Pedestrian Lane Sought for Verrazano-Narrows Bridge

When the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened almost 50 years ago, about 100,000 vehicles and zero pedestrians made the inaugural crossing. Today the daily number of cars and trucks on the bridge has nearly doubled, even as tolls have risen twentyfold.

Yet the number of people crossing the four-mile bridge on foot has never changed: zero. The same goes for cyclists, who over the past decade have increased their presence on New York City’s bridges. In fact, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is among the few major crossings in the metropolitan area without a lane for pedestrians and bicyclists (along with the Bronx-Whitestone and Throgs Neck).

Now, on the occasion of the Verrazano’s semicentennial, a group of cyclists, transportation advocates and residents on both sides of the bridge are leading a grass-roots-and-pavement campaign to add a pedestrian path. Their hope is to reverse a half-century of four-wheeled favoritism and persuade the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to include the path among its planned upgrades on the bridge.

“It’s not just a gimmick anymore,” said Paul Gertner, a cyclist from Brooklyn and a leader of the cause. “If you look at how attitudes around the city have changed, expectations about mobility and safety, we see it as an inevitability.”

The effort goes well beyond the bridge, though — by about 46 miles.

The activists are campaigning for what they call the Harbor Ring, a roughly 50-mile route that circumnavigates the waterfronts of three boroughs and New Jersey. Starting in Staten Island, it crosses the Bayonne Bridge, heads up the New Jersey Gold Coast to Weehawken, onto a ferry to West 39th Street in Manhattan, down the Hudson River Greenway and the Battery, over the Manhattan Bridge, and finishes on the waterfront in Brooklyn from Red Hook to Bay Ridge.

With booming bike use on both sides of both rivers, the only missing link is the Verrazano.

Not that the Harbor Ring is strictly about transportation.

“We think of this as a matter of infrastructure, one that can promote tourism across the city,” said David Wenger, a lawyer who bikes by the bridge every morning on his way from Brighton Beach to work in Midtown Manhattan. He and Mr. Gertner are board members of the Harbor Ring Committee, which is holding a rally on Saturday.

There is added urgency to their push. Last November, the transportation authority began a feasibility study, which covers new approach roads and ramps in Brooklyn, as well as other structural issues in addition to the bike path. The study will not be completed until 2016, but transit advocates have already expressed concern that there have been no public hearings on the plans.

“The study is in the early stages, and findings will be shared with the public at the appropriate time,” Judie Glave, a transportation authority spokeswoman, said.

The agency is also in a tight financial situation, with a $32 billion capital plan that is only half-funded at this time. Even if a pathway is a fraction of a percent of that amount (advocates place it between $40 million and $50 million), it could easily be sacrificed for other investments.

A pathway was part of the original plan for the bridge, the final project of the master builder Robert Moses’ career, but he gave similar budget concerns for eliminating it.

This led to protests when the bridge opened on Nov. 23, 1964, according to an account in The New York Times, and cyclists led the charge then, too. Dozens tried to cross the bridge from the Brooklyn side, leading to their arrest. There were also protests during the 25th anniversary of the bridge and a study in 1997 by the bridge’s original engineer, Amman & Whitney, which put the cost of a path at $25 million.

But the New York of today is considerably different. Thousands of miles of bike lanes have been installed over the past decade, and the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio is pushing for roads that are safer for all users. New tourist attractions are on the horizon on Staten Island, including a giant Ferris wheel and an outlet mall in St. George. There are also public safety concerns, prompted by crowded roads and ferries in the aftermath of such events as Hurricane Sandy and the Sept. 11 attack.

The Staten Island borough president, James S. Oddo, has lent his support to the project. His predecessor, James Molinaro, had rejected the plan, calling it “ridiculous” with too few riders. Mr. Oddo said that so long as the pathway was not too expensive and did not impede traffic, it could be a boon for his borough.

“Allowing pedestrians and bike riders to utilize the bridge would provide an exciting new option for residents to combat our rising obesity epidemic or get to work,” he said in an email, noting that some could even ride to the R train in Bay Ridge. “Who wouldn’t want to walk over this iconic structure and get a unique view of New York Harbor?”