Streetsblog New York City

Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson was at Town Hall on Saturday night for the New Yorker Festival's "How New Yorkers Ride Bikes," hosted by former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne. Clarence wasn't allowed to film the event so he published a nice write-up on StreetFilms. Some excerpts:

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.

Last week, we saw the sorry condition of the new on-street bike route in Times Square and thought to ourselves how much better things would be if only bikes had some truly protected turf in the Crossroads of the World. Alas, just a half-mile south, our idealistic thoughts were quashed by this depressing visage:

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.

In the wake of yet another gruesome killing of a pedestrian walking in the crosswalk with the right-of-way -- this time, a 4-year-old boy run over by a guy driving a Hummer -- Transportation Alternatives is arguing that these kinds of deaths can be prevented or, at least, made less likely, with the following five street design measures:

• 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.

A sacrifice we were willing to make: Until 1922, much of Park Avenue was, in fact, a park. Looking north on Park Ave at about 50th Street. That's Saint Bartholomew's Church on the right.

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)

Guess what Transportation Alternatives' Brooke DuBose and Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson found in Downtown Brooklyn's physically-separated bike lane on Tillary Street this morning? Cars and trucks, of course. Four of them driving, parking or unloading in the "protected" bike lane in just ten minutes of filming. Streetsbloggers who have been debating bike lane design and enjoying Bollard Porn, will appreciate Clarence's video:

Anyone who is upset about cars driving on the Hudson River Greenway or has doubts that New York City's bus rapid transit experiment will work without physical barriers to prevent motorists from driving and parking in bus lanes will find profound satisfaction in this video from Manchester, England.

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.

The green circle with the red dot in the middle marks the intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Glenwood Road where, between 1995 and 2001 there were 23 pedestrian injuries and one fatality. More recent data shows the intersection to be one of the most dangerous in New York City. Source: Crashstat.org

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)