http://www.charlesaddams.com/gallery09.html

Traffic calming through road design is much more effective and doesn't require such a high police presence.

So essentially it comes down to - we are ignoring a law breaking activity (double parking). I would love to see what he feels about bicycles riding on the sidewalk. Is that then okay too?

I don't advocate it, nor do I do it, but would seem if we should give drivers a break for double parking then cyclists should get a similar outspoken break from the Councilman.

I ride on 9th Street becuase i need to to leave my house, go to the Y, the Post Office, the library, CTown, the shoe repairman etc... when i ride on 9th street now (on a daily basis) it is always a bit chaotic - for me as a cyclist as well as for motorists and pedestrians. I think this plan would calm things down and increase safety for all invovled.

I am sure that DOT's process was not ideal. It never is and that's soemthing which should be addressed. City agenices, whether City Planning or DOT, all too often think they know what's best for a community and draw up the plans with little knowledge of what's best for a community. To me, though, this does not mean that a good, solid plan which will increase safety of motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists alike, should be shot down.

If you're up for it, I would like to get together with you either in person or on the phone to run through DOT’s 9th Street plan (if you haven't seen it), explain why I think it is such a beneficial thing for the neighborhood, and describe how it is, in my opinion, somewhat extraordinarily responsive to long-standing community concerns given DOT's history on these issues.

Shoot an email to tips@streetsblog.org if you're interested.

Also, my intent was not to attack the Community Board the other night. I wanted to make sure that they realized that 9th Street is one of the most dangerous streets in the neighborhood. Cars crash and people are hurt and killed there at an alarming rate. And by voting to "table" a very solid traffic safety plan that people have been pushing DOT to do for years and that their transportation committee approved, the Community Board was, essentially, maintaining this unacceptable status quo.

If I came across as abrasive it's probably because I was appalled that double-parking privileges and bicyclists seemed to be a far more urgent concern to Community Board members than two 5th grade boys and a 77-year-old woman who were all killed for nothing more than crossing a poorly designed street.

--Aaron

Here in Park Slope our Community Board votes down traffic calming and vehemently resists bike lanes in order to defend a "right" to double-park cars.

Meanwhile, today's Brooklyn Paper brings news that Assemblyman William Colton (D-Bensonhurst) has proposed a bill that would ban plastic bags from grocery stores.

"These plastic bags are absolutely a grave threat to the community," said Colton. "It makes no sense to use bags when we have the capability to do better for our environment."

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/30/15/30_15bagban.html

Bensonhurst may be the new Park Slope (and vice versa).

April 13, 2007

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
City Hall
New York NY 10007

RE: Cars Parked Illegally in the Bike Lane on Grand Street

Dear Mayor Bloomberg:

I am writing to complain about Captain Frank Dwyer and the police officers under his command in the Seventh Precinct, who are failing and/or refusing to enforce Traffic Regulation 4-08(e), which prohibits parking, standing or stopping motor vehicles in bike lanes.

Last year, the Department of Transportation created a new bike lane on Grand Street in the Lower East Side and Chinatown. I would like to use this bike lane to commute safely from my apartment in the East Village to my job at Civil Court at 111 Centre Street. Unfortunately, large numbers of inconsiderate motorists double park their cars in the bike lane every day, forcing me to swerve into automobile traffic and risk an accident. This situation is particularly bad during the evening rush hour between 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. between Centre Street and Pitt Street.

This afternoon while I was cycling home from work, I was nearly run down by an inattentive motorist as he pulled his car -- which was double-parked in the bike lane -- out into traffic. Even though he was at fault, he swore at me, and we got into a heated argument.

After the incident, I stopped at the Seventh Precinct police station at 19 ½ Pitt Street. There, I spoke with Officer Ortiz (Badge Number 19683). I complained that there were numerous cars in the bike lane on Grand Street, and I described my argument with the motorist. However, Officer Ortiz told me that the police department is powerless to do anything about the motorists who brazenly violate Traffic Regulation 4-08(e) with impunity on Grand Street every day.

Please contact Captain Dwyer and urge him and the officers under his command to vigorously enforce the regulation that prohibits parking, standing or stopping in bike lanes. From my point of view as a cyclist, this is an important issue of public safety. I don’t understand why the NYPD doesn’t see it that way, too.

Yours truly,

John K. Hunka

Cc: Noah Budnick, Transportation Alternatives

Maybe it would make sense for DOT to send draft proposals via the internet for posting on community board websites much earlier. People could also sign-up for to receive proposals from DOT directly. Aaron essentially did this on Streetsblog, but not very far in advance of the meeting. DOT could solicit comments to their draft and attempt to address some with their presentation. This process would give DOT the chance to tailor their presentations to community concerns and react to new ideas in a much more efficient way then the standard community meeting.

Granted, there is a digital divide issue, but this would allow people to have more time to mull over and respond.

I'd be interested to hear what the ideal process would like from people like poster 23 who supports lanes on 9th. My guess is that DOT currently has about 1/100th of the people it would need to do the level of outreach most people on this blog seek. That's why coming up with ways that use what they do have better is important.

The DOT made a presentation to your neighbors two weeks ago and this is what I heard from them at the CB6 transpo meeting:

-a threat to run over cyclists with cars, (which was met by laughter by another ninth street resident)

-the assertion that "no one" on 9th Street owns a bicycle - from a 76-year resident

-the assertion, by several people, that I should not ride on ninth street, but should take third street instead (Aside from the fact that third street is too narrow, I happen to ride my kids from PS 107 to the Ninth St. playground, baseball fields, etc, but why I choose ninth street is none of your neighbors' business)

And you tell me they're "demanding the right to participate". Please.

Arguments about "the process" are bogus. The process is what the process is; everyone agrees it could be improved. Sometimes we get a bad plan like one-way streets and we gag. Sometimes we get a good plan like 9th St. or GAP and we cheer. We should all try to improve "the process" but in the meantime we have to evaluate each plan on its merits.

According to you, we would have to reject the GAP plan too (and every DOT plan for that matter) because it was "prepackaged". Do you reject the GAP changes on the basis of process?

Re: 9th St., "process" arguments aside, what is it specifically about the plan that you dislike?

I really don't think what my neighbors and I were doing was undermining a public process because I guess that I differ with your view of what constitutes a public process.

I don't consider my making a complaint to DOT by signing a petition, then having the black box of planning at DOT spit out a prepackaged solution to cram down my throat a public process. The black box is the problem. It isn't public.

If there were a public process you wouldn't have a disenfranchised citizenry such as we do. Our feelings are legitimate. You've felt this way too at some time dealing with DOT, haven't you?

To "sell your car"

I don't own a car. I have 3 bicycles, a scooter and a skateboard. You're nasty and abusive and assume too much.

At least Council Member de Blasio recognizes that a community is made up of more than just bicyclists with Internet connections. I guess opinions from people who don't have Internet connections, maybe because they're older, or even non-cyclists, don't count?

I think that's what folks in the audience thought Aaron was suggesting the other night when he attacked the Community Board at the end of their meeting. Wonder if he'll be releasing that footage on this site.

Last year, DOT installed class II bicycle lanes on West 77th and 78th Streets. The eastbound lane terminates at an entrance to Central Park designed for but closed to motor vehicles, which is commonly used by pedestrians. The westbound lane terminates at a pedestrian entrance to Riverside Park. I use these lanes all the time I have not experienced or seen any unusual pedestrian-bicyclist conflicts or safety issues.

dartley, I agree with you on the speed limits. While a proposed *citywide* reduction to 25 MPH is politically DOA at present, imposing lower limits on particular blocks is not. DOT frequently does it near schools. In fact, a DOT school safety reports issued last fall recommended installation of a bike lane to lower speeds on Parsons Blvd., without even discussing whether cyclists needed or wanted the lane (see pages 25-26 here: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/pdf/qnbvm.pdf).

This demonstrates that DOT bike lane projects may be driven more by the need to install 200 miles of lanes by some deadline, or by local traffic calming issues, than the needs of bicyclists. The 9th Street lane discussed here has great merit from a bicycle infrastructure perspective because it connects Red Hook and Park Slope. However its value is undercut when it is delivered with assurances from the local city councilmember and precinct chief that the rules against double-parking in the bike lane will not be enforced, and even bicycling advocates attempting to soft-peddle the impact of the lanes on double parking. A Class II lane without enforcement can be more dangerous for bicyclists than no lane at all, because it concentrates bicyclists on a roadway where they will have to zip in and out of traffic to avoid parked cars.

I don't live in the Slope anymore so I don't have a vote to cast on this project, but as a general matter I think it would be better to push DOT to dig a little deeper in the traffic-calming toolbox for alternative approaches like lower speed limits, speed humps, and sidewalk widening, than propose bike lanes as a panacea for traffic calming.

Enough already. You 9th Street car owners are selfish. You want free parking, free double parking, parking in front of your house. People are getting killed and run over and you can't think beyond your right to park for free on public land. Talk about entitlement. Pathetic that DiBlasio kisses your butts instead of calling you out as selfish and unneighborly.

Talk about arrogance. A small group of your neighbors are trying to undermine a public process that has been underway since February 2004 when two little little boys were killed on your street at 3rd Avenue and three City Council members demanded that DOT make 9th Street safer.

That process gained urgency when an elderly woman was mowed down at 7th Avenue in August 2004. And the community process finally kicked DOT into action in August 2005 when a car slammed into Dizzy's and 1200 people, perhaps yourself included, signed a petition, initiated by 9th St. businesses and residents, demanding DOT to plan a safer intersection.

You live on one of the most dangerous streets in Park Slope. People have been trying to get the city to do something about it for years.

DOT doesn't do very many public planning processes. However, if you are or have been so interested in participating more fully in a public planning process then that is something that your block association could have started at any time. This blog covers numerous such efforts all around the city. We have known since at least the summer 2005 that DOT was working on this plan.

The people at DOT who developed this plan, you should know, are not the people who developed the 6/7 one-way plan. It is night and day the way these two proposals came together. We still don't know what problem the 6/7 proposal was trying to solve (well, we do. Atlantic Yards). We know exactly what problems this plan is solving (too many crashes).

There is a reason why CB6's rather conservative transpo committee voted in favor of this plan. It is really good. It makes our neighborhood streets -- your street -- safer and more functional. It accomodates all users, even cyclists. It has virtually no downside. It answers the community's concerns expressed over and over again the last few years.

There are many places within a 15 block radius of your house where we need to fight very hard right now for better community planning processes and public participation. This is one of the few places where we don't.

If DOT proposes bike lanes we must support them at all costs, right? It's okay if DOT steamrolls communities. Especially the ignorant ones like mine.

Isn't it a bit hypocritical to give carte blanche on this issue, but when the misguided engineers at DOT try to ram something else down our throats that we don't like we're the first ones to stand up and fight for our right to be heard?

You can't have it both ways. The process of planning public spaces should be a public one. Period.

Now tell me how ignorant me and my neighbors are for simply demanding the right to participate in an inclusive process.

Educate, don't browbeat. Support, don't segregate. There's more at stake here than you realize.

As with the Houston Street plan, I think there's a clear consensus in favor of traffic calming, and I hate to see it derailed by the perception of this being a "bicycle problem." If the plan instead were to widen the sidewalks, wouldn't there be a clear majority, leaving the double-parkers on the out?

The "one segment of the community" includes 1,187 people who signed a petition for improved pedestrian safety that was sitting out on the corner of 8th Ave. and 9th St. in front of Dizzy's for about two weeks. I would bet that at least 50% of the people currently complaining about DOT's plan signed the petition. That being said, if DOT had sold their plan more as a response to this community request and less as a bike plan, they'd have done 10x better and saved us from a whole lot of strife.

In this case, and unfortunately it seems fairly common, DOT came up with the plan in response to a request from one segment of the community (the Dizzy's owners and customers), but the PSCC and the Ninth Street Block Association got upset because they weren't consulted. Yes, maybe the pro-safety people could have built a broader coalition, and the DOT could have done more outreach, but I don't think that counts as "the major failure" or a sufficient reason to reject the plan.

* The major failure was in DOT not soliciting an appropriate level of feedback from residents to begin with.

Yes and no. DOT is lousy at including neighborhoods in their planning processes. They just don't do it. However, as noted on this blog, DOT's plan is a direct response to years of community requests to make 9th Street safer following tragic deaths on Third and 9th, Seventh and 9th, and 1200 signatures following a car through the front door of Dizzy's at Eighth and 9th. It is up to 9th Street residents to come to committee meetings regarding plans like these. DOT isn't going to come knock on your door.

* The fact that 9th St. is a very busy and dangerous steet for a bike lane -- There are better alternatives for bikes.

Do you actually use a bike? 9th St. has been a bike route for years and is ideal for bike lanes. It is overly broad and has very low traffic counts especially above 5th Ave. It has plenty of space for bike lanes. It basically dead-ends into Prospect Park, a major cyclist destination. There is no better street in the neighborhood for bike lanes, actually. Via Prospect Park 9th Street will create a direct bike link from Central Brooklyn to Red Hook.

* DOT's route could create more of a hazard for Prospect park pedestrian users.

Really? Could you provide us with some data or even just some anecdotal information from the Prospect Park Alliance about bikes causing all of this trouble on the park's pedestrian paths?

* DOT should not completely limit the ability to drop off or pick up passengers on both sides of the street.

This plan does not limit anyone's ability to double-park their car for pick-ups and drop-offs. Miguel: Walk over to Fifth Avenue and check out the bike lanes on that busy commercial corridor. Check out how 3rd Street residents double-park off the bike lane on street cleaning days.

* residents are asking that they review the results of the changes to make sure they haven't created a traffic back-up on our streets.

Explain how the left-turn bays on 9th Street would create back-ups anywhere? It'll be the exact same number of cars taking left turns. They'll just be doing so in a far safer way.

Miguel: You live on a beautiful block that also happens to have the most dangerous intersections in Park Slope. You are fighting a really good plan that will make your intersections safer and, to be totally crass, your property values higher. This is a huge win for you and your neighbors. Wake up.

1) It is not busy. In fact, it carries too few cars for its width. It is dangerous because it is too wide. It is dangerous--all the more reason to make it safer for cyclists. It is dangerous--all the more reason to make it safer for pedestrians.

2) Guess what? Roads do not continue forever. Sometimes they end. Hence the bike lane ends. Rather than presenting this as a problem, why not come up with some solution that would discourage cyclists from entering the pedestrian path? I have a feeling, though, that they won't design it in a way that encourages cyclists to do that.

3) The solution to the problem you present is fewer cars, not more lanes of traffic. Another solution is to change the parking regs adn or meter it as was mentioned before. Besides that, what's more important, having double parking to pick-up/drop-off elerly people and disabled people or a street that keeps them from being hit by cars?

4) See the presentation. The volume isn't there in the first place.

Your comments are a perfect example of why working with the so-called "community" is problematic. You only have a perception of problems that do not exist on a broad or long-term basis. Going to a small group of people who get involved and asking them to help design something like this comes up with solutions that benefit the small group, not necessarily the whole community. However, Aaron previously pointed to the CRISP process in London which sounds promising and interesting as a productive way to engage the community. I'd be very curious, as others have said, to see how it's worked out there.