Streetsblog New York City

This was the scene at Herald Square yesterday afternoon. It's full of people doing what the Times' Susan Dominus finds so un-New York: sitting down. Some of these loafers are actually putting their feet up, right in the heart of our fast-paced, cutthroat city. It's like they've never even seen The Sweet Smell of Success.

Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson sent this photo and some others he snapped while shooting footage of the new Broadway. Before we get to those, a few Independence Day weekend notes.

• First, a reminder to tell John Liu that you support the Bicycle Access Bill. This is a big one.
• Second, the Macy's fireworks are switching rivers this year, so instead of the ultimate car-free event on the FDR, we'll have a car-free Route 9A and bike-free Hudson River Greenway. Starting at 4:30 on July 4th, the bikeway will be closed from 14th Street to 68th Street. It's expected to re-open in the wee hours of July 5th, after the cleaning wraps up.

Enjoy the weekend everyone. We'll see you back here on Monday. On to the pictures from Clarence...

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Meet Gabe Klein, who was appointed to direct Washington D.C.'s Department of Transportation (DDOT) in December 2008. With a background including four years working for Zipcar, Klein was brought in to look at the city's mobility problems from a fresh perspective. As he says:

Cars are a part of our daily life here in D.C., but what we want to do is try to equalize the playing field. Encourage people to walk, to bike, to bike share; or instead of owning a car -- car share.

D.C. already has one of the lowest household car-ownership rates of any major U.S. city, so actively promoting these modes is essential -- as Klein points out -- to helping people move about with freedom.

An important heads up for our New York readers: Before you start grilling this weekend, make sure you sign on to TA's campaign urging John Liu to support the Bicycle Access Bill. Pretty much everyone from Mayor Bloomberg on down expected the bill to clear Liu's transportation committee this week and gain passage in the City Council. Didn't happen.

If Liu lets the bill come up for a vote, we're looking at a watershed moment for bike commuting in New York. If he doesn't, it will be a major blow to PlaNYC's vision of a bike-friendly city, and the collective record of transportation committee chairs everywhere will somehow sink even lower.

The Weekly Carnage is a Friday round-up (a day early this week due to the holiday) of motor vehicle mayhem across the metro region. For more on the origins and purpose of this column, please read About the Weekly Carnage.

Fatal Crashes (6 Killed This Week, 43 Killed This Year*, 6 Drivers Charged**)

• Brooklyn: 72-Year-Old Cyclist Killed on Fifth Avenue; No Charges Filed (News)
• Related: Fatality Sparks Call for Further Street Improvements (Bklyn Paper)  
• RFK-Triborough Bridge: Woman Killed by Lane-Cutting Driver (News)
• East Northport, LI: Dump Truck Tips Onto Car, Killing Mother of Two (WPIX, Newsday 1, 2)
  
• Miller Place, LI: Pedestrian Hit by Victim in Infamous Beating Case (Newsday) 
• Norwalk: Pedestrian Killed on I-95; Investigation Ongoing (CT Post)
• Saugerties, NY: Woman Dies in Three-Car Crash (Post) 

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If you're a person who is accustomed to getting around the place you live without a car, you've probably spent at least some time trying to sell your auto-dependent friends on the concept. Maybe you've even gone so far as to map out a route for them so that they wouldn't get frustrated. And sometimes you've succeeded in getting another person onto a bike, bus, train or trolley to make a trip across town. It's a good feeling, right?

In Chicago's Southland, Streetsblog Network member Active Transportation Alliance has created a program called Footprints that makes this kind of friendly advice available on a wider basis. Footprints pairs anyone who asks with a "coach" who will "create with you a personalized program of biking, walking, and transit options that meets your needs where you live."

In a recent blog post, Footprints coach Mary Lynn Wilson talked about the work she does:

For most of the people we sign up, using a bike for transportation is a novel experience. Using the recommended streets on the Chicagoland bike maps and having the fledgling go at it would bring their noble experiment to a quick halt. So, we coaches poke through maps, Google and Bing only to be faced with a myriad of cul-de-sacs, canals, railroad tracks and streets where a speed limit is merely a suggestion. Persevere we do and manage to come up with a decent route with minimal fast-moving cars, sometimes connecting the rider with a train or bus. We sweeten the pot by offering to make the ride with them. Never give someone a route you wouldn’t ride yourself.… Continue...

When the Obama administration proposed an 18-month delay in drafting the next federal transportation bill, U.S. DOT chief Ray LaHood called for Congress to include "critical reforms" alongside the extension of the existing law. But details on those reforms have been kept under wraps -- until now.

Streetsblog Capitol Hill has obtained a copy of the item the administration wants to see added to any 18-month extension. The proposals are narrowly tailored and relatively inexpensive. Still, securing their passage could prove difficult given the House's preference for passing its new federal bill and the Senate's affinity for a "clean as a whistle" extension.

The biggest item on the administration's agenda is $310 million to help state DOTs and local Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) begin collecting data on the usage and ridership of transportation projects.

"This voluntary program would provide participating entities the opportunity to integrate analysis into investment decisions and prepare for improved accountability standards and merit criteria in the long-term reauthorization," the administration document states.

The administration is also seeking stricter requirements for states and MPOs to report on the costs and performance of projects that are getting federal money.

Coupled with the money for "capacity-building" at states and MPOs, the plan suggests that national performance targets -- the type proposed by Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO) but absent from the House's current legislation -- are on the DOT's radar as it plans for transportation reform over the next year or two.

In fact, the White House appears highly cognizant of the political blowback coming from House Democrats over its proposed delay in the transportation re-write. The $20 billion patch to the highway trust fund that Congres aims to pass by August "should be considered 'Stage I' of the broader reauthorization process," the administration document states.

But the new help for states and MPOs isn't the only transportation policy shift the administration is prepared to push for this year. A national infrastructure bank could also be on tap -- one that looks a bit different from what's proposed in the House transportation bill.

The administration's summary of its infrastructure bank plan is available in full after the jump.

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Thinking of riding your bike to Celebrate Brooklyn this summer but worried about finding a safe and reliable place to lock up? Look no further than the Celebrate Brooklyn Bike Zone, where friendly volunteers from Transportation Alternatives will take great care of your ride (for free!) while you enjoy the sights and sounds of the unbeatable summer lineup. Tonight: MGMT.

The Bike Zone is conveniently located just inside the 11th Street and Prospect Park West entrance, within steps of the bandshell. Check out this handy map [PDF] to scout your best route.

These days, it's not often that we get to report about New York City community boards pushing DOT for more progressive street designs. So sit back and enjoy this post. If you read Streetsblog regularly, it'll blow your mind.

Back in April, DOT met with members of Brooklyn Community Board 9, which covers parts of Crown Heights and Flatbush, about a traffic calming project for Empire Boulevard. At the time, the project did not include a bike lane.

I asked district manager Pearl Miles about that meeting. "We said, 'How about a bike lane?'" she recalls. "Our community is largely residential, so we want it to be safe."

When DOT came back in May for a presentation to the full board [PDF], the project -- now sporting a bike lane -- passed in a resounding 38-2 vote.

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Residents of Inwood were excited by last year's news that the 215th Step-Street -- a block-long staircase linking Broadway to residential blocks in the northern reaches of the neighborhood -- would soon be receiving a long-awaited rehab. But officials announced last week that the project will again be delayed.

Step-streets, staircases built in places deemed too steep for roads, are fairly common in Upper Manhattan, and can also be found in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island. With its cracked stairs and broken lamps, the 215th Step-Street has been in dire need of repair for a decade or more. Last August, DOT officials joined Assembly Member Adriano Espaillat at the foot of the stairs to announce that a reconstruction project would finally be completed in 2009.

It was at Espaillat's June 25 "town hall" meeting, reports neighborhood blog Inwoodette, that the Department of Design and Construction broke the news -- to a chorus of boos -- that "pre-design" work will not be complete until October 2010. Said a second local blogger, Jewyorican: DDC personnel "made it sound like we wanted the city to build the 215th street space elevator to the moon."

It isn't the first time the city has promised to fix the steps only to later renege. As we reported last year, a previous commitment was made in 2005. For whatever it's worth, Streetsblog has messages in with DDC and Community Board 12 to determine the latest project time line.

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The Census Bureau has just released new data showing a resurgence of the nation's cities, with New York leading the way and Chicago reversing five years of population decline.

The urban growth is being attributed to a combination of demographic re-arrangement -- younger families are embracing cities as well as close-in suburbs with transit access -- and the unsustainability, both economic and environmental, of living in sprawl.

It's a pattern that nicely underscores the importance of expanding transportation options beyond the automobile. But will the nation's rising cities see a corresponding increase in the political influence that's necessary to move national policy in a new direction? That's a big question.

The 2010 Census will help determine which states gain or lose seats in the House, the lower congressional chamber where proportional representation rules the roost.

And even if urban populations continue to swell over the next two years, it's still highly likely that western and southern states -- where the housing bubble was largest and sprawl remains the norm -- will gain seats in Congress.

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Police, witness and media accounts vary -- widely -- as to what exactly happened in the East Village yesterday afternoon. The NYPD version goes something like this:

Two officers responding to a call to help another officer were proceeding north on Avenue D with lights and sirens. Near E. 5th Street, the cruiser collided with a white Cadillac, which was pulling out of a driveway. The cruiser then jumped the curb and struck several pedestrians. Two people were hit when the officer driving the car swerved to avoid a baby carriage. Five pedestrians, including the baby and mother, the two officers in the cruiser, and a driver and passenger in the other car were hospitalized with minor injuries. The most seriously hurt person was a 33-year-old man who suffered a broken leg and a gash on his head.

Miraculously, no one was killed yesterday. But as you can see in the WPIX story after the jump, the scene of a crash is rarely as antiseptic as phrases like "treated and released" make it sound. 

At least one report says the investigation into the incident is continuing, as is no doubt the case. But will the public be fully informed of the findings? And what of reports by multiple witnesses who say the cruiser was traveling at up to 50 mph, that there were no lights or sirens, or that passersby who urged officers to assist victims other than their colleagues were told to "Shut the fuck up"? Will these witnesses be vetted, with appropriate action taken to avoid such mistakes, if they in fact occurred, in the future? How about claims by residents that police routinely speed on Avenue D? Will the department at least crack down on non-emergency dangerous driving to lessen the possibility of future injuries and deaths?

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Yesterday's New York Times blog item about why New York women are underrepresented among the city's bike commuters didn't sit well with the authors of Streetsblog Network member Let's Go Ride a Bike. Trisha, one of the blog's authors and a bike commuter herself in Nashville, sees the piece as part of a trend (epitomized by a recent Treehugger post called "6 Reasons the World Needs More Girls on Bikes"). Too often, she says, people looking at female cyclists take a cosmetic approach to a complex subject: 

This is how mothers roll in Japan: on a "mamachari." Photo by anthonygrimley via Flickr.

I certainly don’t want to discount concerns about safety and fashion, which were issues for me when starting out and two things Dottie and I are trying to help others overcome.

What annoys me is that none of the articles I’ve read on this topic lately go any deeper into why those things present serious obstacles for women but not men, even though men have the same concerns (no one wants to show up for work disheveled and stinky after all). Why bother, when it’s so obvious that men are just much less self-absorbed and a million times braver? It couldn’t be that there are higher expectations for women’s appearances in the workplace, or that the burden of transporting children or household errands like grocery shopping more often falls to them—the first reasons that came to my mind. Continue...

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced this week the return and expansion of the Summer Streets program along with more than 1,500 free events taking place throughout New York City this summer. The mayor was joined by DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, who noted that some 50,000 people enjoyed Summer Streets each time it was held last year, and that temporary car-free streets were spreading this year to 14 locations across all five boroughs. Among some of the others supporting the mayor's announcement were Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, Def Jam record label co-founder Russell Simmons and actor Luis Guzmán.