A protected bike path will soon wrap around the circumference of Park Circle. Some segments are bi-directional.

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.

A bi-directional approach to the Ocean Parkway Greenway -- much, much easier to use than the overpass you see in the background.

It's also much easier to cross Prospect Park Southwest where it meets the circle. Technically, there's separate space for pedestrians and cyclists at this crossing, but I think we'll see a lot of sharing here.

The exit from Prospect Park. Yes, that is a "multi-lane" bike path heading toward Park Circle.

Not pictured in this post: The terrible TD Bank building on the opposite side of Prospect Park Southwest from the park. Its curb-cutting driveways, parking lot, and drive-through window are a real blemish on this much-improved urban space.

The BikeStation in Washington D.C., which provides parking and services for bicyclists who use transit. (Photo: U.S. DOT)

The FTA's new rules, released for public comment on Friday, replace the previous definition of the so-called "structural envelope" surrounding a transit station.

In the past, regulators had tended to use 1,500 feet as the distance which "most people can be expected to safely and conveniently walk to use the transit service." But the Obama administration, stating plainly that the current radius is "too short," has proposed expanding it to a half-mile for pedestrian improvements and three miles for bicycle projects.

In its explanation of the new proposal, the FTA wrote:

The most successful and useful public transportation systems have safe and convenient pedestrian access and provide comfortable waiting areas, all of which encourage greater use.

Distances beyond the walkshed of public transportation stops and stations may in fact be within the range of a short bicycle trip. Providing secure parking and other amenities for bicycles and cyclists at public transportation stops or stations can be less expensive than providing parking for automobiles.

The proposed regulation also codifies a U.S. DOT definition of "livability" that Streetsblog Capitol Hill took note of when it was first mentioned by Transportation Secretary LaHood: "If people don't want an automobile, they don't have to have one."

Public comments on the FTA's proposal can be filed here.

New York State devotes just 1 percent of its federal transportation funds to pedestrian infrastructure. Photo: Wikipedia

In the last 15 years, more than 76,000 Americans have been killed while crossing or walking along a street in their community. More than 43,000 Americans -- including 3,906 children under 16 -- have been killed this decade alone. This is the equivalent of a jumbo jet going down roughly every month, yet it receives nothing like the kind of attention that would surely follow such a disaster.

Counterintuitive as it may be, "Dangerous by Design" also finds that, when it comes to investing in pedestrian-friendly streets, New York has little room to boast. Here are local stats culled from the report, issued in a joint statement from TSTC, Transportation Alternatives, the Regional Plan Association and TWU Local 100:

• 22.5 percent of total traffic deaths in New York State are pedestrians
  
• 31 percent of total traffic deaths in the NYC metropolitan area are pedestrians
  
• Only 1 percent of New York State federal transportation funds are spent on pedestrian infrastructure, an average of $0.73 per person
  
• New York State ranks 44th in the nation for federal spending on walking and biking
  
• The NYC metropolitan area receives only $0.61 per person in federal funds for pedestrian and bike facilities, well below the meager $1.39 spent per person for metro areas nationwide

Advocates are calling on Governor Paterson and the New York State Legislature to designate 10 percent of federal Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) and 10 percent of federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) funding for pedestrian safety; to enact a statewide complete streets policy; to increase funding for Safe Routes to School and Safe Seniors programs; and to create a statewide Safe Routes to Transit program.

"From 2005 to 2008, New York has received $5.6 billion in federal transportation funds," reads the statement. "In the same amount of time there have been 1,215 preventable pedestrian deaths."

You can download "Dangerous By Design" in its entirety here. Elana Schor has more on the report's national implications at Streetsblog Capitol Hill.

Among the items on Community Board 8's October agenda is a resolution in support of protected bike lanes on the Upper East Side. As we heard from Transportation Alternatives yesterday, neighborhood involvement has propelled this once-unlikely measure to this point, and friendly voices will be needed to bring it home. The CB 8 meeting starts at 6:30 at the Ramaz School Auditorium, 125 E. 85th Street.

Tonight in Upper Manhattan, Inwood and Washington Heights Livable Streets will hold a regular meeting to discuss, along with other topics, the proposed Dyckman Street Greenway Connector. Thanks to the consistent work of its core members, this group is starting to get attention from local electeds. A good showing tonight can only help build momentum. Meeting details and other discussions can be found on the IWHLS Livable Streets Community page.

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.

A view of the new Petrosino from Spring Street.

With all the remarkable recent livable streets improvements in New York, it's no surprise the tenth annual Walk21 Conference chose our city for its host digs. Visitors and attendees salivated over new pedestrian infrastructure and public spaces, including tours of the recently opened High Line and a special visit to the soon-to-be-restored High Bridge. Featuring a plethora of speakers, design charrettes and walking workshops, the three-day event drew experts from the UK, Austria, Japan, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Italy, and Australia, among other places.

We were able to speak with the organizers as well as conference registrants, and also got a chance to chat with headliners such as Jan Gehl, Janette Sadik-Khan, Kristina Alvendal (Vice Mayor of Stockholm), and Gil Peñalosa (Walk and Bike for Life, Ontario) about the future of walking and the vital importance of this conference in inspiring world leaders.

A map of a neighborhood in Tigard, Oregon. Some of the proposed new trails are marked in blue.

The demand for walkable neighborhoods is up, but in order to fill that demand, we're going to have to transform our suburbs. How that might be accomplished was one of the most vexing issues discussed at last week's Walk21 Conference.

Suburban layouts aren't about connectivity; they're about space, with lots of separated roads and cul-de-sacs, and few direct routes from one place to another. But the folks at Kittelson & Associates, a transportation planning firm, have one suggestion: bypass roads entirely. That's what they're doing in Tigard, Oregon.

Tigard is a pretty typical Oregon suburb: It's about 10 miles from downtown Portland, it's 11.5 square miles, and about 47,000 people live there. That low density gave Kittelson and officials from the Oregon DOT the chance to connect areas of town by building trails that bypass roundabout suburban street design, allowing residents to easily walk or bike around their city, and get direct access to their neighbors, local businesses, and city parks. The idea came organically: For years, residents had carved out their own informal "desire paths" to get around. The Tigard Neighborhood Trails Project is meant to make existing trails safer, and to build new ones to form a better overall network.

On top of gathering community input at formal town meetings, Kittelson and ODOT also put together a website where residents could draw and comment on new trails on a Google Map, as well as point out existing informal ones. Jamie Parks, a planner on the project, said that the web interactivity made it so that far more members of the community had input into the project and, hopefully, will use the trails when they are completed.

The plan is done, and Tigard has begun implementing each trail, so it'll take some time to see how well this idea works out. Still, this could be a great way make disconnected suburban street networks much more walkable. It's a relatively cheap way too -- a network of 42 trails is set to cost approximately $1 million.

Categories of pedestrians, based on their walking patterns. Courtesy: Norbert Brändle, Austrian Institute of Technology.

Part of designing more walkable cities -- a goal of this week's Walk21 Conference -- is figuring out how pedestrians actually interact with the space around them, something that seems inherently difficult because of the erratic and unique behavior of your average walker. But two Austrian researchers came to the conference with with some intriguing ideas for measuring walking. Alexandra Millonig, of the Vienna University of Technology, and Norbert Brändle, of the Austrian Institute of Technology, decided to study and categorize pedestrian behavior based on a survey of Austrian shoppers. They lumped them into four basic types, as you can see above.

The researchers studied pedestrian shoppers in a variety of ways. On top of interviews, they followed shoppers on the street (Brändle called it "stalking"), noting their trajectories, speed, and number of stops. In another phase of the project, they equipped people with Bluetooth and GPS location trackers to map out each walking trip. If you know what different pedestrians look for based on these categories, you can build urban environments that have features that are appealing to each kind of walker.

Designing walkable environments, as you'd guess, is more complex than the grid-and-pavement planning of car-centric areas. The study found that, unlike drivers, who want the shortest path possible to their destination, walkers prefer more convoluted routes, and, more importantly, Brändle said, would prefer to take a different route home than the one they arrived on. That lends further credibility to the argument that in order to make areas more walkable, we also need to give them greater connectivity -- with more routes to and from the places pedestrians need to go.

If you want to see the full results of their study, Millonig and Brändle have made them available on an easy-to-read poster, which you can download here.

Mexico City's dedicated-lane rapid transit bus system, Metrobus, carries as many as 250,000 riders a day. Photo: vonKinder/Flickr.

On Thursday, representatives from governments on the forefront of creating sustainable cities will discuss their strategies to help stop climate change (Thurs. Oct. 8, 9:15 a.m. - 10:45 a.m., Eisner & Lubin Auditorium). Kristina Alvendal, Stockholm's vice mayor of city planning, will explain her "Walkable City" plan, which focuses on a denser, safer urban environment. Steve Heminger, director of the San Francisco Bay Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, will talk about the importance of walking to California's climate change mandate, which involves regional targets for greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, Jon Orcutt, Director of Policy at the NYC DOT, will discuss the greenhouse gas implications of the city's pedestrian planning efforts.

Don't forget, there's also a cocktail reception tonight, as well as on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, where you'll be able to schmooze with many conference luminaries. Tonight's reception will feature a keynote speech by NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

The Walk21 Conference takes place at NYU's Kimmel Center from October 7-9. More information about each event can be found in the program (click to download). You can register for the conference here.

Improving pedestrian space: Montreal's Place Jean-Paul Riopelle features sculpture installations and an 88-tree urban forest. Photo: Wallyg via flickr

Later in the day, there's going to be a workshop on "nutritional deserts." No, not "nutritional desserts." This panel takes an urban planning approach to neighborhoods lacking affordable, healthy food options. How Retail Food Availability Shapes Walking Patterns (Wed. Oct. 7, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm, Room 406, NYU Kimmel Center) is all about how cities can help out there neighborhoods by encouraging greenmarkets, community food gardens, and supermarkets. The workshop will be moderated by Kelly Williams of New York's Project for Public Spaces and will discuss how advocates and cities can shift zoning and land use policies to support access to healthy food in urban environments.

The Walk21 Conference takes place at NYU's Kimmel Center from October 7-9. You can register for the conference here.

East River bridge traffic counts and configurations through 1989. Source: FHWA [PDF]

Sullivan notes that, about a century ago, when it carried over twice as many people per day, horse-drawn trolleys and buggies once shared the Brooklyn Bridge with trains and pedestrians (and no creature, human or animal, crossed for free). Despite efforts by DOT to accommodate cyclists and pedestrians on the narrow elevated path, Sullivan says, "with more people walking and more people biking (both good developments), chaos quite naturally ensues."

Rather than ban bikes from the bridge, a proposal he says he hears "all the time," Sullivan writes:

If we bicyclists cede the Brooklyn Bridge walkway, then it might be a step toward winning the public’s respect. Then, just maybe, pedestrians would call a truce and recognize that their real enemy is the car, that bikers are like pedestrians in that they are just trying to get to work without the use of a gurney.

[Cyclists] are full-fledged New Yorkers now, not maniacs who need to be banned. We are all fighting to make the streets safe for something other than driving and parking. The livability revolution has begun. There is no turning back.

With a four-year rehab project coming up, Sullivan suggests new bus routes on the bridge to lay the groundwork for the return of rail.

What do you think? Is an exclusive pedestrian walkway, with separated bike lanes below, the way to go? And what about bringing back rail? Who should be tolled? In short: What does your ideal Brooklyn Bridge look like?

A college-age Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), with her father. Photo: Klobuchar for Senate

Coburn's amendment fell short by a vote of 39-59, with three other Democrats, Sens. Russ Feingold (WI), Evan Bayh (IN), and Claire McCaskill (MO), also aligning with the majority of Republicans in favor of the opt-out.

Feingold, Bayh, and McCaskill are fiscal hawks who frequently vote to limit the scope of government spending, making their votes less surprising than Klobuchar and Webb's -- if just as disheartening for clean transportation advocacy groups.

Klobuchar in particular hails from a state where bicycling is a popular element of local culture. She has spoken often of her personal appreciation of biking, hiking, and other outdoor activities, and welcomed a 14-year-old climate activist to Washington after the young girl's 1,500-mile bike ride.

Klobuchar's office has not yet responded to an inquiry about her vote on Coburn's two amendments to the Senate spending bill that funds U.S. DOT for next year. The second Coburn amendment that fell short today was a modified version of his earlier proposal to restrict all "transportation enhancements."

Even when limited to only block funding for transportation museums, however, the second Coburn plan was defeated on a 41-57 vote.

One GOP amendment that did make it into the DOT spending bill was Sen. Roger Wicker's (R-MS) proposal to allow Amtrak riders to carry guns and ammunition locked in their checked baggage. Twenty-seven Democrats joined all 41 Republicans to approve the proposal.

Although there is undoubtedly an amazing streets renaissance going on in NYC, there still remain places in dire need of improvement. Every workday, heavily-used areas like the blocks surrounding Penn Station are overwhelmed with pedestrians making their way home via buses, subways, the Long Island Railroad and Amtrak. The sidewalks are so clogged by this "crush of humanity" that people are forced to walk in the streets. If you've never seen it, or if you're claustrophobic, get ready.

Open Planning Project Executive Director Mark Gorton recently went out to sample the atmosphere on a typical weekday evening and posits that we can do much better in how we choose to allocate street space. His words sum it up nicely:

The reason it's so crowded here is not because there's not enough space. It's because we give all of our space to the least spatially-efficient form of transportation available. 

Of course he is referring to the automobile -- especially the single-occupant vehicle. Oddly enough, I did a PSA over three years ago which aired during our New York City Streets Renaissance campaign launch. I filmed most of it in the same location. It still looks much the same, perhaps worse.

Since the spring, DOT construction crews have been building out traffic calming improvements all over the neighborhoods near downtown Brooklyn. When the years-in-the-making Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project wraps up, pedestrians will have safer crossings at dozens of intersections. The sidewalk extension at the northwest corner of Smith and Bergen, shown here, is especially impressive. Several hundred square feet of street space now belong to pedestrians instead of cars.

I popped up from my subway ride home yesterday to take some pictures, and in the five minutes I spent there, it was plainly obvious that people feel more comfortable and at ease on the sidewalk with all that extra room. First, to give a sense of the extension's size, check out what this corner used to look like (you can use the green "Smith's Grocery" awning to orient yourself).

After the jump, more traffic-calmed goodness.

This is the view from the southwest corner, with the big extension on the far side of the street. I'm not the best at eyeball measurements, but the crossing distance on Bergen has got to be less than 20 feet now.

If you're on foot, you feel like you're in charge. You can run into a friend, catch up for a minute, and, yeah, stand nonchalantly by the curb without worrying about getting run over or obstructing someone else's way. If you're biking by, you might have to adjust your path a little...

...but that's okay. A place that feels safe to walk feels safe to bike, too. (This is the view from the northeast corner.)

Speaking of which, a rumor is circulating that DOT might install some bike parking here. The DOT press office told us the agency is "investigating the placement of racks in the vicinity of the sidewalk extension." I think there's enough room to go around.

Thanks to BicyclesOnly for posting this shot from yesterday morning's commute to the Streetsblog Flickr pool. By my count, we've got six people riding bikes here on a one-and-a-half block stretch of the Eighth Avenue protected path, with two or three others farther back, in the shade. As far as I can tell, everyone is riding in the right direction. If I was an Eighth Avenue merchant, I'd start agitating for more bike parking in front of my store.

More recent highlights from the Flickr pool (tag photos with "streetsblog" to contribute) after the jump.

Also from BicyclesOnly: The Lafayette Street bike lane on Tuesday morning.

From darkpilot: The corner of Fourth Avenue and 9th Street in Brooklyn is getting a bigger sidewalk. This is one among dozens of intersections targeted for pedestrian improvements in the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project.

Spurred by comments following yesterday's post on Greenway access in Washington Heights, a reader put together this map [download the full size version] of how to get from the Greenway to the George Washington Bridge. It's no straight shot by any means. If the arrows are a little hard to follow, here are the directions:

Stay on the path under the bridge, take the bridge over Amtrak, the tunnel under S-bound parkway, the path then switches back south then north to parallel the N-bound parkway, which it crosses at a ped bridge to Riverside Drive. Go right onto Riverside, then left on 181st up to Ft. Washington. Depending on preference and access, go to either of the bridge path entrances.

Picking up on the previous thread, for those who know this route, how would you rate it in terms of safety and convenience? For those who don't, how likely would you be to try it? What could be done to simplify this connection, or make it safer?

These days, it's not often that we get to report about New York City community boards pushing DOT for more progressive street designs. So sit back and enjoy this post. If you read Streetsblog regularly, it'll blow your mind.

Back in April, DOT met with members of Brooklyn Community Board 9, which covers parts of Crown Heights and Flatbush, about a traffic calming project for Empire Boulevard. At the time, the project did not include a bike lane.

I asked district manager Pearl Miles about that meeting. "We said, 'How about a bike lane?'" she recalls. "Our community is largely residential, so we want it to be safe."

When DOT came back in May for a presentation to the full board [PDF], the project -- now sporting a bike lane -- passed in a resounding 38-2 vote.

Crews are now working on the Empire Boulevard project, which closely resembles the template DOT used to calm traffic on Vanderbilt Avenue. A moving lane will be removed in each direction, and a painted median with pedestrian refuges will run down the center. (Allerton Avenue in the Bronx is slated for similar treatment [PDF], as Mobilizing the Region reported on Monday. "We presented the Allerton project to the CB 11 committee that covers the specific area and we are taking their input as we finalize the plan,” said DOT spokesman Scott Gastel.)

There are many more streets where CB 9 would like to see bike lanes installed. Back in the 90s -- before anyone had ever uttered the words "Google Maps" -- land use chair Mike Cetera plotted out a bike network on an aerial map of the district. The goal, says Miles, was to identify routes for families to ride safely to local parks, including Prospect Park. The addition of the Empire Boulevard bike lane marks a major milestone for that plan.

"This is our first real implementation, and we're excited about it," said Miles.

The 215th Step-Street: still broken. Photo: Brad Aaron

It was at Espaillat's June 25 "town hall" meeting, reports neighborhood blog Inwoodette, that the Department of Design and Construction broke the news -- to a chorus of boos -- that "pre-design" work will not be complete until October 2010. Said a second local blogger, Jewyorican: DDC personnel "made it sound like we wanted the city to build the 215th street space elevator to the moon."

It isn't the first time the city has promised to fix the steps only to later renege. As we reported last year, a previous commitment was made in 2005. For whatever it's worth, Streetsblog has messages in with DDC and Community Board 12 to determine the latest project time line.

Update: From Mark Levine, chair of CB 12's transportation committee:

A lot of us are livid about this delay. Originally construction was to begin this year (and even that was two years after the project was funded!). DDC says they are now negotiating with the consultant on the pre-design scope package for OMB review. Espaillat has contacted the mayor's office and DDC commissioner in an effort to expedite matters.

Last week DOT unveiled this conceptual plan for a better gateway to the Brooklyn Bridge [PDF]. For the thousands of pedestrians and cyclists who access the bridge on the Brooklyn side every day, it's a winner.

Presented at a public meeting in downtown Brooklyn, the new design features a more generous, boulevard-style bike-ped access ramp to the bridge, plus wider medians and sidewalks, curb extensions, and separated bike lanes on each of the three approaches to the ramp. If implemented, the proposal would greatly improve safety at one of the most complex, heavily-trafficked intersections in the city.

The project is still in its early stages. This plan, based on input from an earlier public workshop in January, will be refined again, with DOT aiming to bring a more finished proposal before Community Board 2 this fall. The multi-million dollar reconstruction of Tillary Street and Adams Street, which cross paths at the foot of the ramp, is slated to begin in 2012.

A reader who went to last week's workshop tells us the reception was generally positive. About 40 people attended, and after DOT's presentation, everyone marked up large copies of the plan with notes about what they liked and didn't like.

Some highlights from the concept plan:

• The entry ramp, currently a concrete barrier-lined chute where pedestrians and cyclists vie for space on a 10-foot wide path, would expand to a 14-foot wide path with plantings on each side. To make room, existing medians would be consolidated and service lanes on Adams Street would be eliminated or reduced in width.
  
• Two-way protected bike paths would extend at least one block in each direction from the foot of the ramp. On Adams Street, cyclists would have a straight shot to and from the ramp thanks to a center median two-way bike path.
• More pedestrian space -- including wider sidewalks, medians and curb extensions -- all along Tillary from Clinton Street to Flatbush Avenue. Similar treatment on Adams directly south of the access ramp.

The city is, in some ways, making up for lost time on this one. An earlier DOT regime passed up the chance to improve safety at the Tillary/Adams intersection when the Adams Street median was redesigned in 1998.

More graphics from DOT's concept plan after the jump.

The intersection of Adams and Tillary in DOT's concept plan. The foot of the Brooklyn Bridge access ramp is at the top of the picture. Proposed additions and enhancements to ped/bike areas are shaded lighter than existing sidewalk. For a look at the existing conditions and the full plan, see this PDF.

Proposed geometry for the bridge access ramp. Image: NYCDOT.

This image of Fifth Avenue unearthed by the Times' Jennifer 8. Lee (nice headline!) is a fascinating relic from the dawn of the motoring age. The new geometry pictured here nicked 15 feet of sidewalk from pedestrians to make room for two traffic lanes. In one fell swoop, the balance of space shifted dramatically: Two 30-foot sidewalks and a 40-foot roadway became 22½-foot sidewalks and a 55-foot roadway. The insets show the sort of "imperfections" slated for elimination on the auto-friendly Fifth Avenue: terraces, stoops, gardens -- the type of amenities that make streets more than simply thoroughfares to pass through.

Which got me wondering: A hundred years from now, how will we interpret images like this?

Photo: jblough/Flickr