You don't have to tell St. George to "get some grassroots going." Our civic association has a 30-year record of accomplishment, including the first historic district in the borough, representing a decade-long effort; rezoning that reflects actual use rather than highest and best use, the development of arts programs in the local elementary school; co-sponsorship of the borough's only greenmarket, and more.

At the moment, community leaders are trying to cope with tremendous residential development pressure, walking the line between encouraging such development and keeping it at a humane scale--and real estate speculation, with absentee investors snatching up even one-family houses that could easily be purchased by owner occupants--often with very negative impacts on individual blocks.

Rather than wait until it's too late to do anything--that is, after development already narrows what is possible or practical--DOT should be taking the lead here in recommending reforms that can accommodate the significant population increases we're about to absorb with very little commercial infrastructure and continued reliance on private transportation in the one Staten Island community that is well served by public transit.

Is it that the other boroughs are crying out for DOT's help, Bill, and Staten Island is not? Or is it simply that it's easier to paint the entire borough of Staten Island as a single-minded monolith that spurns any attempt at reform, per your rather dismissive (and, where St. George is concerned, inaccurate) post?

This is a very old story and once again, it's the latter. Here's the message: DOT needs to look at ways to build on what is already a fairly walkable neighborhoodd--St. George, that is--by reconsidering vehicular and pedestrian circulation and how they can be improved to accommodate the commercial and residential development planned and in the works.

What makes this sector especially worth considering is that it's smack in the middle of an area undergoing substantial revitalization, with significant private as well as public investment. A new county courthouse facility is moving toward construction just around the corner. Three large residential condominium projects are in the works, two 2 blocks away, one 3 blocks away; with others planned, promising to produce a population increase that will overwhelm an already dysfunctional commercial street.

That sector is located within the small commercial/business/government center that is Staten Island's downtown, directly west of the ferry terminal in St. George. The majority of the activity is centered in one narrow, two-block-long street--Stuyvesant Place-- that is home to two large court buildings, one large commercial building, two small commercial buildings, two apartment houses, and a collection of restaurants, bodegas, hair and nail salons, a dry cleaner, and a commercial bank.

The street is bordered on the north by a narrow and steeply hilly street, which makes truck deliveries a nightmare; and at the southern end by the same narrow triangle that has dispersed traffic since Borough Hall was erected in the first decade of the 20th century. The street is also the location where criminal suspects are delivered for trial in the Supreme Court building via a large prison bus--another traffic nightmare.

If ever a commercial street needed rethinking, redesign and reorientation, this is the one. Too bad it's in the borough whose existence the ostensibly newly progressive DOT--like its earlier incarnation--appears unable to recall.

I hope he suggests a car-free Prince Street, at least on weekends, and a car-free Broadway between Union and Madison Squares. I

No law requires that roads be planned, designed or built with bicyclists or pedestrian in mind; no law requires that localities, when they set speed limits or configure traffic signal operations, consider the needs of people who walk or bicycle; the criminal justice system gives sober motorists virtual carte blanche to kill at-will people who walk or bicycle.

And then society complains when we roll through a stop sign??!!