Williamsburg’s Bedford Ave. bike lane was granted a last-minute reprieve Tuesday, as an appellate judge ruled on an emergency restraining order just hours before city work crews were set to begin removing the controversial piece of cycling infrastructure.
Lourdes Ventura, an Associate Justice in the Kings County Appellate Division, ruled that the Adams Administration could not go ahead with its plans to remove the protected bike lane from the central Brooklyn thoroughfare Tuesday evening, after Williamsburg resident Baruch Herzfeld and advocacy group Transportation Alternatives appealed last week’s lower-court ruling that the removal work could proceed.
The city is enjoined from any removal work until a scheduled July 23 hearing, at which attorneys for the Adams administration will be expected to make their case for their plans to move bicycle traffic adjacent to motor vehicle traffic along Bedford Ave.
“The bulldozers might be ready to destroy the Bedford Ave. safety improvements, but the Adams administration is going to have to spend their night preparing their legal case, not ripping out a critical safety project and central Brooklyn’s only protected bike lane,” Ben Furnas, head of Transportation Alternatives, said in a statement.
A City Hall spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The latest twist in the fate of the Bedford Bike Lane came as Transportation Department work crews had already posted “no parking” signs along the route ahead of planned roadwork to begin removing the lane Tuesday night.
The protected lane — in which bicyclists travel between the sidewalk and a row of parked cars — was first installed in October 2024.
Prior to that, bicycle traffic on Bedford Ave. traveled in a painted lane alongside car and truck traffic.
In pushing for a reversal, the Adams administration has cited opposition from some Williamsburg community leaders who say fast moving bikes and e-bikes in the protected lane pose a danger to pedestrians and to children exiting school buses mid-block. A video montage released by the mayor’s office shows several children getting hit by e-bikes as they run toward the sidewalk from between parked cars.
The DOT testified last month that the installation of the protected bike lane had driven injuries on that section of Bedford Ave. down by 47%. But the agency also acknowledged that Hatzalah, the private ambulance service that often responds to injuries in the Haredi communities of Williamsburg, does not always report its calls to the city.
