If you’ve ever locked your bike to a sign post in New York and lost a few hours of sleep wondering whether it would still be there in the morning, NYC DOT wants to hear from you this month. Bike Month is in full swing, and the agency is using it to launch the most ambitious bike-parking expansion the city has ever tried — alongside a brand-new interactive 2026 NYC Bike Map and a major redesign push for one of Queens’ most dangerous corridors. Here’s what cyclists, e-bike commuters, and casual Citi Bike riders need to know this Wednesday.

Secure Bike Parking: 500 Locations, and DOT Wants Your Input

On May 4, NYC DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn formally launched the public-planning phase for the city’s Secure Bike Parking Program. The plan: build a network of 500 secure bike storage locations across the five boroughs, with discounted memberships available for low-income New Yorkers. The structures will sit in curb lanes on residential blocks (Category 1 and Category 2 designs are pictured in DOT’s release) and will be sized to fit standard bikes, e-bikes, cargo bikes, and adaptive cycles.

DOT is openly asking New Yorkers where to put them. The agency has opened an online feedback portal where you can suggest a block, indicate what kind of bike you’d like to park there, and flag preferred amenities like e-bike charging, tire pumps, or repair stations. If you live in a walk-up with no in-building storage — or you’re one of the city’s roughly 80,000 delivery cyclists who lose income every time a bike is stolen — this is your direct line into the planning process.

Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Ben Furnas noted in the DOT announcement that lack of secure parking is the second-most-cited reason New Yorkers don’t ride (after general safety concerns), and that 26% of city households have already experienced a bike theft. Closing that gap is the program’s whole point.

The 2026 NYC Bike Map Is Live — and Finally Interactive

For the first time, the official NYC Bike Map is available as an interactive online tool, letting riders filter routes by type (protected, conventional, shared, links) and overlay Citi Bike stations, bike shops, and rental locations. A static PDF version is also posted, and free print copies are landing at bike shops, libraries, and community centers across all five boroughs this month.

If you’ve been planning a longer Brooklyn-to-Manhattan-to-the-Bronx ride and stitching it together from memory, the interactive version is worth fifteen minutes of your evening. Routes that didn’t exist a year ago — particularly the new connections through SoHo and Union Square along the Lafayette/Fourth Avenue corridor — are now plottable in one view.

Astoria’s 31st Street: 2.5 Miles of Protected Lane Coming

Queens cyclists, this one matters. NYC DOT has formally restarted public engagement on the redesign of 31st Street in Astoria, and the expanded proposal now stretches a full 2.5 miles from Northern Boulevard to 20th Avenue. The plan adds curbside protected bike lanes, painted pedestrian islands, hardened daylighting at intersections, and reorganized travel lanes underneath the elevated N and W tracks.

The numbers behind the project are stark. Council Member Tiffany Cabán cited 26 people killed or severely injured on the corridor between 2021 and 2025, with 502 additional injuries. Protected bike lanes nationally have been shown to reduce deaths and severe injuries by 18.1% across all road users and 29.2% for pedestrians specifically. When complete, 31st Street will become a critical north-south spine connecting riders to the Queensboro Bridge, the RFK Bridge, and the broader Queens bike network.

If you ride, walk, or run a business along the corridor, the new community-engagement window is the moment to weigh in. NYC DOT says it already collected feedback from 150 local businesses during the previous engagement round, and 84% of those businesses have had their input folded into the updated plan.

Commuter Tip

Use Bike Month as your excuse to register every bike you own with the NYPD’s free Operation IDENTification bike-tag program. It takes about ten minutes at any precinct, dramatically improves recovery odds if your bike is stolen, and pairs perfectly with the secure-parking program rolling out later this year. While you’re at it, snap a clear photo of your serial number and email it to yourself — recovery officers ask for that first.

Bike Month Events Worth Your Calendar

May is packed with rides, repair clinics, and community planning sessions across all five boroughs. The full city-sponsored event slate lives on the NYC DOT Bike Events page, and Transportation Alternatives and Bike New York both maintain their own complementary calendars. If you’ve been telling yourself you’ll “finally try Citi Bike one of these weekends,” this is the month — fleet availability is the highest it’s been all year, and DOT staff are physically out at events to help new riders plan routes.

Sources verified directly with NYC DOT Press Releases issued May 4, 2026, and April 16, 2026.