Your peeps did a piss-poor job of organizing the Union Square neighborhood against DoT, if last night is any indication. Opponents of the DoT’s Union Square plan bitched endlessly about the bad process and bad-faith motives of DoT, but you convinced your community board, to a one, that you are a bunch of obstructionists with no interest in constructively engaging to help improve the neighborhood. The fear-mongering, distortions and outright lies of the opponents to the plan literally drove the few remaining Community Board members who had questions about the process into the DoT’s arms, proclaiming “I trust the DoT.” Made the job of the plan proponents even easier than it would have been. Way to go!

It turns out that Ian may have been exaggerating the data. Crashstat shows only one fatality – and 166 crashes resulting in injury – between 1995 and 2005. That’s an average of seventeen injuries a year. Beautiful and walkable, huh? Not that corner.

Your rants have nothing to do with standing up for beauty or walkability, or speaking truth to the power of a modern-day Bob Moses. They’re just plain old territorial pissings dressed up as a good-government crusade.

None of your references support your fatality statistics.

We’re done here.

Does anyone know where “Flatbush Ave & Flatbush Ave” is? (Listed under Brooklyn Ped Crashes)

Changing the tunnel has resulted in a 77% reduction in crashes.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/ssi09_projects/ssi09_parkavenuetunnel.pdf

Nobody has been killed since introduction of this project.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/parkavetunnel.pdf

Incidentally, these three links are also the top Google search results for “E 33rd St & Park Ave Southbound”; these are not exactly obscure documents.

DOT is putting the cart before the horse by producing a design before executing the research to support it — contrary to Planning 101.

Murray Hillers are smarter than that. And we’re not going to let this arbitrary plan get by.

As for traffic moving to other streets, that means Murray Hill streets, our neighborhood, one of the most walkable in the city, as mentioned above, just spreading the bad effects of this unconsidered plan. (Uh huh, DOT has said publicly it hasn’t studied the impacts of this plan, and is only now getting around to it.)

DOT’s already ruined Lower Park Avenue — one of the most beautiful and walkable streets in Manhattan — by closing the Grand Central approach tunnel to south-bound traffic, congesting the avenue with through-traffic. Murray Hillers are fed up with these Robert Moses-like dictates. And we’re organizing.

I once looked at an apartment on the north side of E 34th St. It was a nice apartment at a good price, but the street noise was constant and obnoxious, so I passed on it. From my perspective, the only place street noise can go in this neigborhood is down.

PLUS the concentration of buses on the north side of the street will increase noise for all apartments overlooking that side of the street, not only as the buses rumble by but as they stop and idle at the new “BRT Stations” located every block.

Murray Hill already has a 98 rating (out of 100) for walkability — perfect, according to the Brookings Institution AND 13 points HIGHER than the New York City walkability average. We don’t need — or want — this aggravation for a couple of widened sidewalks at the Empire State Building.

In addition to our other complaints (listed above), blocking our entrances during the day means doubling our service costs at night (that’s right, we have to cover increased staff AND delivery costs), putting undue burden on residents, including many of whom are retired and living on fixed incomes. And service and deliveries at night means unwelcome street noise for people who have to get to work in the morning!

The Murray Hill Neighborhood Association has formed a special sub-committee to help rally the community. We’re not going to see our area ruined and our property values evaporate for DOT’s vanity project.

Thousands of people, including elderly and children, live on the blocks from Madison Avenue to the river, and approximately 100 shops (most owned by small-scale entrepreneurs) line them.

The proposed bus lanes (and their concrete median) will block day-to-day and emergency access to apartment lobbies, service entrances, and stores.

And the BRT stations will throw off increased noise and pollution into adjacent apartments (great for cancer rates and blood pressure).

PLUS streets from 30th to 40th will suffer increased traffic — the locations for public and private schools, houses of worship, and many thousands more apartments.

This is the modern-day equivalent of the Bronx’s “One Mile” where Robert Moses, according to the “progressive” traffic planning of the time, sliced a neighborhood in two with an “expressway”, leading to its demise.

Murray Hill residents are aghast and will make their displeasure to the Mayor, the Borough President, City Council President, Council Representative, and Congressman very clear.

http://www.leparisien.fr/home/info/vivremieux/articles/A-PARIS-LE-PIEGE-DES-COULOIRS-DE-BUS-INTERDITS_298491735

It looks like the shared bus/bike lanes contributed to the problem. Or rather, the fact that it’s not well-marked when cyclists are not allowed in a shared lane, as in this lane, because it’s too narrow for a bus to pass a cyclist.