The announcement comes as the city announced plans to speed up bike and bus lane infrastructure projects and on the heels of separate tragedies in Boston and Chicago in which city transportation department employees who advocated for cycling safety infrastructure were killed while biking. Meanwhile, the Federal Highway Administration recently removed bike lanes and speed cameras from its "Proven Safety Countermeasures."

The soon-to-be construction site—a paved area from about 17th to 12th street along FDR Drive—is popular with bikers and pedestrians, despite tapering to a four-foot width in places. When complete, the connector will be a bridge wide enough to accommodate two-way traffic for both kinds of travel. Bike and pedestrian lanes will run continuously from the East River Park, through the new construction, into the Captain Patrick J. Brown Walk and Stuyvesant Cove Park, Moreno says. Early designs call for benches, drinking fountains, and other amenities, but the DDC will hold community meetings for more local input. Construction should begin in early 2028.

The project is one of 114 named in a report issued last year that identified locations for expanding a perimeter of bike, pedestrian, and green space access in the city. Generally referred to as the Greenway, similar plans are ones WXY had worked on with the EDC and Dept. of Transportation in the past, says Layng Pew, a principal with WXY and design manager for the project. 

The firm had also worked with Skanska to build two other waterfront leisure spaces in New York. “We felt the 14th Street Connector project was an excellent fit for our extensive experience in delivering waterfront and resiliency infrastructure projects across New York City,” says Theodora Diamantis, senior vice president and account manager at Skanska USA Building.

This particular greenway expansion location has extra complexity: The site runs alongside a ConEdison generating station and a pier the company operates. “The permitting alone, given the marine conditions and the ConEd operations, is unusual enough that we built the team around it,” says Pew.

Though the 14th Street Connector is not labeled as being part of the East Side Coastal Resiliency project, the improvement site is sandwiched by a playground and a park that are part of the broader flooding protection program. When the new, higher elevation of the East River Park is complete, it will provide the right footing for the southern end of the Connector. “The park being built under [the East Side Coastal Resiliency project] is a major public investment, and access is what determines whether people actually get its full value,” says Pew. “Our job is to make sure arriving from the north has the same feeling as the rest of the park.”