The bikes are fabulous but don't offer a solution for transporting children under 14.

I've heard that same thing from my Parisian friends. They say it about the Metro too. Some of them don't buy cars until they have kids.

But I don't understand why the Metro is so bad for traveling with children. Plenty of people do just fine on the New York Subway; what's different? People have been transporting kids on the Paris Metro for over a hundred years; what changed? My friends said something about the gates not being wide enough for strollers, but I don't buy it.

Vélib may not offer a solution for transporting children under 14, but clearly bikes do in general - if the streets are safe enough:

http://www.dutchbikes.us/cargobikes/

Yes. I'd relocate the buses too -- not enough room to have a 12-foot lane in each direction for bikes, wider sidewalks, and the buses as well. But looking at the street grid, and the bus map, I don't see that as a big problem.

In Midtown you have 10th and 11th Avenues, 8th and 9th, 6th and 7th (or Broadway N. of Times Square), 5th and Madison, Lex and 3rd, 1st and 2nd. Broadway/7th is an extra downtown street. The grid doesn't need it.

Looking at the bus map, NYCT could just slide the southbound 11, southbound 20, and southbound 6/7 over one avenue.

For the area of lower Manhattan from the Centre Street merge to the Brooklyn Bridge Broadway replicates Lafayette going southbound.

South of there it is a key route paired with Trinity/Church, but this role could be better played by the re-opened Greenwich Street through the WTC site, which will link up with Varick/7th. I told the LMDC that it should built a flyover near the BBT Garage to allow direct access to the BBT from there, making it idea for express buses who now do down Broadway and have to snake around.

That leaves Lafayette/4th from the Centre Street merge to Union Square, which would have to become two-way. But it runs into Park Avenue, which is also two-way. As it is, the extra uptown capacity has nowhere to go from there, because Broaday on the other side of the park is an extra downtown-only street.

The buses would be shifted to Lafayette/4th in this arrangement.

If that were the case, Paris would never have changed nearly every street within a time frame of a few years.

It would be awesome, there, in Herald Square, and in other places along the route to have more space for pedestrians, sidewalk cafes, whatever. It would definately help the retailers there.

For bicycles, the long motor vehicle-free stretch would be a way to attract novices afraid to ride in traffic. Perhaps the hotels along the route could even rent bicycles to tourists.

Lafayette/4th would have to be make two-way from the Centre Street merge to Union Square and some buses would have to be re-routed, but the grid seems to work otherwise.

The 7th/Broadway bikeway and Broadway/7th southbound roadway would meet in Times Square but not cross, leaving 34th Street/6th/Broadway as the only tough intersection. And perhaps it would be possible to redesign it to work better with no motor vehicles on Broadway.

I just got home from spending a long weekend in Denver. About 25 years ago, Denver took what I assume must have been one of the main thoroughfares in the middle of the city and turned it into the 16th Street Mall. It has since been lengthened in 2001 and again in 2001. It's off-limits to private automobile traffic; deliveries seemed to occur during off hours but generally the only traffic was frequent free shuttle buses and the occasional police car. It was a great area to spend time and was clearly the focus of the downtown area of the city, despite the lack of auto traffic. If something similar happened in the Times Square area, I think it'd be awesome.

But the usual protocol for a CB meeting is that you have to wait through a 2-3 hour, excrutiatingly boring meeting, and only get to speak in the "public session" at the very end when a lot of the CBers are looking at their watches and digging their car keys out of their pockets and heading for the exits.

One reason I'm very appreciative that Queens CB2 moved the public comment session to the beginning of the meeting.

But the usual protocol for a CB meeting is that you have to wait through a 2-3 hour, excrutiatingly boring meeting, and only get to speak in the "public session" at the very end when a lot of the CBers are looking at their watches and digging their car keys out of their pockets and heading for the exits.

A good way to start effecting change at your local level is to form (or join) a local neighborhood association, and get your like-minded friends to join also, and use it to push for the changes you want to see, working together with TA, the DOT, community board, other local groups, etc.

The process can take time because if you join an existing group, chances it will be full of motorists. I recall the perjorative term "Transportation Alternativistas" bandied about the group I joined. But, stick it out; time and history are on our side.

Reclaim the Streets!

It's also a good idea to find allies who will support you: I was amazed at the number of people who were silently, independently frustrated at the dangers on my street.

The best place to start is Transportation Alternatives. They've got staff who can identify causes of unsafe situations and make recommendations. (They can also use more money.) Neighborhood resident and business associations, the community board and elected officials can also help.

That same dynamic got us three subsidized stadia after the Olympics went down, and lots of big box stores for the affluent waived through after the City Council blocked a proposal to enable more large supermarkets adjacent to poor neighborhoods.

And, if financial considerations are going to push the transit system into the decline, all the more need for people to be able to ride bicycles.

Albany? They don't care. They don't have to. But the question is, what can they stop?

The first place to reclaim space is the same place that CP went down -- the heart of the CBD. No matter where people are biking from, that's where they will be biking to and walking in.

If Bloomberg/Quinn want to do something dramatic, how about turning 7th Avenue from Central Park to Times Square, and Broadway from Times Square to City Hall Park (and south to the Battery after Greenwich Street opens through the WTC site) over to non-motorized transport and emergency vehicles?