The plan was to transform two of New York City’s busiest crossings for cars into “Bridges for the People,” an idea that Bill de Blasio, the mayor at the time, said would help New Yorkers exit “the era of fossil fuels.”

He promised to remove one vehicle lane apiece from the Brooklyn and Queensboro Bridges to accommodate a pandemic-spurred boom in walking and cycling, a sign of just how far the city had moved away from the car culture that has long dominated its streets.

Four years later, only the Brooklyn Bridge is friendlier to pedestrians. The Queensboro Bridge remains the only city-owned East River bridge without separate paths for pedestrians and cyclists, jamming them instead into a single, overcrowded lane.

Last week, there was hope that the Queensboro Bridge’s time had finally come. City transportation officials were poised to hit send on a news release announcing the opening of a new pedestrian path on the bridge’s southern flank, according to several people familiar with the plan.

The release, which The New York Times obtained, was headlined, “Bridges for People,” and said the project would be “the first bike and pedestrian upgrades to the bridge” since 1979, when the existing walking and bike path was carved from the outer northbound roadway.

City transportation officials even went so far as to invite Councilwoman Julie Won of Queens to a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Sunday, March 16. Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani of Queens provided a quote for the news release.