Streetsblog New York City

Last week I took my first cab ride in recent memory, from Midtown home to Inwood. It was Thursday night, and pretty early -- around 10:00 -- when we exited the West Side Highway onto Riverside Drive and made the left to Dyckman/200th Street. As we passed the bustling Mamajuana Cafe, near the corner of Seaman Avenue, its outdoor tables packed as usual, and the cab driver inched among revving motorcycles, honking livery cabs and boom-car drivers who seemed to have no purpose there other than to cruise the block, I muttered something to the effect of "I'm glad we don't live down here."

Right now, Mamajuana is at the center of a long-standing dispute over the proliferation of restaurants and bars -- those with outdoor space in particular -- on Dyckman and the immediate vicinity west of Broadway. Residents who live nearby say the crowds drawn by these establishments have commandeered the area, clogging sidewalks and streets and generating excessive noise at all hours, and are calling on Community Board 12 and area officials to encourage a more balanced mix of "daytime" and "nighttime" businesses.

Mamajuana's owners, who operate several other restaurants along the Dyckman corridor, counter that they are providing jobs and bringing much-needed street life to the neighborhood. The restaurateurs have repeatedly claimed that most of the noise comes from vehicle traffic, which they have no control over.

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As if constant engine noise, gratuitous horn honking, booming stereos and screeching car alarms weren't enough of a collective imposition on millions of New Yorkers, NYPD is about to escalate the street-level aural arms race with the "Rumbler," a souped-up siren designed primarily to pierce the cocoon of obliviousness enshrouding city motorists.

Expected to be installed in over 100 police vehicles this week, the Rumbler emits a low-frequency signal transmitted through subwoofers similar to those used by car audio enthusiasts. According to manufacturer Federal Signal, the siren has "the distinct advantage of penetrating solid materials allowing vehicle operators and nearby pedestrians to FEEL the sound waves."

"In other words," says Richard Tur, founder of Queens-based org NoiseOFF, "this ear-splitting noise will be heard and felt by motorists, pedestrians and people in their own homes at a level that can cause permanent hearing damage and seriously disrupt their lives."

As noted on the NoiseOFF website, Federal Signal warns Rumbler users to wear ear protection to guard against hearing loss. Yet, says Tur: "The NYPD purchased and installed the equipment with no oversight, no public hearings, and with no evident liability for the massive noise pollution they are about to inflict on New Yorkers, all in the name of public safety."

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The City Council will hold hearings on new rules for tour bus operators next Monday.

Int. 742 would have companies switch from open-air amplification of tour guides to headphone-based systems in buses with unenclosed upper decks or open windows. Int. 836 would require submission of operating plans, including routes, trip times and frequency, to the Department of Consumer Affairs, which would forward the plans to council members and community boards in affected districts.

Though it isn't spelled out in the bill, Int. 836 is ostensibly intended in part to minimize bus traffic on narrow residential streets, increasing pedestrian safety and, like Int. 742, reducing the buses' negative impact on neighborhoods.

Both bills are supported by the group Our Streets Our Lives (formerly Tour Buses No -- Tourists Yes), which worked last year to prod the Department of Environmental Protection to enforce tour bus emission standards. Group member Barbara Backer says most licensed tour buses are now in compliance with those rules. Of the new proposed regs, Backer says: "With re-routing no one will lose one job, tourists will still be able to visit the same businesses, and the re-routing will mean less disruption for local residents. Buses can use their hop-on-hop-off feature on major thoroughfares and still convey the same number of people to the same areas they do now."

Monday's hearing, a joint session of the council's consumer affairs and transportation committees, gets underway at 10 a.m.

As of this writing, the Committee on Environmental Protection is considering Int. 622, which would require school buses to be fitted with filters to reduce kids' exposure to diesel exhaust, and would mandate that buses be retired after 16 years. The Natural Resources Defense Council has been tracking the measure, and has background here.

Local residents turned out to give their opinions on the renovation of the malls early last summer.

Residents of the Lower East Side and Chinatown have been fighting for improvements to the Allen and Pike Street pedestrian malls for more than a decade. Now, with the city's Parks Department set to begin a $5.4 million renovation of the malls below East Broadway, their wait for meaningful action might be nearing an end.

The Hester Street Collaborative has just released a final report on the community's visioning process (download the full study), which was coordinated by United Neighbors to Revitalize Allen and Pike (UNRAP) and will be used to inform the upcoming work.

The malls, which run along the center of Pike and Allen Streets from the East River to Houston Street, have long been in a state of disrepair. The pavement is cracked and uneven. There's little vegetation. The roar of traffic is ever-present. "There's a tremendous need for more viable open space here," says Annie Frederick, executive director of the Hester Street Collaborative. "This neighborhood has one of the lowest rates of public space in the city."

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Fed up with the dysfunction of New York City's streets, people all around the city are picking up video cameras and making their own StreetFilms. The one above is pretty amazing. Unless you like the sound of car horns honking, make sure your volume is turned down before you press "play."

This StreetFilm was produced by Will Sweeney and Kozo Okumura around the palindrome intersection of 37th Ave. and 73rd St. in Jackson Heights, Queens on a Saturday evening at about 6 pm. Will writes:

We put together the video because we wanted to show how visceral the problem is on a daily basis. The problem of traffic congestion has so many side effects that are difficult to communicate in words or still images. Also, most residents would cite noise as the main complaint, particularly horn honking.

Will and Kozo are part of a growing group of neighborhood documentarians who are submitting work to StreetFilms. Last month Brooklynite Doug Gordon shot this video of car traffic illegally entering Prospect Park. Likewise, Ian Dutton of Community Board 2 in Manhattan has been video-taping bike facilities to show the reality of what it takes to get around New York City on a bicycle, at times.

So how about you? It doesn't take much these days. You don't need a great camera, just some patience, steady hand and an idea that you want to communicate. Check out some of our StreetFilm-making tips then send it in to us to post.