Updated January 31, 2023 Bike New York announced a new initiative designed to provide free bicycles to asylum seekers and other immigrants recently arriving in New York City.  Through this new initiative, Bike New York is partnering with the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA), the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT), the New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), Unlimited Biking, Trek, and Recycle-A-Bicycle to oversee a large-scale effort to receive, repair, and distribute donated bikes to recent arrivals from the southern border, to provide an inexpensive and convenient way for them to access the jobs...

2022 saw some hopeful steps toward a bike-friendlier New York: the city took on the issue of bike lane quality and chronic blockage by cars and trucks with new bikeway barriers. We saw a renewed aggressiveness in DOT street design in places like Downtown Brooklyn’s Schermerhorn Street and Queens’ 34th Avenue, and the MTA loosened its long freeze on bike access to its bridges. On the other hand, our new mayor — a cyclist with a police background — still isn’t enforcing parking or traffic laws, and that doesn’t feel great from the point of view of a bike saddle....

MTA bridge access Bike New York developed the concept for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s bridge access legislation in early 2021 and found strong allies for it in the State Legislature and among the coalition of pro-cycling civic organizations that keep biking moving forward in the city. The legislation required the MTA to develop a new strategic approach to bike transportation, including on its bridges.  We kept up a strong drumbeat of behind-the-scenes information sharing and public messaging that the time had finally come to crack the MTA’s bike bans on bridges. We saw the Legislature pass the measure in June...