Streetsblog New York City

Former Bronx boro prez Adolfo Carrion returns to the city for a Thursday event. Otherwise this week's highlights are all about street safety and transit improvements.

• Tuesday: TA's East Side Streets Coalition will hold a workshop on street conditions on the Upper East Side. Participants will review maps showing where pedestrian and bicyclist vehicle crashes occur and their proximity to schools and senior centers, outline transportation problems and brainstorm solutions using the New York City Street Design Manual. This will inform the development of an East Side Action Plan to be launched in Fall 2010. 6 p.m. Also Tuesday: NYCDOT will make a presentation to Brooklyn CB 2 regarding a pedestrian and bicycle safety project for Flushing Ave. between Navy St. and Williamsburg St. and Kent Ave. between Clymer St. and Williamsburg St. 6 p.m.
• Thursday: NYMTC holds its annual meeting, featuring Adolfo Carrion, director of the White House Office of Urban Policy, as keynote speaker. 10:30 a.m. Thursday evening: First/Second Ave. Select Bus Service open house: Learn about the SBS project and proposed station locations; view corridor design plans; provide input and talk with project team members from MTA and NYCDOT. 6 p.m. 

Keep an eye on the calendar for updated listings. Got an event we should know about? Drop us a line.

Yesterday, at The Urbanophile, Aaron Renn posted a thoughtful essay about the idea of the "city as platform." He looks at all the different meanings of the word platform and muses about how they apply in the urban context.

To me, the most intriguing idea in Renn’s post is the vision of "the city as a manifesto":

The political platform version wasn’t something that originally came to my mind when thinking of this, but it too has applicability. What is your city all “about”? What does it stand for? What is its ambition?

Think about the great cities of America, and they all seem to have something of a point of view on the world and what it should be like, even if it isn’t totally clear. Especially for those cities where the civic ambition and POV is murky, a process of reflection on this is clearly warranted. Going back to the notion of a stage, since not everyplace can be New York or London, the question might be how you can create a premier stage or environment in which to attract notice for a focused set of activities or ambitions.

What about it, folks? What are the ambitions of your city, if you live in one? How could they be different? Does your city need to aim higher? Let us know in the comments.

More from around the network: EcoVelo, home of some of the most beautiful bicycle pictures on the Internet, shares some photographic tips. Biking in Dallas wonders about the possibility of a Ciclovía in that Texas city. And FABB Blog has the scoop on a car-free challenge from The Bike Lane.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood made a surprise visit to the closing reception of the National Bike Summit last night, speaking to a record crowd of bicycle advocates and industry representatives, many of whom spent the day swarming the halls of the Capitol as part of the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) annual lobby day.

"People get it. People want to live in livable communities," LaHood told the crowd, after hoisting himself atop a table in the Dirksen Senate Office Building room so the large gathering could see him. "People want streetcars that are made in Portland, Oregon. People want walking paths, biking paths, and opportunities for families to really do the things they do best, which is to hang together and have fun. You all created an opportunity for America with all of your hard work."

"I’ve been all over America, and where I’ve been in America I’ve been very proud to talk about the fact that people do want alternatives. They want out of their cars, they want out of congestion, they want to live in livable neighborhoods and livable communities." He added, to thunderous applause, "you've got a partner in Ray LaHood."

"Ray, we've got your back," said Congressman Earl Blumenaur, the founder of the Congressional Bike Caucus, who told attendees that they have made a difference but there are "a lot of people who don't get the big picture yet."

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Thanks to tipster ddartley for the latest chapter in NYPD's ongoing mistreatment of bus riders on 34th Street. Yesterday, eight cruisers from northern Queens (precincts 110, 111, 112, 114 and 115) sat parked in the bus lane between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. During evening rush hour. You know, we're starting to think there may be a pattern here.

This time, the police stepped up their game, blocking the bus stop itself and forcing elderly passengers to disembark in the middle of the street. Since shame can't keep police from inconveniencing bus passengers, maybe a physically separated busway on 34th will do the trick.

More pics after the jump.

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The Weekly Carnage is a Friday round-up of motor vehicle mayhem across the five boroughs and beyond. For more on the origins and purpose of this column, please read About the Weekly Carnage.

Fatal Crashes (3 Killed This Week, 30 This Year, 6 Drivers Charged*)

• Sung Won Cho, 40, Killed by Driver in Church Parking Lot in Gravesend; Four Others Injured, Including Baby and 10-Year-Old; No Charges (NYT, News, Post, NY1)
• Natalie Assee, 37, Killed in Dyker Heights Hit-and-Run; Suspect at Large (YN, Post, Related: Streetsblog)
  
• Keon Nedd, 17, Killed Outside Soundview Home by Hit-and-Run Driver of Stolen Car; Suspects at Large (News, City Room)

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Straphangers, are you ready to subsidize the runaway state budget?

The Post reports that higher transit fares could be in the cards for the third year in a row, as the MTA re-evaluates its options to cover a $750 million deficit.

State lawmakers passed last year's MTA funding package promising that it was sufficient to stave off service cuts and avert fare hikes until 2011. But that package, which conspicuously lacked bridge tolls, turned out to be insufficient. And to top it off, Albany swiped more than $100 million in dedicated transit tax revenues from the MTA last fall to pay for the state's obligations.

Now, after facing the wrath of transit riders about potential cuts to subway and bus service, the MTA Board is weighing whether to raise fares ahead of schedule instead.

So let's just point out that the amount of money that Albany swiped from dedicated transit taxes last fall ($118 million) is greater than the cost of all the bus and subway service on the chopping block ($77.6 million). A fare hike would basically amount to Albany picking money from straphangers' pockets.

Hat tip @ShellySilver for the Post story.

Maureen Landers was walking to pick up her son Max from P.S. 127 in Bay Ridge last April when she was struck by a motorist turning onto Fourth Avenue. Her stroller -- thankfully empty -- was flattened. She was rushed to the hospital but did not sustain major injuries. As for the driver, he didn't even receive a ticket.

Afterward, Landers started talking about the crash with her neighbors. As parent after parent shared their personal stories about car crashes, it became clear that they didn't feel safe walking on their own streets.

Her group decided to do something about it. Bay Ridge Residents Fed Up With Reckless Driving was born.

Wednesday night, Landers and the other parents who have rallied around street safety presented their concerns to the traffic and transportation committee of Brooklyn Community Board 10. Parents "like living here, but they live in fear of the cars," she told the committee.

The CB was ready to listen. Just this past Sunday, 37-year-old Natalie Assee was killed crossing Fort Hamilton Parkway. In January, all of New York heard the story of 104-year-old Joe Rollino, the World's Strongest Man, killed as he crossed Bay Ridge Parkway. One committee member's grandmother was recently killed by a car in the neighborhood. Everyone in the room was perfectly aware that the neighborhood has a safety problem.

"We all know that our streets are more dangerous than they should be," said Doris Cruz, the transportation committee chair. Until Landers began her activism, however, each crash had been addressed separately. "We've just always seen it in isolation," said Cruz. She opened the meeting by calling for a comprehensive approach to pedestrian safety.

The discussion focused first on enforcement. While a police officer in attendance said the 68th precinct didn't have the capacity to increase traffic enforcement, residents and CB members didn't take "No" for an answer. One resident, Jean Solomon, proposed targeted crackdowns at the worst intersections. "Bay Ridge is the Wild West," she said, "we need to change its reputation." One CB member proposed a "Crosswalk Day" targeted at failure-to-yield violations, modeled on NYPD's periodic crackdowns on distracted drivers.

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Regular readers will notice something new and different across all our sites starting today.

Currently, some of the posts you see on the local Streetsblog sites -- New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Capitol Hill -- actually originated on a different Streetsblog site and are being syndicated.

Starting today, you'll see a little icon, like the one pictured at right, to let you know where the post was first published.

Why is this important to you as a reader? Well, when you click on the post now, you will be taken to the originating site. Same goes for clicking to view or contribute to comments.

The best part of this is that all comments will now be collected in one place. If you're reading the New York site and want to comment on one of Elana Schor's Streetsblog Capitol Hill pieces about federal policy, for instance, you'll be doing so in the same place as readers of the LA and SF blogs.

In addition, all of the Streetsblog Network posts, which I write daily, will originate on the Streetsblog.net site -- where you'll also find links to nearly 400 independent member blogs around the country.

We hope that this will help to make the conversation among our commenters even richer and more rewarding.

We want your feedback on the new system. So please, if you have any questions, suggestions or complaints, you can leave them -- for everyone -- in the comments. 

This week's National Bike Summit culminated in an ambitious new campaign to recruit a million bike advocates and the unveiling of a new Google Maps bike feature. But in a Wednesday session dedicated to the outlook for federal bike investments, cycling advocates hesitated to declare that they could secure new commitments from Washington.

"If Congress is going to act" on a new long-term transportation bill, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy president Keith Laughlin said, "it's definitely going to be our year. If we are ready."

Laughlin's phrasing was aimed at stoking cyclists' appetite for lobbying Congress in favor of pro-bike legislation, such as Rep. Earl Blumenauer's Active Community Transportation Act. But his caution also reflected the ongoing uncertainty surrounding how lawmakers plan to pay for a new long-term infrastructure bill expected to cost at least $450 billion.

Even if bipartisan support can bring the White House on board for a new bill this year, it remains to be seen whether bike advocates can secure the $2 billion in competitive federal grants that Blumenauer has proposed.

Tyler Frisbee, an aide to the Portland lawmaker who spoke to the Summit on her personal time, was careful to praise House transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) as a friend of bicyclists. But Oberstar's transport legislation, Frisbee said, is "not the bill we want for another eight years ... cycling will be light years behind Europe [if it passes]."

Frisbee warned fellow bike advocates that Oberstar views the Blumenauer bill as an expansion of the Non-Motorized Pilot Program that directed $25 million to four trail projects in the 2005 transportation law. Describing her boss' legislation as separate from that spending, Frisbee said a Senate version would be introduced soon by Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley.

Despite the hazy outlook for congressional action on transportation reform, Rails-to-Trails is continuing to push ahead with its long-term agenda. Laughlin said the group's 10-year goal is to help pay for bike trails within three miles of 90 percent of American residences, while doubling existing federal bike spending to $9 billion over six years.

"If the bill comes up for a vote, we have a fighting chance, but to win" requires sustained and increased focus on grassroots lobbying of lawmakers, he said.

NYCDOT unveiled a slate of pedestrian and bicycle improvements to the transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 3 last night. Presenters asked for votes on two street safety projects: the construction of a planted center median on the Bowery between Canal and Division streets, and the addition of new curbside bike routes to improve connections to the Williamsburg Bridge.

Despite a few moments of crankiness from one member ("I can’t in good conscience vote for any more bicycle lanes"), the committee approved resolutions in favor of both measures.

The new bike routes on Suffolk, Stanton, and Rivington streets would complement improvements built last year, which extended the Williamsburg Bridge approach to Suffolk. Slated for implementation in May, the painted, curbside lanes are intended fill in key east-west connections north of where Delancey Street feeds into the bridge path.

The changes are important because Delancey remains extremely dangerous even as biking on the Williamsburg Bridge increases rapidly.

This January, 74-year-old Fuen Bai was killed by a school bus driver while riding in the no-man's-land between the bridge and Allen Street. Every year, traffic injures dozens of pedestrians and cyclists on the corridor, according to CrashStat. Meanwhile, DOT bike counts indicate that cycling on the bridge has quadrupled since 2004. Despite all the people biking over the bridge, the tantalizing proximity of the Allen Street bike path, and the dismal safety record of Delancey Street, the new plan does not address Delancey itself.

DOT's strategy is to divert Williamsburg Bridge bike traffic to calmer, safer side streets. "One of the issues is that people don’t know about the alternatives," Bicycle Program Coordinator Josh Benson told the audience last night. "When you get out there and try this route, it’s gonna make sense. It will change people’s behavior." DOT has no plans to add bike infrastructure to Delancey, he said.

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At the beginning of the year, Streetsblog embarked on a project we hope will shed light on city pedestrian and cyclist fatalities that appear to have been written off as blameless "accidents." To date, we have filed freedom of information requests with NYPD pertaining to 10 pedestrian deaths, and will be reporting on the progress of those requests, along with those submitted in the future.

It's no secret that NYPD takes a proprietary approach to traffic death data. Even family members are kept waiting for details about incidents that took the lives of loved ones. So though our goal is to examine crash investigations themselves, this effort will be as much about the process of extracting information from police.

Case in point: Our initial 10 requests were mailed on January 27. The date of the earliest fatality was November 30 of 2009, the most recent January 26. Today we received denials from NYPD for six of those requests. Here's the legalese as it appears above:

In regard to the document(s) which you requested, I must deny access to these records on the basis of Public Officers Law section 87(2)(g)(iii) as such records/information does not represent final agency determination.

Note that this reasoning differs from that cited in denying information about the death of cyclist Solange Raulston.

The crashes referenced in our requests resulted in the deaths of Frank Justich, Arthur Katz, Mary Mason, Virginia McKibbin, Abundio Mendez-Perez, Joe Rollino, Edith Shaller, Catorino Solis, and two unidentified victims -- one in Brooklyn, one in Manhattan. In each of these cases, press reports either made no mention of charges against the driver or indicated that the driver was already cleared of culpability. In their letters to us, NYPD did not provide names to match their file numbers, so at this point we are following up to ascertain which requests were denied.

As allowed by law, we will appeal NYPD's denials. We'll keep you updated.

Soon after the Senate signed off yesterday on a $150 billion package of tax extenders and unemployment benefits that was promoted as a job-creation measure -- a bill that lacked dedicated new funding for transportation -- Democrats on the House education and labor committee were releasing their own jobs legislation.

The House proposal also lacks specific infrastructure funding, but its structure reflects a shift that could hearten urban planners and other advocates for a more city-centric approach to federal transportation funding. Three-quarters of the bill's estimated $100 billion in aid would go directly to cities and counties to help avert layoffs of firefighters, police, and other workers.

Mayors had pressed for more transportation stimulus spending to go directly to cities but lost the political battle, as the lion's share of the $48 billion in road and transit aid in last year's recovery package was diverted through state DOTs. Many urban governments anticipate budget shortfalls in 2010 that could exceed those at the height of the financial crisis, with transit cuts and delays in infrastructure projects looming as consequences of the cash crunch.

Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the education and labor panel's chairman, told Roll Call yesterday that he hopes mayors will use their political leverage to help the bill move forward in the Senate.

You might have seen it making the rounds over the last couple of days -- the new Mercedes ad in which a bike messenger challenges a driver in one of the company's luxury vehicles to a race from Harlem to the Fulton Ferry landing in Brooklyn.

There are many irritating things about the ad, including the lousy acting and the roundabout route the car takes (why the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and not the FDR?). At more than seven minutes (it's in two parts on YouTube), it's also tediously long.

But worst is the perpetuation of that old stereotype, the "maniac" bike rider. The driver says at the beginning that he thinks the contest will be unfair: "Sure, he gets to ride like a bat out of hell and we have to follow the traffic rules."

And of course, that's the way it goes. No doubt, the risk-taking footage is fun to watch, and some local blogs have posted favorably about the ad (even Bike Snob NYC is mild in his critique).

But Mikael Colville-Andersen at Copenhagenize has it right when he says the Mercedes spot is an effective attack on the idea that riding a bicycle in a major city could ever be comfortable or normal:

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