NYC DOT falls far short of '24 targets for bike and bus lanes – but touts progress

The New York City Department of Transportation installed roughly 29 miles of protected bike lanes in 2024 – the third highest mileage built within a year in city history, but still less than the 50 mile benchmark required by city law, according to the agency’s annual status report on the NYC Streets Plan.

As for DOT’s construction of protected bus lanes, another high-interest infrastructure project prioritized in the five-year plan, the agency completed 13.5 miles in 2024. That’s more progress made than in any other single year, but also again short of the 30 miles required annually by a 2019 law passed by the City Council. The update was shared exclusively with City & State ahead of the report’s Thursday release. 

By some metrics, DOT had its most successful year yet despite falling short of the bike and bus lane benchmarks, even far exceeding some of the requirements like redesigning 2,688 intersections to bolster safety and adding 855 accessible pedestrian signals for low-vision New Yorkers. But with blowback from the City Council and advocates imminent – as has been the case following the release of previous updates – DOT is contending that some of the plan’s benchmarks have been unrealistic from the start. While the agency continues to support the goal of rapidly building more transportation infrastructure, DOT officials want to reframe what they have and haven’t accomplished. 

“Over the past three years we’ve built a record number of protected bike lanes, pedestrian space, and intersection safety upgrades that are making our streets safer and better for everyone,” DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodríguez said in a statement. “New York City is the national leader in pioneering street safety and public space improvements, and we look forward to building upon this success.” 

The sweeping NYC Streets Plan, passed by the New York City Council in 2019 in wake of a spike in cyclist fatalities, directed DOT to sharply expand the city’s biking, bus and pedestrian safety measures – and for the agency to issue and implement a transportation master plan to make streets safer every five years. Some of the targets for DOT (which kicked in at the start of 2022) include building 150 miles of protected bus lanes and 250 miles of protected bike lanes through the end of 2026. While these two areas have certainly drawn the most attention – and controversy – DOT is also beholden to other requirements like completing 2,500 bus stop upgrades and 2,000 intersection improvements. (Under the plan, protected bus lane refers to lanes that are monitored by camera enforcement or reinforced with physical barriers to keep cars out).

The City Council and street safety and transit advocates have repeatedly slammed DOT for failing to meet the bike and bus lane benchmarks outlined in the plan, arguing that the agency has both the capacity and bandwidth to meet mandated targets. Legislation currently up for consideration in the City Council would require DOT to maintain a capital projects tracker to measure progress on projects under the Streets Master Plan. This, its supporters say, is necessary given DOT’s lack of transparency on its progress. Over the past three years, DOT has installed a total of 87.5 miles of protected bike lanes and upgraded an additional 20 plus plus miles by adding physical infrastructure to better protect cyclists from vehicles. Only 23.1 protected bus lane miles have been completed in total – 4.4 in 2022, 5.2 in 2023 and now 13.5 in 2024.

"The NYC Streets Plan was enacted into law with specific benchmarks for transportation infrastructure projects to promote public transit use, street safety, and accessibility. Yet, DOT continues to fall short, especially for the creation of protected bus and bike lanes. The Council has not yet received the legally mandated annual report on the Streets Plan, but when we do, we will review its progress, including during the upcoming FY26 Preliminary Budget Hearing on Transportation and Infrastructure,” a spokesperson for the New York City Council said in a statement.

When the City Council first passed the law that established the plan under then-City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, Polly Trottenberg, the DOT commissioner at the time, and then-mayor Bill de Blasio both raised concerns over what they described as an aggressive timeline given operational constraints and agency resources. New York City had roughly 1,260 miles of bike lines in 2019 – 126 of which were protected, meaning DOT would need to double the number to reach the five-year requirement.

Resource and operational hurdles like hiring enough staff, securing necessary funding, and acquiring space and purchasing equipment took time, inhibiting DOT’s ability to start implementing the plan when it took effect, according to Eric Beaton, DOT deputy commissioner of transportation, planning and management. The COVID-19 pandemic hit shortly after the law’s passage, exacerbating those problems – like the triggering of a hiring freeze, which impacted the agency’s workforce. DOT staffing has since increased from a pandemic-era low of 466 people in the Transportation Planning and Management division to 525. Work to fill vacancies and to ramp up other aspects of DOT’s output and capacity like securing public public space and committing funding is ongoing, according to Beaton.

"We are now in a place where we are actually doing record amounts of all the things that the legislation told us to do,” Beaton said. “Given where we were and what we’ve been able to do, we are doing quite well … We are solving all the problems involved with needing to do this work, but it’s just growing at a pace that doesn’t match what the legislation expected.”