Streetsblog New York City

A rendering of the kind of development possible under the Economic Development Corporation's plans for the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area. EDC calls for 500 parking spaces at the site: more than the zoning code allows.

The Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, or SPURA, is the largest undeveloped, city-owned area south of 96th Street. Located along the south side of Delancey Street at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge, SPURA currently consists of five empty lots, the leftovers of a 1967 slum clearance project. Though mid-century towers-in-a-park style housing was built elsewhere on the site, these lots have remained vacant since the tenements were torn down 45 years ago, displacing a population that was two-thirds black and Hispanic.

Since the 1960s, one proposal after another has been floated for the SPURA site, only to fall victim to the complicated politics of development in an economically-divided neighborhood that has grappled with the challenges of both disinvestment and gentrification — and which happens to be represented by powerful Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Parking remains the only use of the lots.

Now, however, the potential for progress appears closer than ever. A plan from the city Economic Development Corporation [PDF], based on principles put forward by Community Board 3 [PDF], is moving through the city’s land use review process, as outlined in this very helpful post from The Lo-Down. CB 3 will vote on the plan, which differs in certain ways from what it proposed, Wednesday night. The borough president will also weigh in before the City Planning Commission and the City Council take binding votes.

It’s exciting to see anything moving forward on the site, and there’s much to like about this proposal for a major mixed-use development. EDC would build 900 new units of housing, half of which would be designated affordable housing. Another 660,000 square feet would be used for retail, offices and community facilities. Unlike the urban renewal projects nearby, these buildings would engage the pedestrian realm with active ground floor uses and a continuous street wall.

But on one issue, at least, EDC’s plan for SPURA goes awry: parking. The agency is requesting special permits allowing the construction of 500 parking spaces, all underground. That total is higher than what is allowed under the city’s zoning code and higher than what was requested by the community board.

Building additional automobile storage would inevitably mean more cars on the already-deadly Delancey Street and more congestion on the already-clogged Williamsburg Bridge. At the same time, four subway lines meet at the corner of Essex and Delancey, offering ample transit access to the site.

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There’s an important meeting of the Brooklyn Community Board 2 transportation committee coming up tonight, where the DOT bike-share team will present proposed locations for Citi Bike stations.

The bike-share siting process has been praised by several community boards, and like all the other CBs within the bike-share service area, Brooklyn CB 2 hosted a public workshop where participants expressed their preferences for station locations. But the Brooklyn Daily Eagle makes it seem as if the entire program was sprung on the unwitting district overnight. Under the headline “Heights battles bike stations,” the paper quotes Judy Stanton, executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association, who complains that bike-share will take up street space better suited for parking cars.

Of course, the fact is bike-share will increase options for getting to and from Brooklyn Heights and other neighborhoods, not limit them. For every parking space that’s no longer available for cars, the neighborhood will gain many more public bicycle docks. Siting the stations in the street will preserve a much more important commodity than car storage: the neighborhood’s scarce sidewalk space.

To help ensure that rationality prevails, head to tonight’s meeting, to be held at 6 p.m. in the Founders Hall Auditorium at St. Francis College, 180 Remsen St.

The City Council has concluded it cannot require NYPD to fully investigate traffic crashes, despite indications that current department protocols may violate state law.

Investigations into the deaths of Stefanos Tsigrimanis and Clara Heyworth were compromised by the NYPD "likely to die" policy.

In March, Council Member Steve Levin sent a letter to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly questioning the practice of assigning the Accident Investigation Squad only in instances where someone is killed or is believed likely to die. Currently, crashes that result in injuries that are not considered fatal are handled by precinct cops who are not trained to conduct full-scale investigations. According to testimony presented at the February council hearing on NYPD traffic enforcement, held three months ago today, that policy is inconsistent with state traffic code.

Wrote Levin: “As [a full] investigation is only authorized to be carried out by AIS and as AIS limits itself to the investigations of those accidents in which one has either died or is deemed likely to die instead of all accidents that result in serious injury, I do not see how the NYPD can reasonably claim to be in compliance with Article 22, Section 603-A of the New York Vehicle and Traffic Rules.”

While requesting that Kelly initiate a change in the “likely to die” rule, Levin was also preparing legislation to amend the NYPD patrol handbook to conform to state law. However, according to a Levin spokesperson, “The bill will move forward as a resolution because it has been determined that the City Council does not have jurisdiction to amend the NYPD Patrolman’s handbook.”

Delayed AIS deployment in cases where injuries were initially not thought to be life-threatening has severely compromised fatal crash investigations. When a doctor told officers that cyclist Stefanos Tsigrimanis wasn’t in mortal danger after he was hit by a driver in Brooklyn, AIS did not return to the scene for 46 days. Because NYPD did not know that Brooklyn pedestrian Clara Heyworth had died after she was struck by an unlicensed driver who was believed to be drunk, AIS was not dispatched until at least three days after the crash.

“Council Member Levin does hope that the NYPD is responsive to the resolution and recognizes the need to more vigorously investigate accidents involving pedestrians, cyclists and motorists,” the spokesperson said.

Another nascent bill mandating that at least five officers per precinct be trained to conduct AIS-scale investigations will also take the form of a resolution, according to the spokesperson.

Other issues raised at the February hearing, both pertaining to public disclosure, will be addressed through legislation. One bill would require that the names and contact information of each precinct’s traffic safety officer be posted online.

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Publicly backed sports arenas are always a gamble. Sold as a way to attract investment and energy, they can become big public liabilities, draining money for more essential services.

The Nationals' new stadium has turned a dead urban zone into a hotspot. Photo: NRDC Switchboard

But that doesn’t stop too many cities, and there are examples of places that have gambled on sports facilities and won big.

There’s a new member of that club now: Washington, DC. It’s been nearly 10 years since the city green-lighted a package of 30-year bonds for a new home for the Nationals baseball franchise in a depressed southeastern section of the city. Kaid Benfield at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Switchboard blog reports that the investment is paying off:

According to developers in the area, building didn’t really become financially feasible there until the city committed to the ballpark. Today, the neighborhood’s new projects are about 30 percent built. In addition to the new commercial properties, the area’s residential population has increased from about 1,000 to more than 3,500 and should eventually reach 16,000.

It is especially heartening that even those originally opposed to the stadium like what they see. Neighborhood resident Naomi Monk was a prominent skeptic, arguing that the park would only be an eyesore benefiting millionaire players and businessmen, with nothing in it for low-income residents. But in March she told Fisher that “I have to say, it’s been for the betterment of the community. Our crime seems to be under control. The neighborhood looks 100 percent better. The new housing is a great improvement.”

I’m not going to make a broader point about the extent to which public investment in sports is a good thing. It’s likely situational and, though it has been enormously beneficial here in Washington twice (though in the case of Verizon Center the city paid only for infrastructure), and it also appears to have been beneficial in nearby Baltimore, the facts and circumstances vary.

Benfield reports that the tax issued on big businesses to support the stadium is bringing in twice what was expected. Plus additional property taxes related to new investment have added $13 million to the city’s coffers. Nice, for a change, to see a city enjoying a windfall at this moment in history.

Elsewhere on the Network today: Bike Delaware shares a League of American Bicyclists’ report showing that one in four collisions between cyclists and cars involve cyclists being hit from behind. Bike Portland reports the city’s first open streets event of the season attracted an astounding 28,000 people. And Transit in Utah says sustainable transportation advocates need to do a better job developing sales pitches and buzz words.

A map of the coming bike-share system with circles scaled to represent the size of stations. Image: Steven Romalewski

Hungry for more bike-share maps? Yeah, us too. Thanks to Steven Romalewski, the director of the CUNY Graduate Center’s Mapping Service, we’ve got our fix.

In a post on his Spatiality blog, Romalewski uses GIS to analyze the 413 bike-share stations posted on DOT’s website so far. One map, shown above, shows each station with the size of the station displayed graphically. At a glance, you can see the number of docks per station decrease as you move away from employment centers and subway lines, or into Brooklyn and Queens. For an interactive version, click here.

Romalewski also found that the locations of the bike-share stations tracked the map of the subway system relatively closely — no surprise, since that’s where the density, destinations and demand are. Half of all stations are within one avenue block of a subway station, according to his analysis. Only 21 stations are more than a half-mile from the subway (the furthest is on the Hudson River Greenway, four avenues from the Port Authority).

In this map, the size of the circles marking bike-share stations represent the proximity to a subway station. Image: Steven Romalewski

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Photo: Niles Ray

Reader Niles Ray sends in this bird’s-eye view of bike lane construction on Eighth Avenue at 37th Street.

The extension of protected bike lanes on Eighth and Ninth Avenues was proposed by DOT last year, and won subsequent community board approval. The lanes and pedestrian islands will provide safer passage for cyclists and pedestrians north to 59th Street, providing access to the huge numbers of jobs in west Midtown.

Factoring in proximity to bike lanes, street connectivity, topography, and commuter cycling rates, the Bike Score algorithm rated Minneapolis America's most bikeable city. Image: Walk Score

The people behind Walk Score, the real estate rating service that goes by the slogan “Drive Less, Live More,” are out with a new rating system, based on hard data, that should prove useful to prospective city dwellers: Bike Score.

The company launched the Bike Score website today, using its new algorithm to rank the ten most bikeable cities in the country. (We covered their release of city rankings for transit last month.) Minneapolis ran away with the top prize with a 79 percent bikeability rating. San Francisco tied Portland for number two, despite the fact that hilliness was a factor. D.C. and New York also placed highly (while the NYC core rates very highly on Bike Score, the bike lane deserts outside the center city score quite low).

The staff of Walk Score is made up of a whole lot of bike commuters. No wonder they were excited to launch a new bikeability ranking. Photo courtesy of Walk Score

In other bikeability rating news, the League of American Bicyclists released its 2012 list of Bicycle Friendly Communities today. There’s a lot of overlap between the BFCs and the Bike Score winners, but they are compiled use vastly different methodologies. For one thing, you won’t find two of the League’s top three cycling cities on the Bike Score list because Bike Score, so far, only looks at cities with populations over 200,000. Sorry, Boulder and Davis.

Colorado and Montana did well in the League’s rankings this year. Missoula and Durango moved up to gold, and the Colorado towns of Gunnison and Aspen made it onto the list for the first year, rolling in at the silver level. Look for your city on their updated BFC list [PDF].

The League bases its BFC choices on somewhat subjective criteria. They look for the “five Es”: engineering, education, encouragement, evaluation & planning, and enforcement. Decisions are made by staff and external reviewers, in consultation with local stakeholders.

Bike Score, on the other hand, is based on pure numbers. Individual addresses are rated on a scale of 0-100 based on four factors:

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Will outsourcing parking meter operations be the path to widespread use of high-tech solutions, like the real-time sensor being piloted here in the Bronx? Might those tech improvements be paired with a commitment from the city to put an appropriate price on curbside space? Photo: Noah Kazis

New York City is still interested in contracting out the operations of its roughly 82,000 metered parking spaces, according to a report in today’s Wall Street Journal. A prime motivation, it appears, is the belief that a private company could more quickly roll out high-tech additions to the city’s parking system, such as sensors that provide real-time parking data. In the next few weeks, City Hall will put out a request for qualifications to put together a short list of potential private partners.

The city won’t be privatizing two of the most important components of parking policy with the biggest impact on transportation, however. Both the ability to set the price of a metered space and to enforce parking violations, the Wall Street Journal reported, will remain in the hands of the public sector.

The push to privatize parking meter operations stems from a broader interest in privatization under former Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith. An RFP released last February asked banks for their best ideas on what city assets and operations could be privatized, with parking specifically identified as an area of interest.

To the extent that privatizing meter operations is just an administrative decision — can a private company collect coins from and maintain parking meters more efficiently than public employees? — it’s unlikely to significantly affect the health of the city’s transportation system. It’s still reassuring that Deputy Mayor Robert Steel told the Journal that New York City had learned from the Chicago parking meter debacle and isn’t looking to use privatization as a one-shot injection of revenue.

But if the city ultimately uses outsourcing as an opportunity to bring New York’s on-street parking into the 21st century, the effects could be far-reaching. Real-time parking sensors, one technology mentioned in the article, form the underpinnings of San Francisco’s innovative SFPark system, which uses that data to price on-street parking based on demand. New York City installed its own sensors as a pilot program over the winter, but doesn’t yet have a plan for widespread deployment. Pay-by-phone technology, which saves drivers the walk and worry of feeding the meter, has proven wildly popular where implemented.

According to the Journal, New York City won’t be giving up two of the most important parking policy levers: meter rates and enforcement. Given the current state of curbside management, retaining the ability to set meter rates is a mixed blessing.

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Roosevelt Avenue west of 126th Street in Flushing, where cyclist Mireya Gomez was killed on Friday, May 11. Image: Google Maps via Gothamist

A cyclist killed Friday evening near Citi Field in Queens has been identified by NYPD as Mireya Gomez, 50.

According to reports in Gothamist and the Post, Gomez was westbound on Roosevelt Avenue at approximately 5:45 p.m. when she was struck just west of 126th Street by the driver of a Nissan Altima traveling in the same direction. Police initially identified the victim as a male in his 40s.

The driver, identified as a 50-year-old man, remained at the scene. It is unclear how he failed to see Gomez as he approached from behind at eye level in broad daylight. Nevertheless, “no criminality is suspected,” an NYPD spokesperson told Streetsblog.

There is a discussion over at Gothamist concerning dangerous conditions on Roosevelt Avenue. Another cyclist was killed at Roosevelt and 126th in 2000, and three were injured between 2007 and 2009, according to Transportation Alternatives’ CrashStat. Data show that six pedestrians were also hurt in crashes at the same intersection between 1995 and 2008.

This fatal crash occurred in the 110th Precinct. To voice your concerns about neighborhood traffic safety directly to Deputy Inspector Ronald D. Leyson, the commanding officer, head to the next precinct community council meeting. The 110th Precinct council meetings happen at 7:00 p.m. on the third Monday of the month at the New York Bethzatha Church of God at 85-20 57th Avenue in Elmhurst. Call the precinct at 718-476-9310 for information.

Gomez is one of at least two people killed in traffic in the city since Friday, with both crashes occurring in Queens. Early Sunday morning, a pedestrian was struck at Greenpoint Avenue and 46th Street in Sunnyside, in the 108th Precinct. Driver Sayesh Avedis was charged with manslaughter, homicide and DWI, according to DNAinfo. NYPD could not yet release the name of the victim.