great city!

Advancing other major Adams Administration initiatives that advance cycling and the public realm. The Mayor has appointed the incredible Ya-Ting Liu as the City’s first Public Realm Officer, and she has already begun her work with the DOT on a great array of projects. For example, in Midtown Manhattan, through which you will bike today, the Administration is actively at work on ways to make both Broadway and Fifth Avenue more welcoming to both cyclists and pedestrians.

Keeping an eye on equity in everything we do. In addition to our commitment to building out new on-street protected bike lanes, I biked with Mayor Adams earlier this year to the High Bridge between Manhattan and the Bronx to announce that DOT would begin community engagement for an exciting plan to bring a new 7.5-mile greenway along the Harlem River waterfront in the Bronx, bringing cycling access to communities that have been too often overlooked. In addition to expanding greenways Citywide, DOT is also committed to expanding New York City’s network of Open Streets to many of those same communities, spurring and supporting community groups as they create and program their own activities along car-free streets.

Finally, want to offer my personal thanks to Ken Podziba and the entire Bike New York team for their commitment to cycling. Each year, the Five Boro Bike Tour organizers work closely with DOT, NYPD, and other City agencies to coordinate a logistically challenging event that touches each of the five boroughs.

Ydanis Rodriguez Commissioner