Hi John,

I was glad to see you writing about the NYPD’s bike crackdown in Monday’s New York Post. I hope you’ll consider following up with some more reporting on this issue in the coming days. There are lots of interesting questions to explore when it comes to bicycling and the NYPD’s enforcement of New York City traffic law. Here are two ideas I have for additional reporting if you or your colleague Sally Goldenberg are going to be regularly covering the prestigious bike beat…

1. How big a problem are these “brazen cyclists” on NYC streets anyway?
Sure, we hear a lot of bitching and moaning about bikes in the New York Post and on CBS2. But has the NYPD, DOT or anyone else ever tried to quantify the problem? How much pedestrian-endangering red light-running is there anyway? Where are the city’s biggest trouble spots when it comes to bike-ped conflict?

We know New Yorkers are being injured and killed just about every day. (Like the 21-year-old man who was run over by a dump truck illegally backing up on the Upper East Side last month while walking in the crosswalk. Did you hear about that one? The dump truck driver stayed at the scene and wasn’t drunk, so it was basically a freebie for him — a clean, legal kill as far as the NYPD is concerned. Can you imagine if he were your son or brother or colleague? Anyway… back to those damned bikes, right?) How many New Yorkers are being hurt by these “out-of-control” cyclists that you write about anyway? How big is the problem?

2. How does the NYPD measure success in these bike crackdowns?
Thanks to your big “exclusive” we know that the NYPD has written a bunch of tickets to cyclists over the last few weeks. But every time one of these crackdowns happens, we hear scores of stories about cops writing completely bogus tickets to cyclists and, in some cases, even apologizing as they do so. We know, at the end of the crackdown, the NYPD simply wants to be able to say: “See, we wrote lots of tickets. The crackdown was a success!”

But does writing a bunch of summonses — many of them bogus and tossed when challenged — actually do anything to solve this problem of “brazen cyclists” on NYC streets? The NYPD has made great strides in the last 15 years in using CompStat data analysis to enhance its policing. Do they have any similar data or analysis of traffic enforcement to help get a better handle on these out-of-control cyclists? This would be a great story! I know a lot of cyclists who would also like to see real traffic enforcement happening on NYC streets, not just bogus ticket blitzes.

As co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community organization and editor emeritus of Streetsblog.org I am more than happy to go on record and give you great quotes for your bike and transportation stories. I’ve got lots more story ideas like the ones above. Feel free to give me a call.

Thanks,

Aaron Naparstek

For all of the readers, commenters, contributors and colleagues who have made Streetsblog such a powerful tool for transportation policy reform, high-quality online community and fun and interesting job: Thank you. It's been a great four-year run.

I'd say that I'll miss you guys except I'm sure I'll still be seeing you around. I will be moving over to The Open Planning Project's board of directors and I plan to continue to write and work on livable streets issues, among other things. If you want to keep up with me, you can follow me on Twitter @naparstek. I'll be dusting off and redesigning the old Naparstek.com blog as well. And it looks like we will probably be doing a going-away party on Friday, February 5. Stay tuned for details on that.

Naturally, I've been spending some time taking stock of these last four years and I can't help but find myself amazed at how far New York City's livable streets movement has come.

It's almost hard to believe that when we started this blog, ideas like physically-separated bike lanes, car-free Times Square and bus rapid transit were mostly considered crazy or impossible in New York City. It's remarkable to recall that as recently as August 2006 we lamented the fact that the leaders of cities like London, Paris and even unglamorous Chicago were rolling out ambitious transportation reforms and long-term sustainability plans while our own mayor chortled, "We like traffic. It means economic activity. It means people coming here."

When I first pitched the idea for Streetsblog to Mark Gorton in January 2006 (almost exactly four years ago to the day), New York City's streets were improving but still, for the most part, were ruled by a 1950's traffic engineering mindset aimed at maximizing the city's capacity to accommodate motor vehicles. While other world cities were rapidly reclaiming their public realm with bike infrastructure, car-free streets, bus rapid transit and congestion pricing, New York City government still seemed to view traffic as something like the weather -- a force beyond the control of mere mortals. Though few issues touch New Yorkers lives more personally on a more regular basis, transportation was a third-tier issue at City Hall and in the local press.

Streetsblog helped to change that. We initially had four goals in mind: First, we aimed to generate more of an awareness of our issues by creating a new journalistic beat ranging from the intense, neighborhood-level battles over bike lanes to the big question of how New York City planned to address the challenges of climate change. Second, we wanted to educate and excite policy makers, press and regular citizens about the transportation and urban planning best practices that were emerging in other world cities. Third, we hoped to establish an online community and discussion forum for the people who were working on and thinking about these issues. And finally, most of all, we intended to watchdog and reform New York City's Department of Transportation. We wanted Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff and his staff reading our blog. We wanted them to feel mildly embarrassed about the way that New York City's transportation policies were lagging behind those of other cities. And we hoped to create a new, more ambitious set of expectations for what New York City's DOT could do.

And we did it. Streetsblog, in many ways, exceeded -- and continues to surpass -- the wildest expectations that Mark and I originally had for it. Today, with Janette Sadik-Khan at the helm, New York City's DOT is pushing a bold program to create "sustainable streets" through the prioritization of pedestrians, transit and bicycles. The agency is not just reformed, it is transformed, and widely considered the leading example for transportation agencies in other U.S. cities to follow. We certainly can't take all the credit for the great improvements taking place on New York City streets these days and we fully recognize that there is a whole lot of work yet to be done. But looking back at these last four years, I can't help but think of Danish urban designer Jan Gehl's oft-repeated quote: "How nice it is to wake up every morning and know that your city is a little better than it was the day before."

Likewise, it has been gratifying this last year to see Streetsblog grow and succeed in other cities. Streetsblog San Francisco is proving that the model that we created here in New York City can be just as powerful and effective in another city. Streetsblog Los Angeles is demonstrating that even a low-budget, one-man version of Streetsblog can reap substantial results. And Streetsblog Capitol Hill, the only news source covering federal transportation policy as a daily beat, is showing that we can have a tangible impact on the national level as well.

Our national blog network has also been a real eye-opener. When we launched Streetsblog in the spring of 2006 there really wasn't anything else out there quite like it aside from BikePortland.org.

Take a look at our Streetsblog Network map today. There are now more than 300 locally-oriented livable streets blogs in 45 states. Sure, the "Tea Party" movement gets all of the media attention. But I believe these 300 livable streets blogs and the tens of thousands of readers who visit them on a weekly basis represent one of the most vibrant, genuine and rapidly growing new grassroots movements underway in the United States today. It will take time -- building new communities and changing the physical design and infrastructure of existing cities is a slow process. But this is the start of a movement that is transforming the American city and the American way-of-life in some very fundamental and positive ways. Streetsblog will continue to play a critical role in spreading the ideas and connecting the people who are building this nationwide movement.

I will be leaving you in very good hands here at Streetsblog. Ben Fried will continue to edit and run the blog in New York City, with Bryan Goebel in San Francisco, Elana Schor in Washington D.C. and Damien Newton in Los Angeles. Sarah Goodyear will still be building and managing the national blog network and developing and improving our online community. Livable Streets Initiative managing director Carly Clark will be picking up the slack on the fundraising and development front, pushing ahead with plans to open up local editions of Streetsblog in new cities. Streetfilms, of course, will still be doing the great work that they do. Nick Grossman and the TOPP Labs crew will continue to do an amazing job of designing, developing and maintaining our web sites. And TOPP founder Mark Gorton will continue to provide invaluable financial support and strategic direction to the whole crew.

So, thanks again for your readership and support these last four years. As for all of you regular Streetsblog commenters -- I'm pretty sure I heard more from you these last four years than my own wife and kids. You guys all better show your faces at my party. You know who you are. Larry.

Franklin Carsford: The face of CommuterOutrage.

Every rare once in a while we used to get e-mails from readers asking us if we saw what they're saying about Streetsblog over at CommuterOutrage.com. For the most part, we didn't. We had long since concluded that CO.com didn't have much of an agenda beyond trying to get Streetsblog's attention.

There was, however, a time in the summer of 2008 when these outraged commuters managed to do just that. That's when we noticed that a comment posted by one of their authors on Streetsblog originated from an IP address that traced back to the Pentagon's Office of the Secretary of Defense. We did a little bit of digging and, for a brief, thrilling moment we thought we might just have stumbled across a secretive new blogging division of the military-industrial-automobile-sprawl complex working down the hall from Donald Rumsfeld's old lair.

If you've never heard of CommuterOutrage.com then you probably want to go ahead and skip this story. But if you ever found your blood pressure rising as you slogged through a 3,000-word CO.com blog post filled with off-the-wall assumptions, cascading series of factual errors and childish personal attacks, then read on. The following 3,000 words were written for you.

* * * * *

CO.com popped up in the spring of 2008 pseudonymously authored by three guys calling themselves Lewis Derkins, Judd Wiley and Alvin MacIntosh. Their introductory "Rant" (still available in the purgatory of Google cache) announced that they were "fed up with the buffoonery" of the "lazy politicians and inept bureaucrats" who "say we should choose to live closer to the office or find alternative means of transportation." They were outraged over having to pay for tolls, gas taxes and short-term parking at the airport. They decried "entitlement spending" and "social engineering experiments" like congestion pricing and tax credits for hybrid vehicles (As for entitlements spending on highways and social engineering experiments like exurban sprawl: No problem!) And they demanded that federal transportation dollars be spent on the "maintenance and expansion projects that benefit all of us."

If you've ever spent a bit of time in the right wing policy realm, a lot of that language will sound familiar. In the spring of 2008, lobbyists and advocates across the transportation policy realm were gearing up for the upcoming federal re-authorization. In transportation circles, the call to spend more on "maintenance and expansion" is often code for directing funds to roads, highways and the automobile-oriented status quo. You can not, after all, "expand and maintain" light rail and bus rapid systems, or walkable, bike-friendly communities or a national high speed rail system that don't exist.

CO.com was, essentially, Opposite Day Streetsblog. Day after day, its authors tried to make the case that Americans love and demand automobile sprawl, mass transit is filled with perverts and run by incompetent bureaucrats, and bike commuters are sociopathic anarchists who ought to be licensed. But more than anything, CO.com was about, well -- us. Lewis, Judd and Alvin were obsessed with Streetsblog, Transportation Alternatives and the livable streets movement. Though none of them seemed to live in New York City, they were outraged by any effort to make it a more hospitable place for pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders. And they were intent on exposing livable streets advocates as frauds, liars and socialists.

While Streetsblog-types tend to argue in a wonky, policy-oriented style, Lewis, Judd and Alvin appeared to be schooled in the Karl Rovian Swift Boat style of political discourse. Calling themselves the "Streetsblog Truth Squad," they frequently called out individual advocates by name, published their photos online, and piled on the personal insults and schoolyard taunts. Referring to advocates as "weenies" was a favorite. Few Streetsblog items escaped their wrath. Even a funny, little throw-away Streetfilm on Portland, Oregon's new bike boxes merited a lengthy "debunking" by Lewis Derkins.

There were clearly some brains behind CO.com. The writing could be smart and funny. And they certainly knew how to get under the skin of livable streets advocates. Given the intensity and frequency that Lewis, Judd and Alvin were blogging when their site first launched, it seemed conceivable that CO.com was someone's day job. They aggressively promoted their links in the comments sections of other blogs and by May 2008 they started to get some traction in local New York City media, occasionally picking up links from blogs like Queens Crap, Village Voice, Gotham Gazette and even the New York Times' City Room.

For a time, Lewis, Judd and Alvin slugged it out in Streetsblog's comments section until they deemed our automated spam filter an infringement on their First Amendment rights. Likewise, Streetsblog readers did battle in the CO.com comments section until they realized that, aside from a renowned bike crank and America's last remaining urban highway advocate, Lewis and the gang didn't actually have much of a readership. Our server stats confirmed that. Despite the constant links, CO.com drove virtually zero traffic to Streetsblog.

Then it got interesting.

On July 22, 2008 we posted an item called "Highway Funding: The Last Bastion of Socialism in America." Not surprisingly, the article's hyperbolic title outraged Lewis and Alvin and they voiced their displeasure in the Streetsblog comments section. WordPress lets us see the IP addresses of our commenters and after Alvin MacIntosh published a comment during weekday work hours we clicked through to see if it might reveal his place of employment. It did. Alvin, apparently, worked here:

OrgName: The Pentagon
OrgID: THEPEN
Address: OPN-BM, Pentagon
Address: Rm BE884
City: Washington
StateProv: DC
PostalCode: 20310
Country: US

CO.com's "Alvin MacIntosh" was blogging out of The Pentagon!

Now, that was interesting. We already had this lurking, paranoid suspicion that CO.com was, perhaps, being funded by some highway lobby interest. Could it be that a top-secret section of the U.S. Department of Defense was publishing a pro-automobile, pro-suburban sprawl web site bent on the destruction of Streetsblog? In the waning days of the George W. Bush Administration did someone at The Pentagon consider the livable streets movement a threat to national security? How cool would that be?

Excited, we called a couple of our favorite tech geeks and asked if they might be able to help us dig up any more information on Lewis, Judd and Alvin. It was summer and work was kind of slow. So, a small group of us decided to spend some time taking a closer look at CO.com.

First, we looked at their domain name registration. It was purchased on April 4, 2008 by Jamie Ramirez (name changed). It looked like Jamie initially tried to register the web site address anonymously but somehow wound up with her name on it. Though Google turned up a few Jamie Ramirez's, the one that stood out was a public relations professional at Booz Allen Hamilton. She graduated from an Ivy League college in 2002 then got a masters degree in "strategic public relations" in 2004. Prior to Booz Allen, she worked for CSC, Computer Sciences Corporation.

Next, we took a look at CO.com's source code. There we found "fcarsford" (name changed) listed as the Client I.D. on an advertising widget embedded in the web site's sidebar. That was the clue that opened the floodgates. A Google blog search for "fcarsford" uncovered a set of April 9, 2008 test blog posts on CO.com, one of them titled "Test Frank." Though the test posts had been deleted from the live web site, they still showed up in Google's cache.

So, we started poking around the Internet for a Franklin Carsford and quickly found him. According to a LinkedIn account that has since been deleted, William Franklin Carsford (name changed) graduated from the same Ivy League University as Jamie Ramirez in 2002. He studied overseas and earned a master's degree in foreign policy. He lived in a temporary corporate housing facility in Falls Church, Virginia and worked as a consultant for SAIC, Science Applications International Corporation. In 2006, Franklin Carsford was married to Jamie Ramirez.

CommuterOutrage.com, it seemed, was Franklin Carsford's web site. We had our man.

* * * * *

SAIC is one of those gigantic federal government mega-contractors that you ought to know about but probably don't. With 44,000 employees and $8 billion a year in revenue, SAIC has more individual government contracts than any other private company in America. "No Washington contractor pursues government money with more ingenuity and perseverance than SAIC," investigative journalists Donald Bartlett and James Steele wrote in a 2007 Vanity Fair article. "SAIC currently holds some 9,000 active federal contracts in all. More than a hundred of them are worth upwards of $10 million apiece. Two of them are worth more than $1 billion."

SAIC offers its federal patrons a long list of products and services related to energy, infrastructure and national security. But its big specialty is intelligence. Boasting "information dominance" as one of its areas of expertise, SAIC is one of the major players in the brave new world of government intelligence out-sourcing (Jamie Ramirez's employers, CSC and Booz Allen, are two of the others). SAIC is the National Security Agency's largest contractor, and the NSA is SAIC's single largest customer. By 2007, SAIC had "virtually replaced the National Security Agency as the primary collector of signals intelligence for the government," according to investigative journalist Tim Shorrock.

In addition to the spy-for-hire work, the government also turns to SAIC to develop media and propaganda campaigns for the U.S. military. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon selected SAIC to run its Rapid Reaction Media Team. After the invasion, the Pentagon awarded SAIC an $82 million no-bid contract to establish the Iraqi Media Network, which "quickly devolved into a mouthpiece for the Pentagon," according to Bartlett and Steele.

It seemed completely far-fetched, but could it be that some member of the highway lobby had hired SAIC to run a domestic propaganda campaign around the upcoming federal transportation re-authorization and CO.com was the result? Was this what "information dominance" looked like when applied to domestic transportation policy? Preposterous! Yet CO.com's authors suggested that we sustainable transport "weenies" had merely glimpsed the tip of the CO.com iceberg. "Trust me," Judd Wiley wrote in a July 1 comment. "We've only just started. You clowns have no idea what's coming your way."

So, we did some more digging.

* * * *

We found that in February 2008, Franklin Carsford took a course with SPS Training at EEI Communications in Alexandria, Virginia so he could learn how to use PD2, a software application used for Defense Department procurement. In his paperwork, Franklin listed his organization as "the Office of the Secretary Defense" and his email address as franklin.carsford.ctr@osd.mil.

CO.com frequently pulled photos, links and text from Transportation Alternatives' web site, so we asked T.A.'s tech guys if we could take a closer look at their server logs. We quickly noticed that someone with a Defense Department IP address often rummaged around T.A's web site in the hours prior to CO.com blog posts that used T.A. material. For example, we found that someone using a computer at this IP address: 214.16.41.245, dns1.bta.mil, had been doing Google image searches for "Wiley Norvell" just hours before Lewis Derkins published a blog post featuring a photo of T.A.'s Wiley Norvell on July 16, 2008.

BTA.MIL is the domain name for the Pentagon's Business Transformation Agency and we found that, among its thousands of federal government contracts, SAIC had a consulting team working for the Pentagon's Business Transformation Agency in Virginia. We also noticed that people who worked for the BTA often had osd.mil e-mail addresses, just like Franklin Carsford.

Was "Lewis Derkins" actually Franklin Carsford? Some of the evidence seemed to point that way. But the big question was whether CO.com was official Pentagon product or merely Franklin's hobby. If a Defense Department contractor with a specialty in "information dominance" were producing a right-wing, pro-autosprawl, climate change-denying, attack-blog bent on "exposing" the New York City livable streets movement, that was a pretty good story. If CO.com was just some bored Pentagon contractor's side-project, well, that wasn't exactly "60 Minutes" material.

Still, it was nice just to know the name of at least one of the anonymous authors behind CO.com. Even if CO.com was Franklin's hobby, it was notable that a guy who proclaimed himself to be a watchdog over waste, fraud and ineptitude was using the Defense Department's computer network and your federal tax dollars to produce his personal blog. Likewise, it was also somewhat incredible that a guy who worked for one the nation's preeminent contractors of outsourced spy services wasn't competent enough to maintain the anonymity that he so clearly desired. If this were a CO.com story, Lewis Derkins would probably write that Franklin Carsford was just another inept, money-wasting private contractor leeching off the American taxpayer.

* * * * *

While it was fun to imagine that such a thing as the military-industrial-automobile-sprawl complex existed and that it members were sitting around the Pentagon thinking about ways to counter the growing influence of Streetsblog and the livable streets movement, a number of clues piled up during our brief investigation that led us to believe that CO.com was, in the end, nothing more than a hobby for Franklin Carsford and some pals.

The first most obvious clue was the quality of the blog itself. If someone had hired CO.com's authors to advocate for more highway spending -- or anything, for that matter -- they didn't seem to be getting their money's worth. If SAIC, the nation's premier provider of private spy services was running CO.com, how were they making mistakes like the one that allowed us to openly copy that photograph of Franklin Carsford off their server? It didn't add up to a professional operation.

Lewis Derkins, in particular, came across as a desperate undergrad eager to show that he was the smartest kid in class by proving, quantitatively, how stupid everyone else was. Putting aside his inability to make an argument free of sophomoric personal attacks, Lewis's blog posts were so consistently filled with errors it would have taken a full-time fact-checker just to correct them.

We'll give you one example pulled randomly from the first post we chose. On July 2, 2008, Lewis Derkins wrote a 3,200-word term paper criticizing the "bizarre analysis" and "misinterpretation of facts" in Charles Komanoff's seminal work, "Killed by Automobile" [PDF]. Derkins wrote that from 1994 to 1997, "465 people were killed in fires in New York City. That's two and a half times more people killed in fires than all pedestrians and bicyclists killed in NYC by cars. Are we going to launch an initiative to ban ovens in kitchens to combat this menace next?"

As was often the case, if you were familiar with the subject matter that Lewis Derkins was writing about, then you noticed that his numbers were completely wrong. "Killed by Automobile" repeatedly states that 947 pedestrians and bicyclists were killed by cars between 1994 and 1997, nearly twice as many as the 465 that Derkins says were killed in fires. Lewis's assertion that fires killed two-and-a-half times more New Yorkers than cars was off by a factor of five. It's a small mistake. But CO.com blog posts were jam-packed with errors like these, one snowballing atop the next. Lewis Derkins often built entire arguments around these kinds of errors. CO.com at times seemed too amateurish to think that some corporate interest was paying for it.

There were other circumstantial clues suggesting that CO.com was probably just Franklin's hobby. Our favorite was "Kave Daat" (this name has also been changed).

We noticed that, in the early days of CO.com, a character named "Kave Daat" often showed up in the blog's comments section. In his comments, Hiss came across as a kind of bureaucratic manager caricature, like the Pointy-Haired Boss in the Dilbert cartoon, but with an inexplicable obsession for the International House of Pancakes. A typical Kave Daat comment went like this:

| Kave Daat | May 15th, 2008, 8:55 am

Lewis,

Only one complaint about your posting: Too damn long! Who has time to read all this poo at work?

Myself, Kave Daat that is, will not allow any of my staff to experience joy, happiness or the general feeling that their work matters.

I like making them change charts for no g-d damn reason, and spend my whole day managing up and kicking down.

That's the Kave Daat philosophy my friends. Use it too and you'll end up a lonely shriveled up sad excuse for a man.

G-d Bless.

SEE YOU AT IHOP.

Mr. Daat

As we were clicking around through Franklin Carsford's LinkedIn profile we noticed that Franklin was connected to a guy named Dave Kaat (identity changed) working at the Pentagon's Business Transformation Agency. Kaat's resume showed that he was older and more senior than Franklin, he was a government employee, not a contractor or consultant, and he appeared to hold a management job at the BTA.

That's when it clicked: Maybe Kaat was Franklin's boss at work. Perhaps this Kave Daat character was Franklin-and-friends way of mocking the pancake-eating, pension-earning federal employee who tasked them with making charts all day. Or perhaps Kaat was in on the joke and was one of CO.com's other authors. (Or maybe Dave Kaat has nothing to do with any of this, in which case, we apologize for mentioning your name here, Kris.) Either way, would this Dave Kaat character be making appearances in the CO.com comments section if it were an official Pentagon product?

All in all, it seemed a lot more likely that the blog was being produced by one or more SAIC consultants slogging away in obscurity at a boring, bureaucratic job in the Pentagon.

* * * * *

Unlike CO.com, if we're going to write about you on Streetsblog, we generally like to call you first, check our facts, understand where you're coming from and give you an opportunity to tell your side. So, last week we did quite a bit of reporting on this story.

Calls to SAIC's switchboard confirmed that Franklin Carsford works in the company's Intelligence Security and Technology Group. But Melissa Koskovich, an SAIC spokesperson, insisted that CO.com is not produced by the company. "I can tell you right off the bat this is nothing we'd be involved with," she said. "We might have an employee blogging during work time."

Likewise, the Department of Defense said it is not responsible for CO.com. "By definition there's nothing that we do that is 'dot com.' We are either 'dot gov' or 'dot mil,'" Pentagon spokesperson Darryn James said. "The Pentagon is a small city. There are 25,000 people working here. So, this could be some contractor working in his off time."

We reached out to Dave Kaat and Jamie Ramirez but never heard back from them. After a number of calls and e-mails, Franklin Carsford replied on Thursday to say that he had received our note and was open to a conversation. We have been unable to reach him for an interview since then. Also on Thursday, the CO.com web site was taken offline and obliterated.

So, that's it. That's the end of our story and, apparently, the end of CO.com as well. Sadly, we were unable to cobble together enough evidence to convince ourselves that CO.com was the product of an unholy alliance between the highway lobby and military intelligence and propaganda professionals. In the end, all we think we managed to do was put a name and a face on CO.com. After months of their non-stop anonymous attacks, that's kind of satisfying. CommuterOutrage.com was Franklin Carsford's blog. If nothing else, Franklin is now free to come out of hiding and add his voice to the vigorous public debate over 21st century transportation policy and urban development. May he now enjoy the same high standard of accountability that he seemed so eager to impose on others.]]> http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/12/21/what-the-heck-was-commuteroutrage-com/feed/ 48 http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/10/05/bedford-avenue-circular-saw-massacre-caught-on-tape/ http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/10/05/bedford-avenue-circular-saw-massacre-caught-on-tape/#comments Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:05:20 +0000 Aaron Naparstek http://www.streetsblog.org/?p=62351 [...]]]>

The NYPD's 94th Precinct in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is working hard to build on its reputation for being New York City's most infamous bike thieves. Too much demand for bike parking in the neighborhood? "I know what to do," says the 94's commanding officer Dennis M. Fulton. "Bust out the circular saw!"

This time Greenpoint resident Ben Running caught the whole thing on video tape. Running says the confiscated bicycles seemed to be in use:

They didn’t look like beat up bikes that had locked up there forever — they looked like they were being used,” said Ben Running, a Greenpoint resident and cyclist who filmed police removing the bikes from a street sign near the corner of North Eighth Street. “Bikes shouldn’t be removed without some kind of notice.

We're off today for Yom Kippur but here's a reminder:

Two important citywide elected positions are going to be decided in tomorrow's Democratic primary election run-off. David Yassky and John Liu are vying to be New York City's next Comptroller and Bill de Blasio and Mark Green are running for Public Advocate. Since no serious Republican opposition is expected in November's general election, the winners of tomorrow's run-off win the whole enchilada. 

If you've ever wanted to know what it feels like to be a powerful Democratic party Boss with lots of political influence, then do this on Tuesday morning September 29: Wake up, slap some suspenders over your shoulders, and stuff a cigar in your face and a pocket watch in your vest. Waddle over to your local polling place and simply cast a vote. That's it. That's all you have to do to wield serious power on Tuesday.*

Only 11 percent of registered Democrats bothered to vote in the primary two weeks ago and turnout for tomorrow's run-off is going to be absurdly low. If you are one of the few people who show up to the polls on Tuesday, your individual vote will count for a lot. You may never again have so much influence over a citywide election, so get out there and enjoy it just like Vito Lopez does. On Tuesday your one vote makes you the Boss.

Find your polling place here.

* Actually, if you really want to feel like a Democratic Boss, then you should drive to the polling place, don't walk. Once you've arrived feel free to park in front of a hydrant or in some other illegal spot. Remember: You're the Boss!

But once every eight years a New York City resident's vote really, truly matters in a big way. Tomorrow, Tuesday, September 15, is that day.

Thanks to the remnants of New York City's term-limits law, the vagaries of our one-party system, and Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau finally relinquishing office after 35 years, your single, individual vote carries disproportionate influence. Hotly contested, multi-candidate City Council seats will be won with as few as 5,000 or 6,000 votes. That's it. That's all it takes to win the job. Since the general election mostly doesn't matter in the Democrat-controlled Council, the person who is likely to represent you from January 1, 2010 through the end of 2017 will be selected tomorrow by just a few thousand Democratic primary voters. Why not be one of them?

More national heddies at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

And Al Gore and the folks at Repower America say call your U.S. Representative today because you can be sure the guys from fossil fuel-funded advocacy organizations like Newt Gingrich's American Solutions for Winning the Future have made their calls. Here's Al...

Update: The bill passed by a vote of 217 to 205. More later.

You can follow all of the action live on the committee’s web site, right now, 11:15 am EST.

To me, and I suspect no one else on earth, there is something wonderful about listening to country music playing in the cab, air conditioner running, the hum of a huge diesel engine in the background, the tranquility that comes with being in a virtual wilderness of trees and marsh, the day breaking and vibrant pink coming alive in the morning clouds — and getting to build something with each scoop of dirt.

How romantic!

And as if this story weren't weird enough already, a profile of Sanford in American Conservative magazine provides another sordid tidbit about the governor's diesel-powered meditation technique:

During Sanford's first gubernatorial campaign in 2002, an 8-year-old African-American girl wandered onto a Sanford family property on Lady's Island and drowned. A source close to the governor said she fell into a "retaining pond." Her family's lawyer, Manning Smith, called it a "pit." Other sources claim that Sanford, who owned a hydraulic excavator at the time, digs holes on his property to unwind.

DOT contractors are putting down new bike lane markings on Park Slope's Fifth Avenue this afternoon. In addition to refurbishing the original bike lane laid down in 2004 and the sharrows installed in 2006, the crews are adding reinforcements, like the chevron markings through the intersections pictured below.

It would be entirely fitting if these improvements were DOT's response to the recent complaints from a small number of merchants and the idiotic editorial that ran in the Brooklyn Paper claiming that these pavement markings -- and the cyclists who use them -- are somehow interfering with deliveries and parking on the avenue. But this is probably just regularly scheduled maintenance. Winter snow plows really do a number on these bike lanes.

You can follow me @naparstek. 

And you can follow other conference attendees at #cnu17.

We are excited to announce the official launch of Streetsblog Capitol Hill. With major transportation, climate and energy legislation coming before Congress in the next year or two we felt that it was critical to have a talented journalist down in Washington D.C. covering the issues on a daily basis. With the financial support of the Surdna Foundation and the Wallace Global Fund the Livable Streets Initiative has hired reporter Elana Schor to cover the federal beat for us. DC.Streetsblog.org (as it's known to your web browser) will be her new home. Sarah Goodyear, editor of our national blog nework, and talented writers like Ryan Avent will be contributing to Streetsblog Capitol Hill as well.

Broadly speaking, we hope to do two things with this new edition of Streetsblog. First, we aim to make it a high-quality daily source for news and analysis of federal transportation policy and related issues. We want to create a blog that is a daily must-read for the advocates, lawmakers, Congressional staffers, urban planning practitioners, policy wonks and lobbyists who are working to shape the future of America's transportation systems.

Our second goal for Streetsblog Capitol Hill is to help bring outsiders into the federal transportation policy-making process. For decades, transportation policy on Capitol Hill has mostly been an arcane, complex insiders game -- a game that's been played best by highway lobbyists. Streetsblog Capitol Hill will put locally-oriented livable streets advocates on the playing field and help them better understand the rules of the game. As the 293 bloggers who are now members of the Streetsblog Network make clear every day, a vibrant, grassroots movement for sustainable transport, smart growth and livable streets is active and growing increasingly powerful in cities and states nationwide. Streetsblog Capitol Hill will help connect these local activists to the important action taking place inside the Beltway. 

The RSS feed for Streetsblog Capitol Hill can be found here.

From: Paul White, Executive Director, Transportation Alternatives
Sent: Friday, June 05, 2009 2:48 PM
Subject: Urgent mission to save the Tour de Brooklyn

Dearest Bicycle-Savvy Denizens of the Slope and Surrounding ‘Hoods--

Our Budget rent-a-truck broke down at the corner of Smith and 9th. This truck is filled with material for this Sunday’s Tour de Brooklyn. Whomever meets me there at 5pm today to help us transfer this stuff into an operable truck gets free beer and a snack immediately afterward. Many hands will make light work!

Deal?

I need some help here! Thanks!

Sustainably yours,

Paul Steely White
Executive Director
Transportation Alternatives

This is pretty neat: The Department of Transportation just released mapping data identifying the locations of more than 97 percent of the public bike racks in New York City. The data currently contains 5,968 of the 6,100 bike racks that have been installed as part of the DOT's CityRacks program. The data is in .kml format, which can be displayed on Google Earth and similar applications.

I've lived in New York City for just about twenty years now but yesterday was my first trip to Times Square.

Sure, I've been to Times Square before. Plenty of times. But until yesterday Times Square had never ever been a destination for me. Rather, it had always been a place to avoid or, if unavoidable, a place to get in and out of as fast as possible on my way to somewhere else.

The New York City Department of Transportation's "Green Light for Midtown" plan brought me and a lot of other people to Times Square yesterday. And it kept us there. By simply removing motor vehicles from Broadway around Times and Herald Squares and inviting pedestrians in with seating, street performers, good people-watching -- and a naked cowboy -- New York City has created two great new public spaces for tourists, office workers and, yes, even jaded residents.

Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson squares off with the Naked Cowboy. Icon Parking Systems, the Cowboy's sponsor, may be one of the few businesses unhappy with the new Times Square. The Cowboy is pleased.

The space is still raw and unfinished and it'll be interesting to see how it works during the weekday, but my two young sons and I had a blast yesterday along with thousands of others. Times Square is suddenly a place worth visiting and staying a while (especially if you're a parent desperate for an easy, low-cost weekend adventure for your kids).

The Naparstek boys experience Times Square for the first time. ("Can we get a big TV on the front of our house too?")

A large part of the design’s success stems from the altered relationship between the pedestrian and the structures that frame the square. Walking down the cramped, narrow sidewalks, a visitor could never get a feel for the vastness of the place. Now, standing in the middle of Broadway, you have the sense of being in a big public room, the towering billboards and digital screens pressing in on all sides.

This adds to the intimacy of the plaza itself, which, however undefined, can now function as a genuine social space: people can mill around, ogle one another and gaze up at the city around them without the fear of being caught under the wheels of a cab.

A more personal Times Square: Sunning in the middle of Broadway.

No doubt some aspects of the new Times Square will be found to be successful and others not working all that well. Still, DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and her team already deserve a ton of credit for their willingness to experiment and innovate. During the Iris Weinshall era at DOT, the idea of removing motor vehicles from Broadway was considered a huge long-shot, a Hail Mary pass, a kind of Livable Streets Holy Grail. It was difficult to imagine a version of the New York City Dept. of Transportation that would do it. These guys and their colleagues went ahead and did it...

NYC DOT's Seth Solomonow, Janette Sadik-Khan, Andy Wiley-Schwartz, Ryan Russo and Sean Quinn at Times Square on Monday morning.

Open Planning Project executive director Mark Gorton catches some rays.

The changes underway in New York City right now are pretty breathtaking and livable streets advocates deserve some credit too. Yesterday I couldn't help but think back to a January 2005 dinner at Mark Gorton's Upper West Side apartment. Former Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa was the guest of honor. Transportation Alternatives' new executive director Paul Steely White set up the event and Jody Gorton cooked up a delicious meal for Times Square Alliance president Tim Tompkins and about fifteen advocates and civic leaders.

The topic of discussion that evening was Broadway and it's potential to be a truly great, pedestrian-only public space. Peñalosa believed it was possible and he was inspirational in laying out the vision. Project for Public Space president Fred Kent had been thinking about the idea for 30 years and he provided the historic perspective. ITDP director Walter Hook had seen pedestrian streets work all over the world and he talked about international best practices. Tompkins had to live with the daily consequences of whatever happened at Times Square and he reminded everyone of the political realities. At the time it seemed a little far-fetched, this notion that Times Square might someday be a mostly car-free space. But here we are five years later and it's happening along with lots of other good stuff.

It was from meetings like this one that the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign was born and ideas like physically separated bike lanes, car-free streets and a less automobile-dependent city were popularized and made politically possible in New York and beyond. If you've been a part of New York City's livable streets movement, today's a day to pat yourself on the back. As Danish urban designer Jan Gehl says: "How nice it is to wake up every morning and know that your city is a little better than it was the day before."

Photos: Aaron Naparstek, Brad Aaron and Nick Whitaker.

Here's the view from 45th Street looking south at about 1 pm today, about 30 minutes after the city Dept. of Transportation closed Broadway to motor vehicle traffic in Midtown. It's obviously way too soon to judge how this experiment is working but today, at least, car-free Broadway appears to be a huge hit. 

If you have any photos of your own, we'd love to see them. E-mail them to tips at streetsblog dot org or tag them "streetsblog" in Flickr.