One of these bike-share workshop participants is the star of this classic Streetfilm.

It was another evening of hands-on bike-share station planning at Manhattan Community Board 2 last night, as New Yorkers hunched over maps of SoHo and Greenwich Village, marking the best places to site bike-share kiosks.

If you live or work in the bike-share service area, you really ought to mark your calendar for the station planning meeting in your neck of the woods. There’s something very gratifying about the process that NYC DOT and Alta Bikeshare have put together for people to rate different sites. Each time you put a sticker on the map, you’re shaping the bike-share system in a small but tangible way.

The other thing is that you never know who else will show up. Last night, former Talking Heads frontman and one-time Summer Streets spokesperson David Byrne was in the house, marking up a map. If the pattern holds, it looks like Jay-Z will be on hand for the Manhattan CB 6 workshop later this month, and John Franco and John Starks might turn up at Brooklyn CB 2.

New Yorkers submitted dozens of suggestions for bike-share station locations in Chelsea alone. Next week, local residents are invited to a Community Board 4 meeting to determine where stations will go. Image: NYC DOT

When bike-share launches this summer, 10,000 new public bicycles will be available at 600 stations in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The stations will typically be located about 1,000 feet apart from each other, ensuring a quick walk to a public bike from anywhere below 79th Street and in northwest Brooklyn. The exact location of the stations — this corner or that one, on the street or on the sidewalk — is largely up to each neighborhood to decide. The hyper-local planning begins next week at a workshop for the Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen neighborhoods [PDF] and continues throughout the service area over the next two months.

Last fall, DOT officials said that public comments will help determine where to place bike-share stations. Community boards can say “the following locations are ‘hell no’ for whatever reasons,” DOT Policy Director Jon Orcutt told Manhattan CB 2 last October. The stations have to be spaced appropriately and follow certain guidelines — no stations on narrow sidewalks or in parking spaces on busy avenues, for example — but within those constraints locals will get to choose where the bikes go.

Next Tuesday, the city’s first bike-share planning workshop will take place. Hosted by Manhattan Community Board 4, State Senator Tom Duane and Assembly Member Richard Gottfried, the event will be an important opportunity for people who live or work in Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen to help shape this significant addition to the New York City streetscape. The difference between a bike-share system where most stations are on the sidewalk and one where most stations are in the curbside lane may be determined at these meetings, for example.

After Tuesday’s meeting, the next workshop will be the following week and cover Manhattan Community Board 2′s district: SoHo, Tribeca and the West Village. For a full and up-to-date listing of the workshops, including time and location, head over to DOT’s bike-share timeline.

Neighborhood residents who've fought for a safer intersection at Parkside and Ocean cheered DOT's plan when the agency unveiled it in December.

We have a late breaking addition to the Streetsblog calendar. Tonight the transportation committee of Brooklyn Community Board 14 will be discussing DOT’s plan to add more pedestrian space and realign the intersection of Parkside Avenue and Ocean Avenue at the southeast entrance to Prospect Park [PDF]. The redesign will be made possible by relocating a park loop entrance for cars from this intersection to Lincoln Road. An average of 20 people are injured in traffic at this location every year, and the project is expected to cut that number in half.

Neighborhood residents campaigned long and hard for safety improvements here, but Community Board 14 has a spotty record on livable streets. If you live in the area and want to see this project move forward, tonight’s meeting gets underway at 7:00 at 810 East 16th Street, by Avenue H.

Patsy's Pizza owner Frank Brija, right, claimed at a CB 11 meeting that protected bike lanes in East Harlem would make asthma rates worse. Photo: Jeff Mays/DNAinfo

After a misinformation campaign by two local business owners, East Harlem’s Community Board 11 rescinded its vote in support of plans for protected bike lanes along First and Second Avenue Tuesday night. The board will soon vote again on the project, which has the backing of local Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito.

Community Board 11 has already voiced its support for the protected bike lanes twice. In 2010, the community board expressed outrage over being first promised a protected lane, then having the Bloomberg administration recant. Then, this September they voted 47-3 to support the construction of the protected lanes, setting the stage for construction as soon as the spring.

But, as DNAinfo first reported, after restaurant owners Frank Brija and Erik Mayor organized against the project, the board voted to take back its most recent endorsement. The community board will vote again on the bike lanes after considering the businessmen’s arguments and hearing a new presentation from the Department of Transportation.

“They’re ready to do Occupy Milk Burger.”

Community leaders, including Mark-Viverito and CB 11 chair Matthew Washington, support the bike lanes and promised to ensure that the board has accurate information about the project.

Brija and Mayor, the owners of Patsy’s Pizza and Milk Burger, respectively, gathered signatures from 61 business owners in East Harlem. Mayor claimed that the businesses had not been contacted about the project, though DNAinfo’s Jeff Mays reports that DOT Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione said her office contacted every business along First and Second Avenues, as did the board’s district manager and transportation committee chair.

The East Side project would bring protected bike lanes and new pedestrian refuges to a neighborhood with some of the most dangerous streets and severe asthma problems in the city. Mayor and Brija threw the kitchen sink at the proposal. In addition to arguing that the lanes would remove parking spaces and be underused, Mayor and Brija claimed that the bike lanes would increase congestion and actually worsen asthma rates in the neighborhood.

“There was a lot of confusion and misinformation provided that night,” Mark-Viverito said of Tuesday’s vote. She added that she’d personally be working with the board leadership to make sure that CB members get the best information possible about the effect of bike lanes.

“I don’t see this as any sort of slowing down of the process to get the protected bike lanes we want and need in East Harlem,” she said. “The vote was not to say no to the bike lanes.”

Added Mark-Viverito’s spokesperson, “There is a strong commitment on the part of Council Member Mark-Viverito, the Department of Transportation and the Community Board to work collectively to move this forward. The Council Member is still 1,000 percent behind ensuring that we have protected bike lanes in East Harlem.” Mark-Viverito has rallied for the bike lanes on the steps of City Hall and spoken on the issue at previous community board meetings.

Washington, who voted against rescinding the board’s prior vote for the lanes, blasted bike lane opponents for using deceptive rhetoric to make their case. “People are making inaccurate statements about the project and the process and they need to be clear about what it is they are looking for,” he told DNAinfo. “The flow of misinformation is not helping anyone.”

Local residents decried the board’s decision to walk back its support for safety. “It’s not fair,” said Dina Montes, who rides in the neighborhood with her 4-year-old daughter. “They’re putting these people’s safety on hold because these two people don’t like having bike lanes in front of their shops.”

James Garcia said he’s launched a petition drive to counter Mayor and Brija’s efforts and is already receiving an enthusiastic response from his neighbors. “They’re ready to do Occupy Milk Burger,” he said. “You have these wide streets where people speed down. It becomes a hazard not only for cyclists but children and the elderly.”

Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca. Image: CBS 2

For the past few years, TA has held an annual event walking people through the process of applying for community board membership. The event is open to the public. If you go, you don’t get a seat on your community board, but you’ll come away with a better understanding of how to get appointed by your local council member and borough president.

But apparently, if you’ve demonstrated an interest in safer streets for biking and walking and better transit, you’re persona non grata to Vacca:

City Councilman James Vacca (D-Bronx), chair of the Transportation Committee and a bike-lane critic, blasted the pro-biking group’s influence peddling.

“If such a ‘jamboree’ was held by real-estate developers in any neighborhood in the city, I think there would be a hue and cry, and rightfully so,” Vacca said. “We don’t want any board to be dominated by any particular interest.”

Transportation Alternatives spokesman Michael Murphy shot back, “We are empowering residents to get involved in their own communities. I can’t think of anything more democratic than that.”

He also took a jab at Vacca, who was a community-board district manager for 26 years before becoming a councilman.

“It’s pretty ironic that Chairman Vacca, the self-proclaimed champion of community process, is criticizing us for encouraging local residents to participate in community process.”

“We don’t want any board to be dominated by any particular interest.” Agreed. So why do people who speak up in favor of safer streets get booted from their local community boards? And why, in districts where the vast majority of residents don’t own cars, do the interests of the privileged few with free curbside parking so often trump the interests of the many who would benefit from a more democratic use of street space?

Upgrading the Hudson Avenue bike lane would extend the protected lanes on both Eighth and Ninth Avenues.

The transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 2 voted unanimously on Tuesday to endorse a community-generated plan to upgrade the Hudson Street bike lane to a parking-protected lane.

Right now, Hudson Street has a buffered bike lane. It’s one of the oldest in the city according to Ian Dutton, a former vice chair of the transportation committee, who proposed the upgrade along with community board member Maury Schott and Mike Epstein, who works in the area. But the lane has become inadequate for safe travel. The paint on the street has been totally worn away and the lane is constantly blocked by double-parked vehicles.

Since it is already buffered, however, upgrading to a parking-protected lane is easy. “All we’re doing is flipping it,” said Dutton. “It has no impact on moving lanes — they stay right where they are.” The only trade-off for the safety upgrade is a few parking spaces that would need to be removed for new mixing zones and pedestrian refuge islands.

“All the statistics point to the fact that parking protected zones reduce both pedestrian, bike and vehicle passenger injuries,” said Schott. On Eighth Avenue, total street injuries fell between 18 and 35 percent after the upgrade. On Second Avenue, injuries fell 11 percent while the number of weekday cyclists using the lane more than tripled.

Hudson Street effectively runs in two segments. Above Abingdon Square, Hudson runs southbound, connecting Ninth Avenue to Bleecker Street. Below the square, Hudson runs north until it becomes Eighth Avenue. If installed alongside existing DOT plans for bike lanes in Midtown, therefore, the upgrade would create continuous protected lanes on Eighth Avenue from 59th Street to Canal Street and on Ninth Avenue from 59th to Bleecker.

Nearly every member of the public who spoke at the meeting voiced support for the proposal; a straw poll of attendees showed seven in favor and one opposed. Testimony submitted by e-mail weighed overwhelmingly in favor of the lane.

Safety — for both cyclists and pedestrians — was the top issue. CB 2  member Denise Collins,  said she worried for parents and children cycling to Hudson Street’s P.S. 3. “There are people who don’t even know that we have a bike lane on Hudson, it’s just totally washed away,” she said. “I hold my heart in my hands sometimes when I see these people on bikes.”

Ellen Peterson-Lewis, a public member of CB 2′s environment committee, noted that the neighborhood has a growing senior population, a group she included herself in. “To have that flip and to have that pedestrian island there,” she said, “I do think this is an excellent idea.”

The double parking and worn out markings that plague the Hudson Street bike lane are visible here.

Ellen Baer, the president of the Hudson Square Connection, a local BID, expressed opposition to the proposal. Though the BID has supported a number of important improvements to local streets, Baer asked the committee to put off a decision on the bike lane until she could forge some consensus among her members. Dutton later reported that he had heard some BID members were thrilled about the proposed upgrade while others were vehemently opposed.

The transportation committee debated delaying the issue or endorsing a bike lane upgrade only above Houston Street, north of the BID’s jurisdiction, but decided to move forward with the entire thing. “It’s going to be January or February before DOT even comes back to us,” argued Dutton, which would provide plenty of time for negotiations between the BID, DOT and the community board. The committee also requested that DOT revise parking regulations in the area to reduce double parking.

The full board of CB 2 will vote on the proposal on November 17.

Last night the board’s transportation committee heard from NYC DOT about the city’s bike-share plans, and apparently it was a drama-free affair.

Streetsblog reader Steve Vaccaro (also our attorney in the FOIL case seeking documents from opponents of the PPW bike lane) sends this recap:

On bike-share, a CB8 member who adamantly opposed the proposal for cross-park shared bike/ped paths four months ago expressed no hostility, asking if the bikes would have enough cargo room for all her things, and if DOT would consider including three-wheelers in the bike-share program to better accommodate seniors.

The co-chair of the transpo committee, Jonathan Horn, who also opposed the cross-park bike path reso at the full board, expressed no opposition to bike-share and helped explain that the CB would have an opportunity to select exactly where the stations would go, subject to the DOT’s overall density requirements and safety restrictions.

Only one community member, a woman with a canvas bag on which was scrawled “Enforce the Bike Laws,” spoke against the bike-share program. She claimed that seniors would not able to use the bikes and therefore that they were “excluded” from the program. DOT’s Jon Orcutt explained that this was inaccurate.

The presentation by a representative of the Stuart C. Gruskin foundation on the “5 to Ride” education/pledge campaign for commercial cyclists was well received.

The committee then took up a proposal on electric-assisted bicycles, or “e-bikes.” Statements from NYPD and the State DMV were distributed to demonstrate that most if not all e-bikes cannot legally be operated on NYC streets. A proposal was discussed under which businesses seeking a cafe license would have their applications recommended to be approved by the CB only if they agreed not to use e-bikes to deliver food. This proposal passed after thoughtful discussion.

Finally, the committee took up the issue of whether insurance, registration and licenses would be required of commercial delivery cyclists. This issue had been referred to the committee by the full board, after the full board rejected the committee’s proposal last month to require these things of all cyclists (commercial, recreational, and others). The committee chairs seemed to understand that the proposal for commercial cyclists was largely redundant with the rules that already apply to them — something stressed by opponents of the broader blanket reso that had been rejected the preceding month — and after some discussion, decided to table the issue until January.

This is significant, because several members of the Transportation Committee have for years said that licensure and insurance for cyclists was their #1 priority in the area of cycling.

Earlier this month NYC DOT set off on a bike-share information tour, giving an introduction to the city’s plans for a public bike-sharing system to every community board in the proposed service area. Bike-share plans got an enthusiastic reception from the Manhattan CB2 Transportation Committee. And it turns out that the full board backs the program too. On October 20, CB 2 voted 41-0 for a resolution stating that the board “fully supports DOT’s new Bike Share program.”

Next up on the bike-share tour: Manhattan Community Board 8. The transportation committee will hear from DOT this Wednesday at 6:30. If you want to bring bike-share to the Upper East Side, you might want to speak up at this community board, where bike improvements seldom have an easy go of it.

Bike traffic on the Eighth Avenue protected bike lane. Photo: BicyclesOnly/Flickr

By a vote of 26 to 10 Wednesday night, Manhattan Community Board 4 endorsed DOT plans to extend the protected bike lanes on Eighth and Ninth Avenue from 34th Street to 59th Street. The bike lanes will improve safety for all users on some of Midtown’s most chaotic streets, which pass by Penn Station, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and the Lincoln Tunnel entrance.

Though there were objections from a couple of businesses when the CB 4 transportation committee discussed the project last month, last night only one person testified about the lanes.”I’m just someone who got injured and started biking to heal the injury,” said Detta Ahl. “I found it was a good way to get around the city. I want to get around the city safely.”

Ahl also pointed out that the redesigned streets will improve safety for pedestrians and motorists as well as cyclists; further south on Eighth Avenue, a similar redesign reduced traffic injuries for all street users by 35 percent.

On the community board, opponents of the bike lane focused on what they saw as bad behavior by cyclists. Calls for additional education and enforcement of traffic laws earned loud applause.

Construction will take place in two phases next year. The lanes will be extended to 42nd Street in the spring and to 59th Street in the fall.

The Second Avenue bike lane in the East Village. Photo: DNAInfo

Last night, the full board of Manhattan Community Board 8 voted in favor of building a protected bike lane on First Avenue between 60th Street and 96th Street.

Once construction is finished, the lane will be one segment of a complete street running from Houston to 125th with Select Bus Service, protected bike lanes and pedestrian refuge islands (though the cyclist protection and pedestrian islands disappear near the Queensboro Bridge). On the Upper East Side, the Second Avenue lane will be on hold until subway construction is complete, but the First Avenue lane could be in place as early as this fall. In East Harlem, construction will start on Second Avenue next spring.

CB 8 approved the project by a vote of 20-11-1. That total masks the closeness of the vote, however. According to community board member Scott Falk, with two people left to vote the total stood at 16-13-1. Since resolutions need more than half of all voters to support them to pass, had both those two people voted no, the resolution would have failed. Neither did, though, and once the resolution had passed, two nays switched their votes to join the winning side.

The biggest issue was how the bike lane would affect local businesses’ ability to make deliveries, said Falk. “This was going to force triple parking, as they put it.” That argument was ultimately defeated by an appeal to the life-saving effects of protected bike lanes. Said Falk, “This isn’t about bicycles. It’s about safety by design.”

The transportation committee of CB 8 voted to upgrade the buffered bike lane on First Avenue, here blocked by a line of trucks, to a parking protected bike lane. Photo: BicyclesOnly via Flickr.

On the Upper East Side, community board members are willing to vote for safer streets, so long as they can vent about cyclists beforehand.

After a discussion that emphasized bad bike behavior, the transportation committee of Community Board 8 voted 9-2, with one abstention, to support the construction of a protected bike lane on First Avenue from 60th Street to 96th Street.

Above 72nd Street, First Avenue already has a buffered bike lane. Upgrading to a protected lane requires only that DOT flip the lanes for bikes and parking, while maintaining existing lanes for drivers. Between 60th and 72nd, though, there isn’t any bike lane at all. Filling that gap between the shared lane through Midtown and the buffered lane further north would be DOT’s top construction priority, said Ryan Russo, DOT assistant commissioner for traffic management. Construction could start as early as this fall.

DOT is neither building nor presenting plans for a new bike lane on Second Avenue, and won’t until Second Avenue Subway construction is complete years from now. Even in the few blocks below the construction zone, where DOT had originally planned to paint a shared lane, Russo said the combination of subway and water tunnel construction meant that no changes would be made.

To some extent, the limited scope of the redesign contributed to the committee’s endorsement. “I see 72nd to 96th Street as a no-brainer,” said committee co-chair Jonathan Horn. “There’s already a bike lane there. We’re trading a few parking spaces to get pedestrian islands which shorten the crossing for seniors and other people.” A 2009 resolution from the community board said that if bike lanes were to be built on the Upper East Side, they should be protected lanes.

Even so, for many committee members, the idea of drawing more cyclists to the neighborhood was tough to tolerate. “Unless you enforce the laws and make the penalties enough to deter people from doing what they’re currently doing, you should not be encouraging bicycling,” said board member Elizabeth Ashby.

Barry Schneider told the story of a friend of his who was hit by a cyclist 20 years ago and urged that the state register cyclists. “Be an advocate for that,” Schneider told DOT. “Make them part of the vehicular culture.”

“The bike lanes are preceding education,” complained another board member. “You have given us the perfect picture to look at, but in reality it’s really not a perfect picture.” She asked for a public service announcement on safe cycling, and when informed that “Don’t Be A Jerk” ads were already running demanded far wider distribution.

Many board members who complained about cyclists nevertheless voted for the lanes. In the end, the proven increase in safety from the new design further downtown and the desire for pedestrian refuge islands carried the day. In fact, a proposed compromise put forward by Horn, in which the protected bike lanes would be built north of 72nd while a shared lane would be built south of 72nd, was shot down because it wouldn’t improve pedestrian safety.

“In our area, I’m one of them, there are more and more seniors,” explained Judy Schneider. “I like having a shorter street to cross.”

Public testimony, which was overwhelmingly in favor of the protected lanes, surely helped swing some votes in favor of the lanes as well. “It is very tough to go on the streets of Manhattan and without having a protected bicycle lane, it is very dangerous,” said Upper East Side bike commuter Steven Moss. He explained that while he rides in the protected lanes further down on First and Second, uptown he often ends up riding in the Select Bus Service lane for safety reasons, slowing down transit riders in the process. “I’m not supposed to be there,” admitted Moss, “but what is a bicyclist to do?”

The committee’s resolution does request additional cyclist enforcement on First and Second Avenue (specifically praising the 19th precinct for its borough-leading level of bike citations), as well as a stronger education campaign. The committee will discuss a proposal to require licenses for all bike riders at next month’s meeting.

The full board of Community Board 8 meets to vote on the issue on September 21.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer rallied for a car-free summer in Central Park five years ago, and voted in favor of a similar proposal yesterday. Photo: Transportation Alternatives

Though Mayor Bloomberg has ruled out the possibility of implementing a car-free Central Park trial this year, opting for further data collection instead, public support for the proposal continues to grow. At a meeting of the Manhattan Borough Board yesterday, the car-free trial picked up support from still more community boards and new City Council members.

The Borough Board consists of every City Council member and representatives from every community board in Manhattan, as well as the borough president. The board was unanimous in its support for a car-free trial. (The full roll call, provided to Streetsblog by car-free park activist Ken Coughlin, is available at the bottom of this post.)

Of Manhattan’s 12 community boards, 11 have now voted in support of the plan. The only exception is CB 12, which was absent from yesterday’s meeting and had not voted on the proposal previously.

Elected officials, too, voted in favor of the trial. Borough President Scott Stringer, a long-time supporter of such a plan, voted yes. So did Council Members Gale Brewer, who has sponsored legislation to take cars out of both Central and Prospect Parks permanently, and Dan Garodnick, who supported a car-free trial in 2006. Rosie Mendez was the only other council member to vote; she too was in support. As is her practice, Christine Quinn abstained in deference to her citywide duties as council speaker.

No council member has publicly opposed a car-free trial this year.

Here’s the full Borough Board roll call:

• CB 1 – Yes
• CB 2 – Yes
• CB 3 – Yes
• CB 4 – Yes
• CB 5 – Yes
• CB 6 – Yes
• CB 7 – Yes
• CB 8 – Yes
• CB 9 – Absent
• CB 10 – Yes
• CB 11 – Absent
• CB 12 – Absent
• Brewer – Yes
• Chin – Absent
• Jackson – Absent
• Mendez – Yes
• Rodriguez – Absent
• Lappin – Absent
• Garodnick – Yes
• Dickens – Absent
• Quinn – Abstain
• Mark-Viverito – Absent
• BP Stringer – Yes

The first two shared bike/ped paths across Central Park are set to open in early September. At 96th Street, the path will run south of the transverse rather than north of it (both are shown on this map). Image:New York Times

Those paths will be clearly marked with new signage and painted diamonds on the pavement, as on the park’s only current bike/ped path, which connects West 106th Street to the loop drive. The paths won’t be divided into separate lanes for those on foot and those on two wheels, said Greenleaf, but the diamonds will be off to one side of the path.

What those signs should say was a point of contention. Greenleaf said they are likely to urge cyclists to go at “walking speed,” but many members of the CB 7 Parks and Transportation Committees found that overly restrictive.

The co-chairs of the Parks Committee, Klari Neuwelt and Elizabeth Starkey, pointed out that they had sent a letter to the Parks Department months ago recommending that shared paths in Central and Riverside Parks use language like “yield to pedestrians” or “go slow,” rather than speed limits that did not leave room for discretion. “It was not intended to have cyclists go so slowly they fall off their bikes,” said Neuwelt.

At one point, the restrictions on the paths may be more stringent still. Where the 96th Street route, which will run just south of the transverse road on a little-used path, crosses the East Drive, said Greenleaf, a dismount zone is under consideration. “There are issues about whether it’s actually safe to cross the drives on your bicycle,” she said, adding that those issues were exacerbated at that crossing by a hairpin turn just east of the loop.

A number of community board members pointed out how much more smoothly these paths could be implemented if cars were taken off the Central Park loop drives altogether. “It sounds like a lot of this is the result of avoiding automobile traffic,” said board chair Mel Wymore. The community board endorsed a car-free park trial by a vote of 32-1 in June.

The two board members who spoke against the shared paths, though, also cited the board’s support for a car-free Central Park to make their case. “The request is not by park users,” said Tom Vitullo-Martin in an argument echoed by Transportation Committee co-chair Dan Zweig. “It’s for roads to be cut across the park for bicycles.”

Even so, the bulk of community board members and neighborhood residents in attendance spoke in support of trying out the plan. No vote was taken, as Wymore wanted the board to speak up on the plan after the trial was underway.

Wymore also urged the Conservancy to generate hard data on which to evaluate the plan. Greenleaf said that the Conservancy is currently planning to have staff and volunteers qualitatively observing the way the lanes are used and gathering feedback from park users.

CB 9 is the fourth full board to vote in favor of taking automobiles off the Central Park loop drive for a trial period starting this summer, joining CBs 5, 7 and 8. In addition, committees from CBs 1, 10 and 11 have also endorsed the plan.

Before the meeting started, City Council Member Robert Jackson announced that he was in support of the trial, though not ready to take cars off the loop drive permanently. “I’m willing to try anything,” Jackson said.

Brad Taylor, a board member, explained the importance of taking cars off the loop to the West Harlem community. If the drive isn’t closed, he said, “traffic that wants to cut across to Midtown will be coming through our community. If they don’t have that option, they’ll stay where they are on the East Side or the West Side.”

Car-free park advocate Ken Coughlin cited a 2007 survey that found one third of the drivers on the Central Park loop came from the Bronx, ten percent from New Jersey, and six percent from Westchester. That adds up to 1,200 to 1,800 cars per day “that would not be on Harlem streets if it were not for the availability of the Park Drive,” he said. “Harlem has the most to gain from this trial.”

Said Lenna Nepomnyaschy, a long-time resident of the community district, in support of the proposal: “Having cars in the park is unbelievably horrible to see. All of a sudden the cars come in, there’s honking, there’s exhaust, there’s anger. There’s just not enough space for everyone.”

In order to ensure that the trial provides information that is as accurate as possible, the board amended the resolution to request that the car-free period extend sixty days after Labor Day, in order to be able to measure the effect of the closure on heavier traffic days.

The car-free park trial has picked up committee votes at no fewer than seven community boards, as well as full board votes from CB 7, CB 5, and CB 9 (we’ll have more on the CB 9 vote later today). So far, the proposal seems to be on track to pick up an overwhelming show of public support from the districts surrounding the park, which will be needed to have a shot at overcoming Mayor Bloomberg’s opposition.

The CB 8 vote, which comes from a district bordering the park on the Upper East Side, is notable because the board has reverted to displaying one of the more virulently anti-bike stances in the city, and any proposal perceived to benefit cyclists must overcome a certain level of ingrained resistance.

Board member Michelle Birnbaum is probably the most consistently vocal opponent of bike and pedestrian improvements on CB 8. At a recent transportation committee meeting, she objected to the installation of marked crosswalks and pedestrian signals at an approach to the East River esplanade that crosses underneath the FDR Drive at 96th Street, saying that devices like advance-stop bars would cause traffic to back up too far on the highway service road, and that the city can’t put “plazas and umbrellas” everywhere.

Birnbaum was the only CB 8 member to speak against the car-free park proposal Wednesday night, which was introduced by transportation committee co-chair Jonathan Horn as “another proposal about Central Park and bicycles,” following the board’s vote against shared bike-ped paths across the park (more on that below).

Some highlights from Birnbaum’s unsuccessful attempt to sway the board against the car-free trial:

• She dismissed the 100,000 signatures gathered in favor of a permanently car-free park between 2000 and 2005, which car-free park advocate Ken Coughlin mentioned at a recent committee meeting. “They neglected to mention that the 100,000 signatures were being gathered since 2003, which preceded the current car-free hours,” she said, asserting that collecting so many signatures is easy if you stand on the loop drive and flag down cyclists. Birnbaum neglected to mention that all those signatures were in favor of a permanent, 24/7 car-free Central Park, and that the people who collected them will tell you that the vast majority came from pedestrians, who are much more likely to stop and sign something than cyclists.
• The lengthening of the car-free hours in the park in recent years “has been devastating to traffic,” she said, citing no evidence.
• Birnbaum believes “it’s important that there’s a quick way for traffic to cut through local streets.”
• “The philosophy [behind the car-free park proposal] is based on a Danish engineer who believes that if you eliminate roadways, you eliminate cars. I don’t buy that philosophy,” she said. In reality there is a wealth of empirical evidence that people consolidate trips, shift to different modes, and otherwise alter their behavior in response to reductions in road space, and it doesn’t come from Copenhagen and Jan Gehl.

While those arguments were unpersuasive to most board members Wednesday night, the full board did sign on to a rather virulent declaration of anti-cyclist sentiment, passing a motion opposed to the establishment of shared bike-ped paths across Central Park.

The Central Park Conservancy has been working on a plan to establish four east-west routes that would give cyclists a safe and legal path across the park. While the two routes that the Conservancy is currently considering do not border CB 8, the board took it upon themselves to forcefully denounce the idea of demarcating shared crosstown bike-ped paths inside the park.

The resolution, which took a few minutes for board member Elizabeth Ashby to finish reading aloud, is essentially a lengthy condemnation of people who bike in Central Park. (Sample clause: “Whereas virtually all bicyclists ignore the laws, rules, and regulations in Central Park.”) The full board passed it 33-10 by my unofficial tally. Streetsblog has a request in with CB 8 for the official text of the resolution.

Dyckman at Broadway and Riverside Dr. Photo: Brad Aaron

After years of delays, a citizen-generated plan for a separated bike path in Upper Manhattan will get an audience tonight.

The Dyckman Greenway Connector would, as the name suggests, link the east- and west-side Greenways a short distance from the northern tip of Manhattan, in Inwood, completing an uptown circuit for commuters and recreational riders. It would also help bring order to what is now a chaotic environment for area cyclists and pedestrians.

The bike path concept was first proposed to Community Board 12 in early 2008, and for the last three years has languished. At various times, advocates were told by CB 12 and DOT that each was waiting on action by the other. Proponents were repeatedly assured the connector would be addressed in a long-awaited neighborhood traffic study, but after the study was released with no mention of bike facilities, DOT told Streetsblog that CB 12 had asked that the project be excluded. Last winter, the CB 12 transportation committee turned away residents who had come out to endorse the proposal, and refused to reschedule discussion until the spring on the grounds that cold weather would keep seniors from attending.

Nevertheless, CB 12 has formally asked DOT for a feasibility study, and tonight’s “Bike Lane Forum” will ostensibly be dedicated at least in part to the Greenway connector concept. Along with residents of Inwood and Washington Heights, representatives from DOT and Transportation Alternatives are scheduled to attend.

If I might break character for a minute: July will mark my fifth year living in Inwood, and based strictly on personal observations, this spring has already brought a noticeable uptick in the number of cyclists on the streets, despite the fact that bike facilities — lanes and racks — are virtually non-existent here. I don’t bike myself, but as a pedestrian I would spend a lot more time and money on Dyckman, along with Broadway and other streets for that matter, if they were more pleasant places to walk. It’s entirely conceivable that, combined with changes in the works for the intersection of Dyckman at Broadway and Riverside Drive, a Greenway connector could supplant the summertime hordes of cruising motorists and motorcyclists with activity that’s more conducive to a livable neighborhood.

Tonight’s forum will be held at ARC XVI Ft. Washington Senior Center, 4111 Broadway, at 6:30 p.m.

Neighbors gather on Fulton Street to watch a fashion show at a Summer Streets event last year. Photo: NYC DOT

The traffic and transportation committee of Brooklyn CB 10 endorsed the concept of a weekend street closure along Bay Ridge’s Third Avenue Wednesday night, but due to a large number of unknowns, they held off on voting for the actual proposal. The elected officials supporting the Bay Ridge Summer Streets plan — State Senator Marty Golden and City Council Member Vincent Gentile — are now working to find answers to the community board’s questions in time for the full board to vote on the plan.

The decision came after a lengthy discussion of the merits of bringing Weekend Walks, DOT’s program to turn city streets into car-free community gathering places on summer weekends, to Bay Ridge. “They generally supported the concept, but they felt that there were a number of issues that were not complete,” said district manager Josephine Beckmann. “It’s new to us, so we have a lot of questions.”

The board’s unanswered questions included where a Third Avenue bus would be rerouted, how to provide programming for the closed street, such as fitness events or local art exhibits, and what time the street would have to be closed for events to start taking place by 6:00 p.m.

Some of the confusion was due to the fact that no representatives from the city were on hand to answer the more technical questions. Golden has pushed hard for the Summer Streets plan on economic development grounds, but isn’t the person to explain the nitty-gritty of implementation.

“Hopefully all of these answers can be provided,” said Beckmann. If a more concrete plan is in place by CB 10′s full board meeting on June 20, she said, the board could reconsider then.

The list of Manhattan community board votes supporting the trial period has grown to be pretty hefty at this point. Transportation, parks, or planning committees from boards 1, 5, 7, 8, 10, and 11 have all overwhelmingly supported the trial, as has the full body of Community Board 7. Only the transportation committee of Community Board 9 has opposed the plan, and then only by a vote of two to one; their full board is expected to readdress the issue when it meets with a larger and more representative set of people.

In all of those votes, only four people have voted against the car-free park trial, compared to nearly one hundred voting for it. As anyone who attends community board meetings knows, achieving that level of unanimity on any topic at all is practically unheard of. Even free ice cream cones would raise the hackles of more than four people distraught over the sidewalk-blocking lines or the excess litter.

As the district bordering the entire northern face of Central Park, CB 10′s vote is significant. “The argument for a trial closing that the committee members appeared to find particularly compelling,” reported car-free park advocate Ken Coughlin, “was that their neighborhood likely has the most to gain based on the overwhelming evidence that the loop is drawing traffic into their district that otherwise would stay on peripheral highways.”

This is what a grassroots groundswell of support looks like. Is Michael Bloomberg watching?

There are two proposals in play. The first would close the park to cars for four months, from the July 4 weekend through the first weekend in November. A second plan, from the Manhattan Borough Board (borough boards are comprised of the borough president, borough City Council members, and the chair of each community board) would end the trial on Labor Day but allows for a DOT extension. Here’s the latest:

• Manhattan CB 7 has approved both the original and Borough Board resolutions by votes of 32-1 and 29-1, respectively.
• The transportation committee of CB 11 approved the Borough Board resolution unanimously.
• The CB 1 Planning and Community Infrastructure Committee also passed the Borough Board reso with a unanimous vote.

City Council Member Vincent Gentile chose to replace only one Community Board 10 member this year: Bob Cassara, who clashed with Gentile over a proposed bike lane on Bay Ridge Parkway. Image: NYC Council

The Department of Transportation has made it a de facto policy not to implement major changes to the streets without a favorable vote from the local community board. The idea is to defer to a group perceived as representing the will of the entire neighborhood.

But these bodies are only as representative as the borough president and local City Council members want them to be, as shown by the dismissal of Bob Cassara, the Brooklyn Community Board 10 member who led the fight for a bike lane on Bay Ridge Parkway.

Council Member Vincent Gentile decided not to re-appoint Cassara for another two-year term on the community board in late May, according to his spokesperson Dena Libner. She confirmed that Cassara was the only board member not to be re-appointed this year, though half of the fifty members’ terms were up.

Gentile’s decision to boot Cassara from the board was first reported in the Brooklyn Eagle. The Eagle drew the connection between Cassara’s dismissal and his strong push for the bike lane at the community board and in the press. (Speaking to the press can be dangerous for community board members, as former Brooklyn CB 1 transportation committee chair Teresa Toro learned when she was temporarily ousted from her position in 2008.) Gentile had been a top opponent of the Bay Ridge Parkway lane, working with his colleague Domenic Recchia and Assembly Members Peter Abbate and Alec Brook-Krasny to scuttle DOT’s plans to stripe it.

In her first statement on why Cassara was removed, Libner told the Eagle: “As many people as possible should have the chance to help shape our neighborhood’s future and welcoming new members onto the community board is the best way to achieve that.”

Bringing fresh voices onto community boards is a noble goal, but not one that would justify removing Cassara.

He’d served on the board for eight years, Libner told Streetsblog. But Cassara said that many of his colleagues on the community board had been there at least as far back as 1995, when he first started working with the board on reducing truck traffic. We have a request in with Community Board 10 to see how long each board member has served but have not received a response.

Cassara also noted that while there are plenty of board members who miss meetings or leave early, “I’ve missed one meeting since I was appointed.” The idea that Gentile replaced Cassara, and only Cassara, in order to shake up an ossified community board simply doesn’t hold water.

That would lend credence to the Eagle’s theory that Cassara’s high-profile advocacy for the bike lane led to his dismissal. “I must have done something,” Cassara said to Streetsblog.

Libner, however, categorically denied that Gentile’s removal of Cassara was related to his bike lane support. “If anything, Bob’s advocacy and conviction deserves our admiration,” she said.

Libner went further, saying that Gentile had no interest in imposing his opinions on bike lanes on the community board. Said Libner, “Had CB10 and the community at large been supportive of it, Councilman Gentile would have supported its installation and done everything he could to facilitate it.” She also claimed that Gentile was not anti-bicycle, noting his sponsorship of a bill to turn traffic lights in parks to blinking yellows during car-free hours. “What [Gentile] is opposed to,” said Libner, “is city agencies’ regular refusal to defer to local expertise and preferences.”

But at the last CB 10 meeting on the project, where several board members raised concerns about the traffic and safety impacts of a project that will slow down vehicle speeds and won’t remove any travel lanes, many board members’ “expertise” on street safety came across as threadbare. By removing Cassara, Gentile has ousted one person who was committed to explaining subjects like traffic calming and bike lanes to his fellow board members.

And Libner’s answer still raises the question of just why Cassara was taken off the board. On that, she was silent.

According to a CB10 member who wished to remain anonymous, the bike lane was one of several contentious issues between Cassara and local politicians. Given Gentile’s reticence to cite any point of disagreement, it’s hard not to assume that the most visible recent conflict between him and Cassara, the Bay Ridge Parkway bike lane, played a part in Cassara’s ouster.

Gentile’s decision not to reappoint Cassara has removed a strong voice for street safety from Community Board 10 and may have a chilling effect on those who remain on the board. Community boards can be important forums for local-level debate, but not if elected officials remove those who publicly disagree with them.