Streetsblog New York City

If you want to see more of this, and less of this, at the community board level, Transportation Alternatives is making it easier to apply for a spot on your own neighborhood CB.

Next Monday, November 24, TA will host the "Community Board Join-Up Jammy-Jam" at the offices of The Open Planning Project. There will be snacks, drinks, and short presentations on community board membership (and "why it rocks"). TA staffers will be on hand to field questions, along with a notary to make your app official.

RSVP (through Monday) to Elena at volunteer[at]transalt[dot]org or 646-873-6036.

WHAT: Community Board Join-Up Jammy-Jam

WHERE: The Open Planning Project, 349 W 12th St, #3 (1st Floor), Manhattan

WHEN: Monday, November 24, 6:00-9:00 p.m.

If you can't make the party, or want to get a head start, application info for all boroughs is after the jump.

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Planning to do something fun this Saturday at Summer Streets? Let us know! 

We'd like to help facilitate the planning of ad-hoc events along the route. Did you realize that most of the side streets adjacent to the route are also closed? So there's plenty of room to, say, organize a game of stickball. 

We've started a Livable Streets Group: "Summer Streets 2008."  There's a discussion going there, so join the group, sign up for the mailing list and toss around ideas with other readers, or post ideas for activities on the wiki.

If, for example, you're interested in stickballing with TOPP staff and Streetsblog editors, meet at Union Square by the Gandhi Statue at 10 a.m.   We've also heard of demand for more kids activities, so if you know of anything, add it to the list.

We hope to see you out there!

Photo of Robert Burghardt mural: wallyg/Flickr

The World Carfree Network's Towards Carfree Cities conference is underway in Portland, Oregon this week. Now in its eight year, it's the first time the event has come to North America. Streetsblog EIC Aaron Naparstek made the trip, along with others from The Open Planning Project Livable Streets crew.

TOPP's Nick Grossman is live-blogging the conference, and if we can get Aaron off his rental bike we'll have coverage on Streetsblog as well.

Photo: Nick Grossman 

As a candidate for a livable streets makeover, Columbus Avenue is a no-brainer. A block from Central Park, it is home to the American Museum of Natural History and sports a string of active ground floor businesses, but the street itself is a classically car-oriented corridor: three moving lanes sandwiched between two parking lanes. The Columbus Avenue BID has been working with Project for Public Spaces to make the street itself more of a destination -- to create a walkable, transit-oriented "spine" running from the museum to Lincoln Center on Broadway.

The photo-simulation you see above, produced by the Open Planning Project, depicts the re-envisioned Columbus Avenue at the corner of 72nd Street (download the whole report). The main feature, on the left side of the street, is a physically separated bike-and-bus lane, which is accompanied by textured crosswalks, corner bump outs, and additional bike parking. Here's how this intersection looks today:

"We hope to become a model district for the city of New York," said Barbara Adler, executive director of the BID. "We've been trying to make Columbus Ave as environmentally-friendly and pedestrian-, worker-, and resident-friendly as possible. This report is a compendium of ideas that could happen if we lived in a perfect world."

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Description: As a part of Streetsblog's impending redesign we are launching a new web site called Streetswiki. Streetswiki is a free, web-based, community-created encyclopedia dedicated to sharing knowledge about sustainable transportation policies, practices and ideas from around the world. Like Wikipedia, its articles will be written and edited by anyone with a bit of unique knowledge and access to the Internet. Through Streetswiki, we hope to provide a means for Livable Streets practitioners in cities around the world to share information, ideas and best practices.

The Open Planning Project, the publisher of Streetsblog and Streetfilms, is seeking to hire one or more writers to help get Streetswiki off the ground. Our goal is to have a healthy number of Streetswiki articles written and published when the new site launches this spring. As such, we are looking for individuals with professional writing or editing experience and a background in urban planning, transportation policy or livable streets advocacy to help us seed Streetswiki.

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You may have noticed the new tab at the top of Streetsblog and StreetFilms with a link to NYCstreets. If you haven't checked it out yet, it's worth a look. NYCstreets is a place where people interested in improving New York City's streets and public spaces can find online tools, resources and, most importantly -- other people -- to help get organized and make change happen.

NYCstreets is part social network, part directory of local Livable Streets initiatives and part project management tool box for civic groups. It is the latest  example of the open source community-building tools being developed by Streetsblog's non-profit, parent organization, The Open Planning Project.

Here is what you can do on NYCstreets:

• Join an existing Livable Streets project: There are already a bunch of Livable Streets initiatives up and running. Find one in your neighborhood or area of interest, join up and get involved.
  

• Create a new project: Write up a description of a project that you would like to get done in your own neighborhood and use NYCstreets tools -- wiki pages, blogs, mailing lists, and a collaborative to-do list -- to organize your campaign.
  
• Sign up and create a profile: Simply join New York City's growing community of Livable Streets advocates by creating an a profile on NYCstreets. In 2008 we'll be launching a redesign of Streetsblog and StreetFilms that will integrate NYCstreets member profiles. When you leave a comment on Streetsblog, for example, it will link back to your NYCstreets profile and the various projects you're involved in.
  

More on the way: We're busy adding new features to NYCstreets, and will be rolling them out steadily over the coming months. One feature to look out for is our forthcoming NYCstreets Map. Do you need a wider sidewalk, traffic-calming device, improved bike lane or have an idea for how Brooklyn's entire bus network should be re-routed? You'll be able to pin your concept to the NYCstreets Map and get the conversation started.

We need your help: NYCstreets is still in development. To make these tools as useful and powerful as possible, we need intrepid Livable Streets advocates to jump in and begin using them. Your help and your feedback is absolutely essential. We look forward to seeing you on NYCstreets and hope to hear from you.

In the first of many shorts we will present over consecutive days, The Open Planning Project's Executive Director Mark Gorton tours the streets of the Upper West Side with neighbor Lisa Sladkus pointing out problems in advance of the November 6 Streets Renaissance Workshop with Jan Gehl. Today's topic is: Double Parking.

Parking policy is one of the biggest challenges that faces New York City and the rest of the U.S. In this related StreetFilm, Donald Shoup explains how responsible pricing can solve the woes of double parking and pollution, while raising revenues that can be re-invested in communities.

Evicted from their Park(ing) Day spot by the 78th Precinct last month, Park Slope Neighbors (with the PD's permission) observed the event over the weekend. StreetFilms' new producer Elizabeth Press was there, talking to participants, passers-by and motorists who support human-oriented use of valuable public space.

There will be a Park(ing) Day celebration tonight in lower Manhattan, hosted by The Open Planning Project and Transportation Alternatives. Don't forget to RSVP.

Please join the NYCSR and The Open Planning Project as we present an enlightening cross-section of our best work featuring twenty of our short films at the Pioneer Theater on Tuesday, July 10 at 7 PM. The program will run about 85 minutes in length and all tickets will include a free pizza and drinks reception downstairs in the Den of Cin.

This should be a great night of advocacy, conversation, feedback and fun with special guests. It is amazing how far the city has come in a short time, and together we can continue the quest for a more livable city.

The theater only holds 99 people so please buy your tickets ahead of time. You can buy tickets here.

Tuesday, July 10th 7pm
Two Boots Pioneer Theater
155 East 3rd Street
New York, NY 10009

The "Triboro RX" and New Transit Riders by Origin (Michael Frumin, 2007)

For the Regional Plan Association, Michael Frumin visualized their plan for a rapid transit line in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx that could be built almost entirely on pre-existing rail and would connect with at least twenty existing subway lines. The "Triboro RX", which originated in the 1996 Third Regional Plan, could provide effective transit between these boroughs at a fraction of the cost of most transit projects.

Working with Jeff Zupan and Alexis Perrotta, I helped to develop a possible alignment for the Triboro RX, and a crude estimate of what levels of initial commuter ridership one could expect to see if it were built. At the end of the day, we can comfortably say that at least 76,000 New Yorkers (including 32,000 diverting from other modes of transportation) would use the Triboro RX to get to and from their jobs every day. This number that is quite competitive with many existing lines, and without ever touching the island of Manhattan.

At the heart of our ability to make this estimate is the Journey-to-Work data published by the census -- counts of commuters between every census tract and every other census tract in the city. Given these flow data, the shape of the subway network with and without the Triboro RX, and a rough model of how people make travel decisions on public transportation, it's not so hard to guess which subway riders would use a new transit line if it were built. Estimating new transit riders is more nuanced, but we did our best with limited resources.

To create these transportation models, Frumin used one of The Open Planning Project's software projects GeoServer. Take a look at the fruits of Michael's labor:

• Interactive map of New York City, its subway system, and the Triboro RX
  
• Subway and Triboro RX in Google Earth
• The whole enchilada in Google Earth
  

How would the TRX tie into congestion pricing? The graphic above shows that the TRX would do a great job of providing mass transit to unserved communities in the outer boroughs.