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.

Bronx

• Information
• Application [PDF]
  

Brooklyn

• Information
• Application [Word]

Manhattan

• Information
• Application [PDF]
  

Queens

• Information
• Applications must be picked up at 120-55 Queens Boulevard, Kew Gardens, NY 11424
  

Staten Island

• Information
• Application [PDF]

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."

How many of these ideas will actually happen? In the immediate future, generating higher parking turnover seems like a safe bet. "The first thing we'll see is parking meters switched out for Muni meters that accept credit cards," said Adler. "I think we'll see the cost of parking rise on Columbus Avenue, and on Broadway and Amsterdam as well."

Also fairly likely in the short-term, she said, are painted neckdowns, more bike racks, and leading pedestrian intervals.

As for the more ambitious infrastructure changes, Adler said her hopes for the immediate future have been "scaled back," even though she believes the BID's report fits well with the goals of PlaNYC. "We're waiting to hear from DOT," she said. "We had hoped to get a traffic-protected bike lane, but it doesn't appear that that's going to happen anytime soon. I do think that all of these things will eventually have to be implemented in New York City, but not as fast as we had hoped."

The BID will present the report to the transportation committee and green committee of Community Board 7 on Monday night. They will be seeking a letter of support, not a vote.

You can voice your support for a more livable Columbus Avenue to CB7, Monday the 24th at 7 p.m. The meeting is at 250 W 87th Street, on the second floor.

Photo and simulation: Carly Clark 

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.

Hours: We are looking for someone who can commit a minimum of 20 hours per week and can focus intensively on this project for the next four to six weeks.

Pay: A rate of $20 per hour or we can work out payment on a per article, per word or per week basis. Let's discuss.

• Jan Gehl, Danish urban designer
• Ciclovia
• Woonerf
• Milennium Park Bike Station, Chicago
• Park(ing) Day
• Enrique Penalosa
• A complete list of all known public bike-sharing programs
• The Velib bike-sharing program in Paris, France
• Chicanes
• Le Mobilien
• Hans Monderman
• TransMilenio
• Donald Shoup
  
• Cheonggyecheon River Highway removal project, Seoul, South Korea
• Physically Separated Bike Lanes
• Christine Berthet of the Clinton / Hell's Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition
• CHEKPEDS: The Clinton / Hell's Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition
• Mode Shift
• Curbside Vacancy Rates
  
• Transit-Oriented Development
• Ghost Bikes
• Las Ramblas, Barcelona, Spain
• Traffic Justice
• Vauban, Freiburg, Germany
• VMT
• London Mayor Ken Livingstone
• Janette Sadik-Khan

If the gestalt of this list is immediately clear to you and you have professional writing and editing experience and you can devote at least 20 hours a week to this project for the next four weeks (and you may be interested in editing Streetswiki as a full-time job), send a cover letter, resume and clips to aaron [at] streetsblog [dot] org. Please write, "Streetswiki" in the subject line of your e-mail.

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.

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.

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

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.

This web site would be a far less interesting and informative place without all of the people who take time to send in tips and contribute to the comments section and we are really proud of the relatively high level of discussion that we've got going here.

So, if you've been a part of the movement or a contributor to the blog, come on over to The Open Planning Project office this Friday after work and hoist a pint to a pretty remarkable year's worth of advocacy. Shoot an e-mail to tips@streetsblog.org as an RSVP, if you would. Here are the details:

Streetsblog Birthday Party
Friday, June 15th, 2007
6:30 pm - 9:00 pm

The Open Planning Project
349 W. 12th Street, 3rd Floor
in Manhattan, between Greenwich & Hudson Streets

Drinks, snacks and hanging out on the deck if the weather allows for it.

Oh, yeah: Here is Streetsblog's first official post, "The $46 Million Parking Perk." It went online on Friday, June 16, 2006. Note that we still have some work to do on this issue.

A Livable Streets Discussion and Happy Hour
Wednesday, March 28th, 6:30 pm @ The Tank
279 Church Street, downstairs

At 7 o'clock, leaders from a few organizations will introduce themselves and say a few brief words about their current activities:

• Aaron Naparstek, Streetsblog
• Sean Clifford, Streetfilms
• Jasper Goldman, Municipal Art Society
• Nick Grossman, The Open Planning Project