A DOT team received a mix of gratitude and derision at Tuesday's public forum about recent pedestrian improvements in the Meatpacking District, which attracted an audience of about 100 people to the Housing Works offices on West 13th Street. It was an interesting window onto the competing interests now vying to shape what has been, from the beginning, a genuinely community-based project seeking to put pedestrians on equal footing with vehicle traffic.

Those who came to praise described the new sense of safety they feel walking around the area near Gansevoort Plaza. Those who came to scorn suggested rolling back those improvements in the hopes that livery passengers might not have to wait another minute or two to be dropped off right at their luxe destinations. The former enjoyed a two-to-one advantage over the latter among those who spoke, with much of crowd opinion resting with a sizable, aesthetically-driven middle ground -- people who professed support for street reclamation in theory, but just don't like the look of nipple bollards.

The goal of the meeting, said DOT Manhattan Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione, was to get "a sense of the overall feeling and a sense of what can be tweaked" about the project, which is slated to enter a permanent design phase this July, followed by construction the next year. There was no shortage of thoughtful ideas -- and clunkers -- for a neighborhood attempting to deal with the influx of cab and limo traffic on weekend nights. Taxi stands, anyone?

One solution for the Meatpacking District's livery congestion: taxi stands. Image: NYCDOT

On the side of preserving safety gains, longtime resident Cynthia Penney encapsulated the sentiment of many locals. "I love the fact that I can cross the street without taking my life in my hands," she said. "Judging by the crowds outside Pastis, I don't think anyone is having trouble getting here."

On the side of maximizing vehicular throughput, Andrew Winter, a representative of luxury resto/lounge tandem Vento and Level V (a favored haunt of "good-looking, well-heeled New Yorkers in their late twenties, happy about how, well, good-looking they are" says New York Mag), put it to DOT thusly: "Instead of spending money on moving these cement block things into new areas, can we focus our funds on how to get the traffic in and out much easier?"

Not that all testimony hewed to the residents-vs.-businesses pattern. Paolo Secondo, owner of the restaurant Revel on Little West 12th Street, was firmly in favor of the pedestrian improvements. "I believe that a privilege we can no longer afford in New York is to be able to arrive at a restaurant in a cab or a limo," he said, assigning blame for traffic congestion in the area to the willy-nilly pattern of livery pick-ups and drop-offs. "I would much prefer to have stands or drop-off zones." His call was bolstered by comments from a CB4 member who recounted how taxi stands had eased traffic tie-ups and quieted late-night honking in Chelsea's nightclub district.

One of the most intriguing storylines to develop was -- brace yourself -- the question of management. As Project for Public Spaces can tell you, the success of any public space depends on programming and maintenance. Someone has to care for it. The Meatpacking District, unlike Madison Square and other areas where DOT plazas have bloomed, does not have a BID to assume this role. It does have a merchants' association -- the Meatpacking District Initiative -- and here's the Catch 22: The MPDI is funded through voluntary contributions, not mandatory assessments, so if the businesses don't like the new public spaces, they don't have to pay for things like putting on events or keeping planters looking good, and perceptions of the pedestrian zones will suffer.

"People want us to fund something that our members are not pleased with," said MPDI founder David Rabin, who called for some of the pedestrian areas on Ninth Avenue to be narrowed or removed. "It is unacceptable for me to hear people say they think it's okay that it's hard to get to the Meatpacking District."

Rabin was followed immediately by Florent Morellet, one of the first restaurateurs to set up in the area and a driving force behind the public space plan. "Cabs can come to the outskirts of the neighborhood but not to the middle," he said in a plea to fellow business owners. "The concept that people can drive wherever and whenever they want is over. You're going to kill business with the old way of thinking. Don't think the old way."

Judging by much of the testimony, many of Rabin's design-conscious members would be satisfied with changes to surface appearances -- nipple bollards, apparently, offend their haute sensibilities. As one boutique owner put it, the street furniture doesn't match the "Paris-like setting" that first attracted her to the neighborhood. Finding a substitute may prove tougher than you'd think. Any device to demarcate pedestrian space will have to meet DOT traffic engineers' exacting safety standards, which the reflective tops of nipple bollards manage to achieve.

With the final design phase slated to commence this July, the Gansevoort project is one to keep an eye on. Some changes may already be in the works. We checked in with DOT the day after the meeting, and the agency said they hope to install taxi stands in the next month or two.

In a pair of votes last week, DOT's plan for a protected bike path on Eighth Avenue got the thumbs up from Community Board 2. On Tuesday, the transportation committee approved a resolution expressing support for the cycle track, and on Thursday, the full board did the same. Both votes were unanimous.

The path will run from Bank Street to 23rd Street and is also set to be reviewed by Community Board 4.

Ian Dutton, vice-chair of the CB2 transportation committee, gives credit to DOT's public outreach effort. "They printed up brochures for [the plan], and went door to door," he said. "Instead of there being more uproar, at our meeting absolutely no one was there to express concerns." The twelve attendees who spoke about the cycle track all supported it, he added.

In the resolution, CB2 requested bell bollards for pedestrian refuges and leading pedestrian intervals at some intersections. DOT has shown more openness to such suggestions than in years past, said Dutton. "It's remarkable how much they're seeking our input instead of just dictating terms. They're asking the neighborhood what they think."

According to Dutton, DOT plans to complete the cycle track by November.

Photo: NYCDOT

Less than a month ago, the Meatpacking District's Gansevoort Plaza was a chaotic free-for-all for vehicles. Today it sports a large pedestrian space lined with planters and bollards. The Open Planning Project's Lily Bernheimer snapped these photos showing the new seating and street furniture in action, two weeks after capturing the construction phase. In terms of getting a good bang for the livable streets buck, this project seems like a real winner -- a quick and inexpensive reallocation of space.

UPDATE: DOT says this phase of the project cost about $90,000, plus labor. Construction took three weeks (they're laying down crosswalks and removing the construction barrels tonight). Also, we should note, while the implementation went by in a flash, an extensive community process led up to this point, going back to meetings held in 2005 between Project for Public Spaces and local businesses and residents.

More pictures after the jump.

Peter Jackson ain't got nothing on Clarence Eckerson. Here is the third and final installment of Streetfilms' Bogotá trilogy based on the New York City Streets Renaissance team's visit with Gil Peñalosa in Colombia last September. Clarence writes:

You'll find lots of tasty video morsels including: riding some of the great ciclorutas and cycle paths, a visit to a thriving pedestrian-only street where they said it couldn't be done, a "bollard farm," mucho footage of the city's parks and public spaces and comments from the city's residents. And we couldn't resist -- just a wee bit more dance mania from the Recreovia.

If this is your first foray into Bogotá, you may want to check out these as well:

• Ciclovia Bogotá, Part I (9:41)
• Bus Rapid Transit Bogotá, Part II (7:29)
• Mark Gorton Interviews Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa (12:07)

Portland, Oregon, which has ascended the ranks of cities judged most walkable, bikable, and urbane, benefits mightily from its small 200-foot square blocks, which provide businesses more street frontage and people more streets on which to bike, cycle and walk. These short blocks did not create Oregon's and Portland's growth management and pro-transit policies, but they gave them terrain on which these policies could take root.

Contrast that to Salt Lake City. Its founder Brigham Young for some reason opted for one of the widest urban grids anywhere. (I've read he wanted teams of cattle to be able to turn around?) Its streets are laid out in a grid where each blocks is 660 feet square - which means that nine Portland blocks to fill up one Salt Lake superblock. This makes getting around Salt Lake City on foot very difficult, as I can personally attest.

New York City is somewhere in the middle, at least in Manhattan. Its numbered streets are set at a pedestrian friendly 200 feet apart while its avenues are set at a pedestrian unfriendly 800 feet apart, except where broken in two by Lexington, Madison or other mid-grid streets. This deficiency has long been noted, so if anything the city should have a set policy creating new streets when possible, and so to create shorter, more pedestrian friendly blocks.

But that is not the case. Instead the city and state often encourage one of the deadest institutions, the Superblock. Not content with blocks that are too large already, the city and state often team up to create even bigger blocks, and not even pedestrian friendly versions of those.

What exactly is a superblock? This term came into vogue in planning circles more than a half century ago to describe the then fashionable idea of demapping older street grid and creating one large blocks where before many blocks had been. It was thought that the old small blocks were outmoded, and did not fit a car-friendly culture. Jane Jacobs, among others, fired a stake into the heart of this idea, and now, theoretically at least, the superblock is dead. There are few defenders of it -- theoretically.

But practice is different than theory. Let's look at a few examples.

There's the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn. While there are a lot of reasons to criticize this project, starting with the process that seemed to reverse the normal way development of a public parcel should proceed. But when you get down to urban design of the plan itself, it has entirely too few streets. Not only does it de-map some existing ones, it doesn't pick up the possibility of creating new ones so that this big area could be divided into smaller, pedestrian friendly blocks.

The Hudson Yards Development on the Far West Side of Manhattan is still evolving and it's far from clear what exactly will emerge there. But most of the proposed plans submitted by developers for the new area atop the West Side Rail Yards show towers set in parks or plazas. They seem more appropriate to an Edge City outside Dallas than in a dense urban city. Only the Brookfield plan, in its words, "honors the Manhattan street grid" by drawing several new streets across the site, and puts an emphasis on urban style buildings that front on streets.

Brookfield's Hudson Yards project plan essentially maintains Midtown Manhattan's street grid.

Why do developers haul out the superblock so quickly when designing current projects, and why do public officials let them, despite its near death in academic circles?

One common answer these days is terrorism concerns. Setbacks for more prominent buildings are often larger now, to allow for the placement of bollards and other protective measures. But there is a certain lack of logic here. After all, most New York City buildings do not have enormous setbacks from the street, so pushing that for newer buildings hardly deprives a terrorist of potential targets.

A stronger explanation to me lies in finance and issues of political power. Large concentrations of money affect development in New York City disproportionately, and such large concentrations of money often favor having large concentrations of land to work with. While it may be a disservice to the city to have a large, island-like superblock - traffic flow is disrupted, walking and bicycling trips are made more difficult -- to the developer, a superblock allows for wide floor plates, campus-like settings and a level of land use control that would not otherwise be possible. And since the government sector is weak, large developers often end up doing what suits them first, not the public.

I'm not expecting to get rid of all superblocks. But it is a fair question whether the city should make creating a pedestrian friendly city of short blocks with buildings close to the street a priority. We have the most pedestrian oriented city in the country, but too often we chip away at its essential attributes in this regard, rather than seeking to add to them.

Photosim by Eric McNatt and Jason Lee for New York Magazine.

This piece was written by Transportation Alternatives:

On December 1, 2006, Eric Ng was riding his bike up the Hudson River Greenway. He was on his way to meet friends. He never made it, because a drunk driver named Eugenio Cidron took his life. After leaving a party at Chelsea Piers, Cidron got behind the wheel of his car and drove it on to the Greenway. Eugenio Cidron sped down the Greenway, a car-free path, for a mile at 60 miles per hour, before crashing into Eric Ng and killing him.

A little over a year ago, the government agencies that have something to say or do with the Hudson River Greenway, along with Transportation Alternatives, convened a task force to develop improvements that will reduce conflicts between drivers and Greenway users, but today little has changed on the ground. The Hudson River Greenway was never designed to have high volumes of cars and trucks crossing it. Regardless of whether or not government knew this when the biking and walking path was built, it knows it now and is often guilty of aiding and abetting the increase on driving across the path.

There are over a dozen City, State and Federal government agencies that have some say in what goes on along the Hudson River between Battery Park and 59^th Street, but no one has taken charge. On the Greenway itself, it's a jurisdictional nightmare. The State DOT designed and built the Greenway and continues to be responsible for path redesigns. The City DOT maintains and times the traffic signals along the Greenway. The Hudson River Park Trust maintains the Greenway path. The NYC Parks Department tries to ensure design consistency between this Greenway and the ones it builds and maintains around the boroughs. There are myriad groups, including the City Economic Development Corp, the MTA, the Passenger Ship Terminal, Chelsea Piers and private ferry operators (who often drive buses across the path), that weigh in on the need for driveways across the Greenway.

Each day, thousands of people in New York City head to the Hudson River Greenway on bicycle and foot. It's one of few car-free places where people can commute, exercise and feel comfortable away from the risk of traffic and motorists on our streets. The Hudson River Greenway is supposed to be a safe and protected place, yet it is not. And despite fatal crashes like Eric's, little has been done to change this.

There are a host of improvements that will reduce motorist-Greenway user conflicts, including:

• Close unnecessary driveways where motorists cross the Greenway

• Install fixed bollards where streets and driveways cross to keep drivers from driving onto the Greenway

• Narrow driveways crossing the Greenway to slow and control motorist turning movements

• Install curb extensions on streets crossing the Greenway to make pedestrian and cyclist crossing easier and safer

• Install bike lane treatment where streets and driveways cross to make drivers more aware of the Greenway and pay attention to cyclists and pedestrians

• Coordinate signal timing between the bike traffic signals on the Greenway and the motorist traffic signals on Route 9A to avoid turning conflicts

• Lower Greenway traffic signal heads to same height as pedestrian signals

• Install shades on Greenway traffic signal heads to limit motorists' view of them and reduce confusion

• Display safety messages on overhead highway signage along Route 9A warning drivers to drive safely and be aware of cyclists and pedestrians.

In a 2007 survey of bicyclists, pedestrians and drivers along the Hudson River Greenway, more than a third of Greenway users reported cars driving on the Greenway. Transportation Alternatives has identified seven crossings where motor vehicles repeatedly violate the car-free path.

• Warren Street

• Chambers Street

• West Houston Street/Pier 40 driveway

• Christopher Street

• West 17th Street/Chelsea Piers driveway exit

• West 30th Street

• West 40th Street

• West 42rd Street

With the sentence of Eric's killer handed down, the NY State Department of Transportation and NYC Department of Transportation must rededicate themselves to the immediate implementation of safety improvements to ensure this tragedy is never repeated.

Photo: Emmanuel Fuentebella for Transportation Alternatives

This scene was photographed by Flickr photographer BicyclesOnly on Saturday. Read his note below. Hopefully someone will ask members of Manhattan Community Board 8's transportation committee if this sort of car crash meets their rigorous aesthetic standards. Last January, CB8 rejected a proposal to physically protect Park Avenue's pedestrian refuge areas because they didn't think bollards, barriers or planters could be made to look pretty enough. Streetsblog readers will also remember CB8's transportation committee as the group that tried to kill DOT's crosstown bike route plan for the Upper East Side last summer. It looks like CB8 is still trying to kill it. The 91st Street bike lane is on the agenda of their December 10 meeting: 

This guy was driving too fast in the snow and apparently drove right up onto the Park Avenue Mall at 78th St. I didn't see the collision, but there were two ambulances there and the driver was fine, so he may have hit one or more pedestrians standing on the mall.

Ironically, on January 3, 2007 the Transportation Committee of Community Board 8 rejected a proposal to erect bollards on the Park Avenue Malls to protect pedestrians against this threat. The Community Board was concerned that the bollards might detract aesthetically from Park Avenue.

The driver (pictured) tried to prevent me from taking these photos, but he found that I'm not easily intimidated. I checked out his plates and found that this isn't the only illegal thing he's done with his limo lately:

• 10 VG43 7323821939 08/24/2007 NO STANDING-EXEC. TRUCK LOADING 105.00
• 11 VG43 7839654850 Hearing Pending 10/26/2007 NO STANDING-DAY/TIME LIMITS 115.00
• 12 VG46 7326909738 Hearing Pending 10/23/2007 NO STANDING-EXEC. TRUCK LOADING 95.00

Taking bicycle infrastructure to the next level, Amsterdam traffic engineers have created a "green wave"  along Raadhuisstraat. Cyclists riding at a speed of 9 to 11 miles per hour will never have to stop at a red light. Tests show that the cyclist "green wave" is helping buses move faster and is slowing down car traffic.

This same idea has already been implemented both in Copenhagen and Odense, Denmark. The video above shows how the system works in Odense, where green lights embedded in small bollards along the road alert cyclists to speed up or slow down to avoid the red light. News from Amsterdam reports:

On average, trams become about 1.5 minutes faster and buses moving out of the city centre about three minutes. Cars moving out of the city centre become three quarters of a minute slower. The municipality did not provide data as to the effect on cyclists' speed.

Marjolein de Lange of cyclists' organisation Fietsersbond tested the green wave and found that it works most of the times. However, she points out that most cars drive faster than 18 kmph, which means that they have to wait and then accelerate again at traffic lights, increasing air pollution. She suggests introducing an 18 kmph speed limit for all road users.

With construction of the new Ninth Avenue separated bike path in Chelsea still underway it is way too early to draw any conclusions about the project. The new medians and planting beds haven't been built, the markings aren't done and DOT still needs to install new traffic signals. Once the Muni-Meters are turned on, every other block will be reserved for paid commercial parking -- deliveries only. Likewise, DOT says that it is working with the police department on ramping up enforcement but that hasn't started yet either.

In the meantime, Streetsblog is getting quite a few reports of cars and delivery trucks planting themselves in the cycle track like some sort of invasive species that has found a new niche to conquer. On Friday afternoon Streetsblog reader Mike Epstein took a stroll up the avenue and found that New York City's nascent cycle track is rapidly becoming Chelsea's most popular delivery truck unloading zone.

Given the NYPD's near total disinterest in enforcing traffic laws on behalf of cyclists and pedestrians, is it too soon for DOT to begin pricing out retractable bollards? I don't think so...

The good news: He's not double-parked.

This van would look really good impaled on a retractable bollard.

Plenty of space to park an 18-wheeler.

More good news: Lots of new bike parking too.

Photos: Mike Epstein and LFreedman500 on Flickr

Mr. Byrne, dressed in black and sporting his cool taxi-yellow bike helmet (see our previous StreetFilm here) then rode onto the stage and locked up. Moments later Hal Ruzal, NYC bicycling icon and mechanic at Bicycle Habitat, emerged from behind a curtain to pick his lock with a variety of tools. Mr. Ruzal's advice on not getting your bike stolen? "Have a bicycle lock that is real expensive, and a bicycle that's really cheap."

Danish urban designer Jan Gehl extolled the many benefits of biking in Copenhagen, where 38% of commuters ride: "This is important because if you see a pretty girl, you can easily jump off the bike and start kissing."

Mr. Byrne then introduced Jonathan Wood, the hilariously dry Deputy Chairman of the U.K.'s Warrington Cycle Campaign, who burned down the house with his "Bicycle Facility of the Month" slide show.

Here is a "Facility of the Month" example from the Warrington web site:

Keeping cycle lanes clear of parked cars is a problem the world over. This design from Mulhouse in France provides a self enforcing solution; yellow bollards have proved to be much more effective than yellow lines at deterring illegal parking.

Here in Herald Square, across from Macy's, there's a bollard-protected bike lane for one measly block. Peds are supposed to stay to the left (east) of the planters, and bikes get a few feet between the planters and the bollards. Except when it snows, apparently, in which case someone has the thoughtfulness and foresight to lay out caution tape and cones rather than actually clearing the path.

The ped walkway is partly clear, and the street has been plowed, but bikes are given the freeze. Does the plow not fit? Did the design not take into account the possibility of snow? Do the street cleaners just not care? (Or is it all of the above?) Whether it's a class I, II, or III bike route, or not a bike route at all, it's not going to be a good place to ride unless the planners, the builders, the enforcers, and the maintainers really want it to be.

• Provide pedestrians exclusive crossing time so that turning motorists have the red light while pedestrians have the walk signal. (example: Union Square NW- 17th and Broadway
• Leading Pedestrian Intervals (LPI) or "pedestrian head starts" give pedestrians the signal before motorists, better establishing their presence in the crosswalk and making them more visible to turning motorists. (example: 23rd Street and Broadway, 23rd Street and 6th Ave).
• Neckdowns -- sidewalk extensions at corners, force motorists to make slower, more accurate and safer turns (example: 29th Street and 8th Ave).
• Raised crosswalks in which the pavement under crosswalks is elevated by 4 inches, again force motorists to slow down when navigating an intersection.
• Bollards -- placing steel bollards at corners (pictured) or on two way street, placing plastic bollards where the double yellow line meets the crosswalk protect pedestrians while waiting on the sidewalk and force drivers to make safer turns (example: 12th Street and 7th Ave).

Perhaps most notable, the T.A. press release also says that there were 170 pedestrian fatalities in New York City in 2006, a 7 percent increase over the previous year. DOT has not responded to requests to verify that number. Outgoing DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall touts improving pedestrian safety as one of the major accomplishments of her tenure.

With all the talk about high level personnel changes at the DOT, let's take it back to the streets for a minute, shall we? As we have already noted, Chinatown has gotten a buffered bike lane on Grand Street, which is fantastic, and would be even more fantastic if it wasn't treated as a car parking lane. But that is not the only recent change to the Chinatown streetscape.

I am pleased to see all the traffic calming, or at least traffic channeling, improvements that have been put up in Chinatown. The double yellow lines in the center of the Bowery and Chrystie Street have been given visual reinforcements -- bollards that keep cars from swerving into lanes of oncoming traffic and alert drivers to the fact that they are in a heavy pedestrian zone.

Here are some more photos.

In a way, however, all these large bright orange devices sort of mar the streetscape, scalding the retina of the slow pedestrian. But their presence also indicates what traffic is around major bridge approaches: Romper Room.

Peter Hornbeck was killed on January 10th 2004 in a horrific hit and run crash on 96th and Park Avenue. The driver who killed him was speeding, had his license already revoked for prior speeding and the vehicle itself was stolen. The site of his death will be the memorial site for all pedestrians killed on city streets this Sunday at 1:30pm.

Last night I attended Community Board 8's Transportation Committee meeting to propose the installation of basic pedestrian protections on the Park Avenue medians. As reported in this morning's New York Sun, the idea was rejected for a variety of reasons. "Longtime neighborhood residents," the Sun reports, "said they hated to sacrifice the aesthetics of a landmark city street for a safety issue they felt was no big concern.

While I certainly don't expect Park Avenue's median to be restored to its verdant, pre-1922 width any time soon, the photo above illustrates the absurdity of pitting streetscape aesthetics against pedestrian safety. Clearly, Park Avenue was once a whole lot more beautiful and a whole lot more safe than it is today as a roaring six-lane parkway. As we've written before, there are lots of ways to make a street safer for pedestrians. Even bollards, the most basic and functional of pedestrian safety measures don't have to be ugly.

Peter Hornbeck's fiancee Rachael Myers volunteered to speak at the meeting. Rachael was walking with Peter the night that he was killed. With Rachael's permission, I thought I would share with you what she said last night since it had a deep impact on me and many other people in the room:

In an article published in the New York Times this past week on the issue of installing barriers at the Park Avenue medians, it was reported that some residents were surprised that this issue had emerged. After all, only one person was killed while crossing Park Avenue in 2003 and another in 2004.

As the girlfriend of the person killed in 2004 and a witness to the crash, I can tell you that one person is too many. What exactly are we willing to sacrifice for the "touch of Paris" look of the medians on Park Avenue? Are we willing to sacrifice two human beings?

Those of us that were close to Peter will feel that loss forever. But the loss to our community is something that we will never know and never be able to calculate. Pete spent his free time volunteering to care for homeless dogs at a local animal shelter on East 92^nd street. He was an outspoken environmentalist who was returning to graduate school at Hunter so that he could teach Earth Science to high school students. We will never know how he would have touched these lives if given the opportunity. It is important to try to keep this in mind when looking at statistics and numbers and trying make a cost/benefit analysis.

Some may think that we can solve this problem through increased traffic enforcement, and that is certainly part of the solution, but police cannot be everywhere at all times. In this case, the driver's record indicates that he had little respect for police and traffic laws. He not only was driving a car that was uninsured and reported stolen, his driver's license had been revoked due to prior speeding infractions. All previous efforts by the police to get this driver off the road were ineffective. When such drivers refuse to stay off the road, our only hope is that traffic-calming measures and pedestrian-friendly street design will be in place to protect our fellow citizens.

I can assure you that even if the proposed median barriers protect only one person in the future, it will be worth it. Not only for the friends and family, but for the countless lives who are affected by just one individual; it will be worth it for the entire community.

While we failed to win Community Board support for new pedestrian protections on the Park Avenue medians last night, Rachael's statement made a difference, we got the discussion started, and this issue isn't going away. Hopefully we can make some changes happen before the next horrific headline.

Photo: New York Historical Society via Jeff Prant

On the evening of Saturday, January 10, 2004, Peter Hornbeck, 26, stepped off the curb at Park Avenue and 96th Street and was struck by a Chevy Suburban traveling 74 miles per hour. The SUV, being driven by a 26-year-old man from Queens who had had his license revoked years earlier, dragged Hornbeck for a block as Hornbeck's friends cried out in horror. The driver, Gurpreet Oberoi, sped off, ditched his SUV and continued by bus to Atlantic City, where he spent the night gambling. Oberoi's friends stayed in the city, went to the police and called Oberoi on his cell phone to urge him to turn himself in. Oberoi was arrested (NYT Select, 2nd item) days later and sentenced (NYT Select) to up to nine years in prison for second degree manslaughter.

In what is something of a success, there has not been a single pedestrian death on Park Avenue between 59th and 96th Streets since that one. But there was a recent near miss in Morningside Heights, where a cab crashed into the three-foot-tall concrete wall on the median at Broadway and 114th Street:

"That wall is the only thing that kept the taxi driver from killing any pedestrians," Detective Bob Winton said. "He was traveling at 40 or 50 miles per hour-anyone crossing the street would have been killed."

Today, the New York Times has a report about Streetsblog's own Glenn McAnanama, an Upper East Side resident, who is asking his community board to approve similar concrete walls or metal bollards for the Park Avenue malls:

A spokesman for the Parks Department, which has jurisdiction over the malls, said the department had little information about the idea. A Transportation Department spokeswoman, Kay Sarlin, said that the malls themselves "provide a safe refuge" and that the agency considered bollards unnecessary.

Margaret Ternes, the executive director of the Fund for Park Avenue, said that she is not necessarily opposed to the idea but is baffled by the emergence of the issue, since she could remember few accidents involving pedestrians crossing Park Avenue. According to the Department of Transportation, one pedestrian died on Park Avenue between 59th and 96th Streets in 2003, one in 2004, and none since.

The bollard issue emerged right here on Streetsblog, where Aaron Naparstek showed in October 2005 that bollards protect pay phones and fire hydrants throughout the city, but rarely are used where people are likely to stand. It isn't just Park Avenue where opportunities to improve pedestrian safety exist. Here's a photo of Park Row next to City Hall.

Notice the bollards protecting the hydrant from errant motorists while people waiting on the refuge island are vulnerable. It is great to see Glenn taking the lead and setting the agenda on pedestrian safety, even if others find this baffling.

(Photo credits: Top: Daniella Zalcman/Columbia Spectator and Flickr; Bottom: Aaron Donovan/Streetsblog)

Watch as scofflaw motorists try to sneak into an express bus lane and are impaled on high-tech retractable bollards...

Thanks to David Snetman for the link.

Yesterday morning, the driver of an SUV fleeing a minor fender bender drove up on the sidewalk on Flatbush Avenue and mowed down a mother and her three children from behind, killing a 5-year-old. Then she tried to drive off. The aftermath of this crash was so horrific, even the firefighters were in tears. The New York Times reports:

As the mother lay bleeding on the rain-slick sidewalk, screaming and moaning in pain, witnesses said they could see her staring at her fatally injured son. Bookbags and shoes were scattered about. The driver of the Explorer, Bertilde Gabriel, 52, kept going down the sidewalk along Flatbush Avenue in Flatbush until she was forced to stop when at least one driver who had seen the accident cut off her vehicle, witnesses said.

But it was the last line of today's Daily News story really caught my attention:

The mom and kids were hit near Flatbush Ave. and Glenwood Road - the site of 35 pedestrian injuries in the past 10 years, according to the watchdog group Transportation Alternatives. The group called the intersection one of the most dangerous in the city - an assessment city officials denied.

The denial is mysterious. As the Crashstat map above illustrates this entire section of Flatbush, Brooklyn is the scene of frequent motor vehicle carnage. Additionally, according to DOT crash data that Transportation Alternatives received from a Freedom of Information Law request earlier this year, during the three year period between 2002 and 2004 Flatbush and Glenwood averaged 6.3 pedestrians struck per year. This places the intersection within the 99th percentile for most dangerous signalized intersections in New York City, according to TransAlt.

What might DOT do to protect pedestrians at these known dangerous intersections? Yesterday we published a photo of a car crash scene just a bit further up Flatbush Avenue at Grand Army Plaza. Though the car easily could have careened into a pedestrian crossing heavily traveled by stroller-pushing moms, there was no accompanying story of tragedy because this section of sidewalk is protected by steel bollards.

While city government can't prevent or be held responsible for every act of motor vehicle mayhem on New York City streets, there is a lot that the city can do to reduce risks to pedestrians. That won't start getting done if officials are in denial and refuse to acknowledge their own data.

The scene on Monday morning at the pedestrian refuge island in the middle of Flatbush Avenue between Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Public Library.

The bollards this guy smashed into surround the infamous pedestrian refuge island where the "little walk man" beckons people into the middle of Flatbush Avenue and then sadistically traps them there as heavy traffic flies by on both sides. Some say that DOT has made some improvements in the signal timing at this intersection. Others say it hasn't changed. Calls to DOT on this question have gone unanswered for about two weeks now. More:

• Pedestrians, Cyclists Demand a Safer GAP (TransAlt)
• DOT Reconstructs Grand Army Plaza Traffic Island (NYC.gov)
• Bollards: Making NYC's Streets Safe for Hydrants & Pay Phones (Streetsblog)

The barriers were often ugly and almost always stole vast tracts of sidewalk space from the public. Meanwhile, their security benefit was usually questionable. While annexing public space from the city's pedestrians the bollards did absolutely nothing to prevent a rental truck filled with explosives from rolling freely into Midtown (a camera-based congestion charging system like London's might help with that, however).

Jeff Zupan of the Regional Plan Association raised the issue here on Streetsblog in July with his short photo series of sidewalk-blocking bollards (here and here). He also wrote an excellent essay, Bombs, Barriers and Bollards for the RPA's Spotlight on the Region newsletter.

Five years after September 11th, the City has responded. Saturday's New York Times reports:

After evaluations by the New York Police Department, the city's Department of Transportation has demanded that many of the planters and concrete traffic medians known as jersey barriers be taken away. So far, barriers have been removed at 30 buildings out of an estimated 50 to 70 in the city.

Officials found that the barriers obstructed pedestrian flow and, in the case of planters, often ended up being used as giant ashtrays. Counterterrorism experts also concluded that in terms of safety, some of the barriers, which building owners put in of their own accord, might do more harm than good.

"Wherever possible, we want to avoid the appearance that the city is under siege or unwelcoming," Iris Weinshall, the city's transportation commissioner said in an e-mail message.

Photo: Jeff Zupan.