Streetsblog New York City

Bike racks set up for MS 51's annual Bike-To-School Day are filled with students' wheels.

Based on this picture of rows of temporary bike racks, all filled, it looks like MS 51′s Bike-To-School Day was a big hit (photo via Lara Lebeiko of Bicycle Habitat, which provided volunteers for the event). Escorted rides, or “bike buses,” took students from Sunset Park, Carroll Gardens and Windsor Terrace/Kensington to the Park Slope school and back. During the day, a bike skills and safety course helped teach the students how to ride on their own.

MS 51 has been holding a Bike-To-School Day event since 2010. Check out Streetfilms’ coverage of the school’s first year of festivities here.

But even a coordinated effort to promote biking to school didn’t eliminate one of the most persistent perils on the route to MS 51. In the morning, Fifth Avenue is a mess of double-parked parents dropping off their kids out in front of school. The bike lane in front of the school is routinely impassible, and today was no exception, as the below photo from Streetsblog reader Car Free Nation illustrates.

It’s great to see a city school promoting cycling to its students. To keep them riding, though, it looks like the city needs some traffic enforcement.

Double-parked cars block the Fifth Avenue bike lane before school starts.

Cyclists may only account for 1 percent of all trips taken in the U.S., but that’s still good enough to save the American people a total of $4.6 billion per year, according to research recently released by the League of American Bicyclists, the Sierra Club, and the National Council of La Raza. The announcement coincided with National Bike to Work Day, observed last Friday as part of Bike Month.

National Bike to Work Day, as observed last Friday in St. Louis, MO. Photo: @aboutcycling via NPR

It gets even better, as a recent article in Forbes pointed out:

The average annual operating cost of a bicycle is $308, compared to $8,220 for the average car, and if American drivers replaced just one four-mile car trip with a bike each week for the entire year, it would save more than two billion gallons of gas, for a total savings of $7.3 billion a year, based on $4 a gallon for gas.

The Forbes story made it into our headline stack on Monday, but as congressional Republicans seem poised to make another run at eliminating the Transportation Enhancements program (a major source of funds for bike infrastructure), the numbers bear repeating.

Especially these numbers: Biking and walking put together make up 12 percent of trips, but bike-ped funding accounts for less than two percent of transportation spending. Furthermore, though the U.S. had 40 percent more bicycle commuters in 2010 than in 2000, efforts persist to gut what few bike-ped programs remain in favor of increased highway spending.

And yet, here’s a list of bicycling facts that have emerged (or re-emerged) in recent research:

• Bike path and trail projects create more jobs per million dollars spent than highway projects.
• Building bike paths and trails encourages more people to ride more often.
• Cycling is not a purely urban phenomenon.

Add to that the knowledge that transportation is overtaking housing as the single largest household expenditure in America, especially among low-income households, and it should be a no-brainer: Funding bike-ped infrastructure is a bargain.

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Comptroller John Liu. Photo: DelMundo for Daily News

Election Day is more than a year away, but the race to become the next mayor of New York City is well-underway. In the last two issues of its magazine, Reclaim, Transportation Alternatives has been asking the would-be mayors for their thoughts on transit (in the more recent interviews, one question about cycling was added). So far, TA has received responses from all of the major candidates except 2009 Democratic nominee Bill Thompson.

All this week, Streetsblog will be re-printing the candidates’ responses. Here are the answers TA received from Comptroller John Liu.

Q: What role does a well-funded public transit system play in New York City’s economic growth?

A: Public transit is paramount to New York City’s economy. More than half of NYC’s commuters rely on our network of subways, trains, buses and ferries to get to work (subways are the mode of choice for more than a third of commuters to NYC). New York City’s transit, especially its subways are a defining characteristic of our city and transit is an efficient use of resources – economically and environmentally. Transit makes our dense business districts and neighborhoods possible and adds to the diversity and vibrancy of the city.

New York City’s population is growing and along with it ridership levels on our transit systems. In fact, MTA’s average weekday ridership in 2011 was the highest since 1951. Growing ridership on our transit system requires that we ensure adequate resources to keep up with that demand. Time lost in congestion is counter-productive for our economy, but is also frustrating to commuters and residents. It is essential that we ensure that transit is funded, and managed in a way that keeps the city and its economy moving.

Q: What would you do as mayor to address transit deserts, which are locations where riders are faced with hour-plus commutes, multiple transfers or multi-fare rides?

A: The next Mayor, whoever that may be, will need to address this issue. Last year, the Center for an Urban Future released a report that demonstrated that a large part of the city’s job growth and population gains have occurred outside of Manhattan. This de-centralized growth pattern has translated into longer commutes for low-income workers. Around the world, and recently in NYC, transit authorities have been using buses as a cost-effective way to close gaps in transit service. Expanding Select Bus Service where appropriate and bringing additional bus service to growing job and population centers can be an effective way to address transit deserts.

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Although Senate Republicans had hoped the carefully crafted compromise over the Transportation Enhancements program would stand, some House members are stating their insistence that the program be stripped out entirely in conference.

Sens. Barbara Boxer and James Inhofe worked hard to negotiate an agreement on transportation enhancement funding -- a deal now threatened by House Republicans. Photo: Transportation Issues Daily

Transportation Enhancements is the primary source of funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects. It comprises less than two percent of total federal transportation funds but has been a source of bitter contention, nearly derailing talks in the Senate. The two sides eventually made a deal under which TE is subsumed under the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement program’s “additional activities” category. Per that agreement, states can opt out altogether, and some road uses compete with bike and pedestrian projects for funding. An amendment to maintain some local control over the funds made it somewhat more palatable for advocates.

Sen. James Inhofe, the conservative top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, warned House members at the outset of the conference that “the conservative position is to pass this thing,” even if members are not 100 percent satisfied with the compromise. The changes to the enhancements program constituted “the most meaningful reform to conservatives” in the bill, he said.

Transportation conference chairwoman Barbara Boxer said today that lawmakers “have a chance” to make the bill longer than two years, as the Senate bill is written. She also said that 80 percent of the EPW Committee’s portion of the bill is not controversial and has been agreed to. According to Boxer, House Speaker John Boehner told her last night that he has instructed House negotiators to get a bill done.

Still, a staffer familiar with the ongoing conference talks has told Streetsblog that TE is again an issue of contention. Freshman Republicans have made a point of expressing their dissatisfaction that any funding whatsoever remains in the bill.

In addition to TE, Republicans took issue with one of the most popular bill elements among transportation reformers: the provision allowing for more flexibility for transit agencies in times of high unemployment. The Senate bill allows agencies in such cases to spend federal funds normally reserved for capital improvements on operations. GOP opposition to these programs is part and parcel of the urban/rural divide, according to Streetsblog’s source, who said some House members are bent on redistributing money from urban areas to rural districts.

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Image: NYPD

Seventeen vulnerable users were killed on city streets in April, according to the latest NYPD crash data report [PDF].

City-wide, 12 pedestrians and five cyclists were fatally struck by drivers: three pedestrians and one cyclist in Manhattan; three pedestrians and one cyclist in the Bronx; four pedestrians and two cyclists in Brooklyn; one pedestrian and one cyclist in Queens; and one pedestrian in Staten Island.

Across the city, 934 pedestrians and 316 cyclists were hurt in collisions with motor vehicles. Per NYPD policy, few if any of these crashes were investigated by trained officers.

Five motorists and six passengers died in the city in April; 1,662 and 1,799 were injured, respectively.

There were 16,244 motor vehicle crashes in the city last month. After the jump: contributing factors for crashes resulting in injury and death.

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The MTA will increase transit service to the Barclays Center on game nights, but Forest City Ratner won't be paying for that increased service or for discounted fares. Photo via Brownstoner

The MTA will be adding extra transit service on Barclays Center game nights. But past promises of free or discounted MetroCards for arena-goers did not materialize in the transportation demand management plan revealed yesterday by developer Forest City Ratner, which local advocates are calling “too little, too late.”

Under the plan to reduce the number of people who drive to the arena, developed by Sam Schwartz for Forest City, more 4 and Q trains will run at the end of a Nets game, according to Norman Oder at Atlantic Yards Report. LIRR trains will run from to Jamaica every 15 minutes, rather than every 25. Nine subway lines already run directly to the now-renamed Atlantic Avenue/Barclays Center station.

Additionally, 541 parking spaces will be built on-site, fewer than half what had been planned earlier this year. The reduction in parking capacity will make driving to the site that much more difficult. Four-hundred bike parking spaces will be provided, but despite past promises from Forest City Ratner, they will not be indoors.

Beyond that, the transportation demand management plan focuses on marketing measures urging fans to take transit. The arena’s website, for example, tells those who look for information on where to park, “Parking at Barclays Center is very limited. We strongly recommend using public transportation.”

But the plan goes neither as far as the developer had promised, nor as far as arena neighbors and sustainable transportation advocates would like. “The plan released today doesn’t even include the free subway fare for Nets ticketholders promised in 2009,” said Kate Slevin, executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and a member of the BrooklynSpeaks coalition, in a press release. As recently as last year, free or discounted transit fares were being discussed by Forest City Ratner. Now it looks as if riders will have to pay full freight.

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Bike licensing and mandatory registration — can we just go ahead and file these under bad ideas?

Bike licensing: Why? Photo: Wild Bell

Putting up barriers to healthy choices like biking makes no sense from a policy perspective — especially since many people cycling are children or very low-income, for whom the registration and licensing process may be especially difficult, offputting, or nonsensical. (By the way, if you don’t have a car, how do you legally get to the registration point?)

But in case you needed another reason, James Sinclair at Network blog Stop and Move has a good one for us today: police profiling. Sinclair points to a recent statement from the police department in Clovis, California:

From what I understand, Clovis still has a law on the books requiring that all bikes be registered (with a fee). Fortunately, that law hasn’t been enforced in years, and it’s entirely possible the current PD doesn’t even realize that law exists.

Anyway, in the title of the post, I mention that profiling is included. What do I mean by that? Well, the ABC news broadcast has a very unfortunate quote from a Clovis PD rep.

Calli Biaggi of the Clovis Police Department is quoted as saying:

If we stop somebody and they’re on a bicycle and it doesn’t look like maybe they should have that bicycle, we can run the serial number of the bike and then we can see that its owned by someone else. And then we can contact that person and see if that bike is supposed to be with that person.

Sinclair responds:

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Behind these doors is a public passageway meant to relieve pedestrian crowding on Midtown avenues. The developer of the Metropolitan Tower included the passage in exchange for rights to construct a taller building. Photo: Jake Schabas

“It’s a private property with public access,” a security guard explained after stopping me from taking photos of a mid-block passageway through the Metropolitan Tower on 56th Street. The space in question, which connects 56th to 57th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, is one of more than 150 privately owned public spaces in central Midtown, many of which are products of a 1980s zoning program to improve pedestrian circulation. In exchange for development bonuses that today are worth millions of dollars in rentable square footage, developers were supposed to build and maintain publicly accessible mid-block passageways to help ease pedestrian congestion on the heavily used north-south avenues. The problem is many of these semi-public spaces now appear so private, most walkers wouldn’t even know to use them.

This summer, the Department of Transportation is looking to change that with a series of midblock crosswalks tying 51st Street to 57th Street between Sixth and Seventh [PDF]. Approved earlier this month by Community Board 5, the crosswalks will string together six passageways and enhance a much-needed pedestrian path on some of the most-walked streets in the city. The project is an important first step toward reclaiming several privately-owned public spaces — or POPS, as they’re known — that could be doing much more for Midtown pedestrians.

A midblock crossing proposed by NYC DOT for "6½ Avenue" in Midtown. Image: NYC DOT

POPS are the product of New York’s epochal 1961 zoning law and come in all shapes and sizes, from passageways and arcades to plazas and parks. The basic idea is that developers can erect taller buildings if they provide and maintain a public amenity. These amenities can be as utilitarian as a covered outdoor passageway — for example, the Rihga Royal Hotel’s POPS connecting West 54th and 55th Streets between Sixth and Seventh Avenues —  to the more intricate, landscaped Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan.

The Rihga Hotel's utilitarian POPS connects 54th Street and 55th Street. Photo: Jake Schabas

As the Occupy Wall Street protests at Zuccotti demonstrated, these semi-private, semi-public spaces inhabit a legal grey area. Different rules apply to each space, from the hours the space is accessible to the number of tables and chairs that must be provided. OWS-style challenges to the rules governing these spaces are rare. More common is the slow creep of private uses that crowd out the public. Nowhere is this more clear than in midtown Manhattan’s mid-block connectors.

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A pedestrian killed in Kips Bay last week has been identified as 76-year-old Pietro Palumbo.

Palumbo was crossing East 23rd Street near Second Avenue at around 1 a.m. on Friday, May 18, when reports say he was struck by a 1997 Acura driven by a 72-year-old woman. According to DNAinfo, the then-unidentified victim was crossing East 23rd “south to north in the middle block” when he was hit by the westbound motorist.

DNAinfo reported that Palumbo was in a wheelchair, while the Post said he was using a walker after a recent hip surgery. An NYPD spokesperson told Streetsblog he had no information on which version of the incident was correct.

A witness told the Post that the impact of the collision sent Palumbo “literally, 20 feet flying into the air.” Said the witness: “He just came down and smashed the windshield and went straight to the ground.” DNAinfo said Palumbo was “discovered lying in the street with severe injuries to his body.” He was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital.

Despite indications that the unidentified driver was traveling at an excessive speed, NYPD confirmed that “no criminality is suspected.”

This fatal crash occurred in the 13th Precinct. To voice your concerns about neighborhood traffic safety directly to Deputy Inspector Ted Berntsen, the commanding officer, go to the next precinct community council meeting. The 13th Precinct council meetings happen at 6:30 p.m. on the third Tuesday of the month at the 13th Precinct station house, located at 230 East 21st Street. Call the precinct at 212-477-7411 for information.

Palumbo was at least the second vulnerable street user killed in the city since Friday. Last night, 33-year-old Amjad Barakat was fatally struck by a hit-and-run driver in Bay Ridge. As of this writing, no fewer than 43 pedestrians and cyclists have died on city streets in 2012.