Streetsblog New York City

One of the biggest planning stories of the last decade is undoubtedly the opening of the New York City waterfront to the public. Across much of the city, however, the automobile still occupies the prime waterfront spaces. 

The fate of Harlem River Park exemplifies the challenges of bringing recreation to a riverside dominated by the Harlem River Drive. The park is new and beautiful, but underused. It's no surprise. To get into the park, pedestrians and cyclists have to walk by a series of ramps and access roads funneling huge volumes of traffic between the highway and the many nearby bridges, most of which are free. Local residents and the Harlem Community Development Corporation have been raising the issue for years and since 2007, Transportation Alternatives has worked with them to develop a set of recommendations for improvements [PDF]. 

To try and knit the community together with its park, DOT is developing a set of safety improvements for the intersections near park entrances, particularly 135th and Madison, 139th and Fifth, and 142nd and Fifth. Interestingly, Transportation Alternatives' CrashStat map shows that these intersections aren't the locations in the neighborhood with the most crashes, by a long-shot. It seems that pedestrians and cyclists are so deterred by the unsafe conditions there that many don't even venture over.

Read more...

Last Saturday, ten cyclists returned to where they had parked their bikes in Hudson River Park to find them gone. They had been attached to a railing along the river and, as reported in Gothamist, confiscated by the park.

By Hudson River Park regulations -- the park isn't run by the city Parks Department -- bikes may only be parked at a bike rack. "Bike racks are designed to have bikes locked to it; our railings and lightposts are not," explained Hudson River Park spokesman David Katz. "This was an iron railing. It's going to get scratched. It's going to get scuffed."

According to Katz, the bikes had been locked to the sea wall railing near Leroy Street for around two and a half hours when park enforcement officials decided they had to go. Katz claims that staff asked nearby park users, including those in the dog run and at Pier 40's athletic fields, if the bikes were theirs. When no one claimed them, they cut through the locks and took them to the park headquarters inside Pier 40. "Since they are in violation of park regulations," added Katz, "they are summonsed."

Ultimately, all ten bikes were reclaimed, said Katz. The owners had all been on a cruise together on the nearby Queen of Hearts boat.

The Gothamist report pointed a finger at the park for not notifying the cyclists that their property was about to be seized. In particular, the lack of signs announcing the rule was seen to make the seizure unfair. Katz claimed that the rule was prominently displayed. "There are large signs at every entrance to the park," he said, including the bike parking rule along with other regulations. 

Read more...

We got a couple of e-mails this week about a new directive from the Parks Department ordering cyclists to dismount on the Riverside Park path that connects the Hudson River Greenway and Riverside Drive at W. 72nd Street. On his Flickr page, BicyclesOnly says he learned of the restriction from parks enforcement:

[An] officer rode his SUV up the path behind me and issued a "warning bleep" and ordered me to dismount. I pointed out to him that the dismount instruction was first announced ahead of me and it was the first time I had ever seen the sign (which was true), so why did I have dismount? He told me that they would be getting more signs so that the entire pathway would be a dismount zone, and directed me to dismount.

Following his instructions, I dismounted, took out my camera, and a took this picture. He then asked why I was taking a picture. I told him there was no reason for me to tell him. He then told me it was a violation of park rules to take a picture of any official Parks Department signage. I told him I didn't believe there was any such rule and that I'd like him to go ahead and issue me a summons for taking a picture in the park. He got upset and scolded me for being sarcastic (I wasn't being sarcastic), but he didn't write me the summons.

He then proceeded to follow directly behind me in his SUV as I walked my bike up [the] hill. Then he took up a position in the 9A underpass and began scolding other cyclists.

Another tipster told us that a parks officer said cyclists would be issued summonses for ignoring the new rule, which, he points out, exponentially increases the commute time from Riverside Drive to the greenway. "The rule change and signage are symbolic of Parks' vague approach to dealing with the growing volume of cyclists on the greenway," he said, adding that the dismount order has not been accompanied by suggestions for alternate connections.

We have a message in with the Parks Department for details on the new dismount rule, including what's behind it.

In San Francisco, the Pavement to Parks program has launched an initiative that may someday alter the way U.S. cities treat their commercial strips.

Taking the PARK(ing) Day concept a step further, the Parklets Program is experimenting with allowing businesses to convert parking spaces into public spaces and cafes. The first was installed in March outside the Mojo Bicycle Cafe on Divisadero Street, where two parking spaces were reallocated. Now cafe tables and chairs, benches, bike parking, and plants sit on a raised platform over the asphalt. If all goes well through the evaluation period, the idea is to eventually implement a regular permitting process that business groups and communities can apply for. It looks good: Owners of Mojo say business is up 30 percent and they have had to hire more staff.

The Pavement to Parks program has already transformed a number of community spaces in the Castro, Showplace Triangle and Guerrero Park.

The parks department will hold a hearing Friday on plans to clamp down on what it sees as an unnecessary, untamed incursion into some of the city's most vaunted public spaces.

Of course, we're talking about art vending.

The idea dates back to at least the 1990s -- in 2003, the creators of Central Park's "The Gates" appealed to Mayor Bloomberg to drop it -- and is based on the city's claim that artists are taking up too much room, causing congestion and safety issues for park-goers. The new rules [PDF] would curtail the number of vendors and vending locations by up to 80 percent in Union Square Park, Battery Park, on the High Line, and in some sections of Central Park (see maps here). Tomorrow's hearing will be held at 11:00 a.m. at Chelsea Recreation Center, 430 W. 25th Street.

It's not clear who's clamoring for a vendor crackdown. In an informal survey, the advocates at the Street Vendor Project found that most people in Union Square Park like the art vendors just fine.

Whatever the motive, this seems like a solution in search of a problem. The vendors don't impede pedestrian movement any more than the Union Square Greenmarket or the line snaking around Shake Shack in Madison Square Park. Regardless of personal opinions about the quality of their wares, art vendors bring life and vitality to areas intended for human-scale activity. Clearing them out of public spaces en masse misses the point of what city gathering places are all about. To quote urbanist William H. Whyte, "What attracts people most, it would appear, is other people."

If Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe is truly concerned about safety, and park patrons being crammed into tight, contested spaces, he could start with this:

Read more...

It's about a year-and-a-half behind the schedule announced in 2007, but the rehabilitation of the High Bridge, a pedestrian and cyclist link between Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, is off the ground.

Per an email from project coordinator Ellen Macnow of the Parks Department, via Inwood and Washington Heights Livable Streets: 

A contract has been signed with the firm Lichtenstein Consulting Engineers, and they will start work soon. Lichtenstein is charged with producing designs for the bridge, including structural improvements, new ramp access and new protective fencing. Their work will result in a contract to be bid out for construction, which is funded by Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC program.

Public comment meetings will be scheduled in the spring.

Macnow says the High Bridge Coalition "will be working hard this year to engage the local and advocacy communities in the design." (Parks has already conducted at least one round of public input, in August of '07.) There was also concern upon the project's announcement nearly three years ago that access would be limited to daytime weekend hours, a fear Macnow tried to mitigate. "We want everybody who wants to use the bridge to use the bridge," she said.

Built as part of the Croton Aqueduct in 1848, the High Bridge spans the Harlem River to connect Washington Heights with the High Bridge neighborhood. It stopped carrying water in 1958, and was closed to the public completely in 1970.

We missed it in the run-up to the holidays last month, but this item in the Brooklyn Paper is worth a longer look. DOT has announced its intention to implement some safety fixes at the northern end of Grand Army Plaza.

According to the Brooklyn Paper, the agency may calm the racetrack conditions on the plaza's north end, where drivers speed around the traffic circle without stopping:

The suggested improvements would do away with the loop in favor of a normal traffic light with a left turn signal at the intersection of Vanderbilt and Flatbush avenues inside the circle.

At October's Walk21 Conference, I got the chance to tour the High Bridge, a viaduct connecting Manhattan and the Bronx which has been closed to the public for nearly 40 years.

Opening the High Bridge to pedestrians and cyclists has been a long-held goal for many New Yorkers. (I remember reading about this effort back in 1998, during a postcard campaign directed at then-Parks Commissioner Henry Stern.) Many community groups, non-profits, and public agencies have advocated for its restoration, including the City Parks Foundation, The High Bridge Coalition, and C.L.I.M.B.

Over the years, many target opening dates have been announced, but recently momentum has really picked up. Very early in 2010, community input and design will finally begin. Then, if all goes well, it shouldn't be long until we can all walk and bike across this magnificent structure.

There's a very nice set of livable streets improvements underway at Park Circle, where Brooklynites heading to and from Prospect Park mix it up with traffic heading to and from the Prospect Expressway, Ocean Parkway, and the Fort Hamilton Parkway. Construction was still in progress when I took these pictures a few days ago, but it's already making a big difference for pedestrians and cyclists. (And, I assume, the equestrians coming from Kensington Stables, although I didn't see horseback riders during my visit.)

The DOT plan [PDF] got a thumbs up from Brooklyn CB 7 back in June. Here's a look at the wide open sea of asphalt Park Circle used to be, seen from Coney Island Avenue:

The best thing about the project is that motor vehicles are now channeled into a tighter space. Traffic is noticeably calmer -- the circle doesn't feel like an extension of nearby speedways anymore. Here's a tighter shot of that same angle today, zoomed in on a fairly huge new traffic island:

More pics after the jump.

Read more...

SoHo's Petrosino Square was one of the first places identified by the New York City Streets Renaissance as a prime candidate for pedestrian reclamation. The western edge of the square, defined by Lafayette Street, used to give way abruptly to an inexplicable expanse of asphalt. No longer. At a ribbon-cutting ceremony yesterday, officials unveiled a new Petrosino. The square now extends 20 feet farther into Lafayette Street and 156 feet closer to Spring Street on the north. Stay tuned for a report from Streetfilms' Robin Urban Smith. (City Room also has a nice recap and great historical background on the square's namesake, Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino, a trailblazing New York City police officer murdered by the Sicilian mafia while on assignment in Palermo, Italy 100 years ago.)

We have a few still shots for now, and some archival footage of the old Petrosino from the Streetfilms vault, featuring Streetsblog publisher Mark Gorton and Project for Public Spaces' Ethan Kent. Yes, they filmed this just four years ago:

After the jump, a shot from Robin showing the square's spiffy new bike parking.

Read more...