The DOT has unveiled plans to make a cyclist-heavy section of Smith Street in Brooklyn a bit safer, with a bike lane extending from the intersection of Hamilton Avenue to Bergen Street, where Smith narrows. After Bergen Street, there is already a bike lane running to Jay Street (between Bergen and Pacific this includes shared bike lane markings, which remind drivers of cyclists' presence with logos of cyclists painted on the road).
"We’ve seen that the shared lane does get a good response [from drivers]," Preston Johnson at the DOT tells the Brooklyn Paper. "It acts as a reminder." A DOT study found that 449 cyclists used this stretch of Smith Street in one 12-hour period; the street, which many bikers take to connect to the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, runs parallel to the southbound Hoyt Street, which already has a bike lane. (That will be extended one block to Wyckoff Street.) Barring any spontaneous breakout of mass hysteria among the locals, the DOT expects to implement the extension in June.
