Streetsblog New York City

First Avenue at 88th Street. Concrete pedestrian islands and tree pits have already been installed, and the bike lane has been striped.

Our most recent progress report on the protected bike lanes for East Harlem and the Upper East Side came last October, when crews installed the bike lane and pedestrian refuges on Second Avenue between 100th Street and 125th Street. Last year also saw the construction of a protected bike lane on First Avenue between the Queensboro Bridge and 72nd Street. Now, long-time reader Jacob sends in photos of the latest extension on First Avenue, which will stretch up to 125th Street.

This is a major safety upgrade that East Harlem residents and Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito fought hard for the past few years. When complete, crossing distances will be shorter for people walking across the avenue, and biking will feel much safer than it did with the old buffered lane, which was frequently obstructed by double-parkers.

Elsewhere, adjustments to pedestrian and bike space on Broadway between Times Square and Herald Square are underway. When this stretch was first redesigned about five years ago, a protected bike lane was sandwiched between the sidewalk and a floating plaza space, which wasn’t the smoothest arrangement for either pedestrians or cyclists. The design tweaks, which got a thumbs up by Community Board 5 last fall, narrow Broadway from two general travel lanes to one, while replacing the plaza-adjacent protected bike lane with a buffered bike lane on the other side of the street. It also widens the plaza space to 20 feet and connects it to the sidewalk. While cyclists now ride between parked cars and motor vehicles, traffic is light and tends not to move at high speeds.

Broadway at 36th Street. The bike lane has been moved to the west side of the street to reduce conflicts between pedestrians and cyclists

Since 2009, Friends of the Williamsbridge Oval and Bronx Community Board 7 have been asking DOT to improve pedestrian safety and access to the Norwood neighborhood’s central public space. Most intersections surrounding the park don’t have crosswalks, and sections of the road surrounding the park are also missing sidewalks. Now, after years of requests from neighbors, DOT has proposed changes that would make it safer to get to the park.

Trying to get to the park? There are no sidewalks or crosswalks now, but that's slated to change. Image: DOT

Williamsbridge Oval, also known as Reservoir Oval, had 15 pedestrian injuries and 22 motor vehicle occupant injuries from 2006 to 2012, according to DOT. Over the same period, there were no bicyclist injuries, while four of the motor vehicle occupant injuries were serious.

DOT’s proposal [PDF], presented at a meeting co-hosted by CB 7 last Wednesday, would reduce the speed limit on the oval from 30 mph to 20 mph and add signage alerting drivers to speed humps and curves in the road. It would also add painted curb extensions and crosswalks at the intersections of Holt Place, Reservoir Place, and at a park entrance near the tennis courts between Wayne Avenue and Bainbridge Avenue.

While painted curb extensions are now a common tool DOT uses across New York,  unlike its counterparts in other cities, the agency doesn’t normally suggest striping crosswalks where there are no traffic signals or stop signs.

“It’s a big step in the right direction,” said Jay Shuffield, a member of both CB 7 and Friends of the Williamsbridge Oval. Shuffield thanked DOT’s pedestrian projects group for the change in tone, since advocates felt they were stonewalled by the agency’s Bronx borough office. ”They suddenly dropped their resistance to common-sense solutions here,” he said.

The proposal also adjusts the oval’s two high-traffic intersections with Bainbridge Avenue. At the avenue’s intersection with West 208th Street, the proposal adds a painted pedestrian island, and at Van Cortlandt Avenue East, it shifts parking to create a painted sidewalk that connects to a park entrance.

Nine additional parking spaces would be added on Reservoir Place as it approaches the oval to calm traffic coming from East Gun Hill Road, and parking spaces are being shifted to accommodate the painted curb extension on the oval at Holt Place.

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Crosswalks weren't striped on Katonah Avenue in the Bronx until six weeks after a repaving.

A few weeks ago, a reader sent in a picture of an intersection on Katonah Avenue in the Bronx, which DOT repaved and striped with a double-yellow line — but not crosswalks. For more than six weeks, residents crossed this neighborhood artery without painted markings, which had parents at P.S. 19 especially worried.

Our tipster recently wrote back with good news: Two days after we posted about the missing crosswalks, DOT crews were out on Katonah Avenue, putting high-visibility markings in place.

A tipster sends in this photo of Katonah Avenue at P.S. 19, where pedestrians have waited more than a month for crosswalks.

In early February, DOT repaved Katonah Avenue in the Woodlawn section of the Bronx, leaving a smooth black surface with no markings. Shortly after a nearby resident called 311 a few weeks ago, a crew was sent out to mark where the crosswalks should be, and the double-yellow stripe was installed. Residents are still waiting for crosswalks. It’s a particular worry at P.S. 19, where students cross Katonah Avenue daily.

“I waited several weeks, and nothing,” our tipster says. “I just called it in. They still haven’t done the crosswalks.”

The hold-up, which brings to mind the national road paint shortage of 2010, doesn’t seem to be caused by other road work scheduled for Katonah Avenue: the only road construction permit for the street is for one block of gas line work over the next month.

Streetsblog has a few inquiries in about the delay. We’ll let you know if we get an explanation.

Eight city council members have put a portion of their discretionary capital funds up for a vote as part of an exercise in participatory budgeting, which allows residents to decide how the money will be spent in their own neighborhoods. Votes in each district are approaching soon, and there’s an opportunity to support livable streets projects.

With participatory budgeting, residents of a City Council district have a say in how $1 million in discretionary capital funds are spent. Photo: Daniel Latorre/Flickr

The participating council members are David Greenfield, Brad Lander, Stephen Levin, and Jumaane D. Williams of Brooklyn; Dan Halloran, Eric Ulrich, and Mark Weprin of Queens; and Melissa Mark-Viverito of Manhattan. Each has put up $1 million in discretionary capital funds, with residents submitting ideas that will appear in early April on a final ballot, open to district residents age 16 and older.

In Lander’s district, stretching from Cobble Hill to Borough Park, there are five projects related to pedestrian safety and livable streets:

• A Safe Routes to School project at Yeshiva Torah Temimah, on Ocean Parkway near 18th Avenue [PDF];
• Extending an upcoming DOT capital project on Church Avenue by adding curb extensions at Coney Island and McDonald Avenues [PDF];
• Constructing a larger plaza space at the triangle intersection of Church Avenue, 14th Avenue, and 35th Street;
• Adding capital funds to an existing DOT project on Hicks Street, to gain concrete curb extensions and improve visibility at the intersection with Congress Street;
• Creation of a new concrete pedestrian plaza adjacent to a community garden at Van Brunt Street and Hamilton Avenue.

Lander is hosting a science fair-style expo where residents can learn more about the projects on the ballot, this Thursday from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Park Slope branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.

Council Member Stephen Levin’s office identified two projects that may be of interest in the district, stretching from Park Slope to Greenpoint along the East River waterfront:

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Image: Google Earth/GGW

Earlier this week we looked at the intersection of Route 355 and Shady Grove Road near Rockville, Maryland, flagged by Ben Ross at Greater Greater Washington for being especially hostile to pedestrians, even though it’s the site of a bus stop. We asked if it might be the worst intersection in the country and put out a call for readers to send their nominations for the title.

As some readers pointed out, the Rockville intersection at least has sidewalks on all four corners and some refuges for pedestrians caught mid-crossing, so it certainly can’t be nation’s worst. Several other submissions landed in our inbox where the engineers let the sheer car-centricity of the roads overwhelm the meager provisions for pedestrians even more.

Wouldn’t you know it: We received three nominations from Florida, which Transportation for America has singled out as the most dangerous state for pedestrians. One reader sent us this stunner: State Route 7 and Forest Hill Boulevard in Wellington, Florida. From this satellite picture, it looks like a walk around this intersection would cross 45 lanes, plus — is that a bike lane? Wouldn’t want to be in the middle of that on a Cannondale:

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Residents of the Bronx’s Norwood section have long dealt with missing sidewalks and crosswalks on the street encircling Williamsbridge Oval Park, the neighborhood’s central green space. After getting stonewalled by DOT’s Bronx Borough Office, neighborhood leaders are now hoping a Slow Zone application will get DOT to take action.

DOT's Bronx Borough Office has not been receptive to calls for crosswalks and sidewalks around Williamsbridge Oval Park. Photo: Google Maps

Since 2009, advocates have been asking for basic improvements that would slow speeding traffic and make it safer for people crossing to the park. ”They’re narrow streets and yet, it’s amazing how fast people will go around it,” said Assembly Member Jeffrey Dinowitz, who recently helped secure a Slow Zone for nearby Riverdale.

Instead of a long-term solution, the neighborhood has received piecemeal fixes: a striped buffer at the intersection with Bainbridge Avenue, which drivers have learned to ignore, followed by a fresh coat for existing road markings that had faded away. A speed hump was installed at the request of Council Member G. Oliver Koppell in July 2012, while crosswalks and a sidewalk remain elusive.

In August 2012, fed up after the borough office had failed to make progress, Friends of the Williamsbridge Oval sent a letter to Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan asking her to intervene and deliver the requested safety improvements.

On January 23, DOT and Community Board 7 hosted a forum to discuss potential fixes for intersections next to the park. DOT staff spoke about temporary solutions, such as painted curb extensions and chicanes, but not crosswalks or sidewalks. The agency says it is processing feedback from the workshop and will have a proposal for the community board in the future. DOT did not provide a timeline for the proposal.

Meanwhile, enthusiasm is building for an application to DOT’s Slow Zone program, which would lower the speed limit to 20 mph and introduce traffic calming measures to the neighborhood.

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A go-to NIMBY argument against safe street improvements is that bike lanes, pedestrian plazas, and ped refuge islands interfere with emergency responders.

We await the exclusive CBS 2 report retracting all their nonsense about safer streets slowing down emergency vehicles.

In 2009, one complainer at an event sponsored by then-Council Member Alan Gerson claimed that pedestrian islands on Grand Street “put lives in danger” by slowing down fire trucks and ambulances. Opponents of the Prospect Park West bike lane lobbed the same accusation at DOT and got Marcia Kramer to give them a megaphone. Assembly Member Dov Hikind spearheaded a successful campaign to make Fort Hamilton Parkway more dangerous for seniors based on nothing more than specious complaints from Hatzolah ambulance drivers, again amplified by Kramer.

A data set released by the city Wednesday blows another hole in what has always been a weak and cynical criticism. At an event on Randall’s Island yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg and Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano announced that in 2012, FDNY achieved the fastest average EMS response time in the city’s history. Fewer civilians died in fires last year than ever before, which the mayor and fire chief attributed to another near-record low average response time. From a City Hall press release:

The FDNY’s Emergency Medical Service averaged an ambulance response time for life-threatening medical emergencies of 6:30 — a second faster than the previous record of 6:31 set in 2011.

Structural fire response time in 2012 was 4:04, two seconds higher than last year when it was 4:02 due in part to the large call volume that occurred during and after Hurricane Sandy when the FDNY responded to nearly 100 serious structural fires.

Compared to the total amount of street space in the city, the square footage dedicated to pedestrians and cyclists in recent years is actually quite small. But there are still hundreds of places with new sidewalk extensions, pedestrian islands, and bike lanes, and at the very least the FDNY numbers suggest that new measures designed to make streets safer for walking and biking are not having the detrimental effect prophesied by the likes of Dov Hikind, NBBL, Marty Markowitz, and Marcia Kramer.

Advocates for safer streets are alarmed by a New York State DOT “blueprint” for capital investments that scarcely acknowledges walking or biking as modes of transportation.

The Tri-State Transportation Campaign noted in November that the NYS DOT document released with the file name “Two Year Capital Plan” [PDF] made virtually no mention of pedestrians or cyclists.

Biking got no ink in a document described by the New York State DOT as a blueprint for future transportation spending. Photo: @BrooklynSpoke

“Although the document uses key buzzwords — ‘multi-modal,’ ‘users of all modes,’ ‘sustainable,’ ‘improve livability,’ ‘environmental protection’ — complete streets advocates are left hanging when the document lists the ways New Yorkers get around,” wrote Nadine Lemmon, Albany legislative advocate for Tri-State.

The state DOT released the report at a time when investments in walking and cycling are “getting hit left, right and center” in New York State, according to Lemmon. The new federal transportation bill, MAP-21, resulted in a 30 percent cut in federal dedicated funding, Lemmon says, and new NYS DOT policies put bike-ped projects at a disadvantage when competing for state matching funds.

The omission of walking and biking is particularly striking given the state’s new complete streets law, which took effect in February.

In an email to Streetsblog, NYS DOT spokesperson Beau Duffy distinguished between the document and the capital plan, which will guide state transportation spending for two years.

The document submitted by NYS DOT to the NY Works Task force for consideration represented an infrastructure investment blueprint from which an investment level to support the development of the Department’s next transportation capital program would be advanced. NYS DOT’s report was intended to address four broad-based investment categories (Construction and Program Support, System Maintenance and Operations, Local Roads and Bridges, and Modal Infrastructure) and was not intended to address all of the infrastructure assets or modes under its jurisdiction.

Notwithstanding, each one of the four investment categories detailed by NYS DOT in the report provides support and opportunities for bicycle, pedestrian and safety-related improvements. The Department’s capital program of projects will be developed in coordination with the Executive and the Legislature as part of the State budget process.

Advocates say that explanation is just a long-winded way to distract from the lack of specific commitments to walking and biking as the capital plan takes shape. ”In this document, they are asking for guidance on what funding level will be approved for the next capital program,” says Lemmon. “[T]his is about the capital plan — and [Duffy] says that.”

Read more…

Bartel Pritchard Square, at the southern end of the Prospect Park West bike lane, got some bike and pedestrian tweaks this morning, including this new crosswalk. Photo: Philip Winn

Bartel Pritchard Square, at the southwest corner of Prospect Park, received some tweaks this morning, including new and re-striped crosswalks enhancing access to the central space in the middle of the traffic circle. There are also markings to channel traffic as it enters the square, and the short stretch of bike lane between Prospect Park West and Prospect Park Southwest has been more clearly marked as two-way.

More tweaks are on the way, along with a bike lane on 15th Street, according to a DOT staffer at the site who spoke this morning with tipster Philip Winn.

Above, two views of the upgraded zebra crosswalk coming to Bartel Pritchard Square and Prospect Park Southwest. Photos: Philip Winn