Streetsblog New York City

After a dozen years of waiting, what's a couple more, give or take? Photo: Brad Aaron

It was supposed to happen circa 2005. Then in 2009. Now the city says the restoration of a crumbling block-long staircase that serves as a pedestrian-only street in Inwood will be finished by summer 2013.

The 215th Step-Street connects Broadway to residential blocks at Inwood’s northern end. For years its cracked stairs and broken lamps have posed a hazard — neighborhood residents have been asking the city to rebuild it since at least 1999. In 2007 a woman tripped on a hole in the stairs, cutting her legs and face, prompting renewed calls for action.

In 2008, DOT officials and then-Assembly Member Adriano Espaillat announced that a reconstruction project would be completed the following year. Instead, in the summer of 2009 the city backed off its pledge.

Now the Department of Design and Construction says plans are moving forward.

“The project is in Final Design and that phase is scheduled to be completed by July 2012,” a DDC spokesperson told Streetsblog. “The project is scheduled to begin construction in FY 13.”

While the news is promising, Inwoodites could be forgiven for not holding their breath.

City officials showed Community Board 5 renderings of the design for the permanent plaza at Times Square last night. Image: NYC DOT

By taking out a troublesome diagonal from the Manhattan grid, the Green Light for Midtown program improved street safety and retail business while creating new public space at one of New York City’s most iconic locations. Pedestrian injuries are down 35 percent and injuries to motorists are down 63 percent, even while traffic is flowing more smoothly than ever. Pedestrian volumes are up 11 percent in Times Square, bringing business to area shops and catapulting Times Square to the second-most expensive retail area in the city.

Yet all anyone ever seemed to talk about were the lawn chairs.

That particular media obsession may finally be ready for retirement, though. NYC DOT and the Department of Design and Construction released plans for the permanent reconstruction of Times Square last night, as reported by DNAinfo. The entire roadway is going to be rebuilt for the first time in 50 years, said DOT spokesperson Seth Solomonow, repairing the utilities beneath the street. Instead of putting the asphalt back in place, however, the city will be installing a plaza designed for pedestrians from the ground up.

The Times Square design, seen from the TKTS booth. Image: NYC DOT.

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Large new pedestrian areas have added safe space for walking and imposed order on traffic at the intersection of Vanderbilt (with the cars queued up) and Flatbush. Photo: Ben Fried

Construction work is nearing completion at one of the summer’s biggest livable streets projects: DOT’s improvements for pedestrians and cyclists at Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza. Spurred by the advocacy groundwork laid by the Grand Army Plaza Coalition, the city has added huge new pedestrian islands on the north side of the plaza and created safer biking and walking connections on the south side, near the entrance to Prospect Park. All together, the changes make it much easier to walk to GAP’s central public space and navigate the whole area on foot or by bike. Here’s a peek at the pedestrian improvements on the north side.

Above is the intersection of Flatbush and Vanderbilt, looking north from one of the new pedestrian islands. Below is a similar angle, pre-makeover, grabbed from Google Street View.

Image: Google Street View

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The transportation committee of CB 11 voted to bring the complete street design for First Avenue, shown here in the East Village, to East Harlem. Photo: NYC DOT.

The transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 11 wants to see protected bike lanes on First and Second Avenues, which the city promised for East Harlem last year and then delayed. Joined by City Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito, who spoke strongly in favor of the project, the committee endorsed plans to build protected lanes between 96th Street and 125th Street on both avenues in a vote of 5-1, with two abstentions.

Officials from the Department of Transportation presented plans to build parking-protected bike lanes on both avenues to the committee last night, saying they would have the same design as on First Avenue south of 34th Street. On that stretch of road, said DOT, the protected bike lanes and pedestrian islands have greatly improved safety — injuries are down 37 percent there — without leading to increased congestion.

2010 conditions on First Avenue at 117th Street. Photo: James Garcia.

DOT bike and pedestrian director Josh Benson said that construction could start as soon as next spring, though he didn’t commit to building out all thirty blocks of each avenue at once. Because First Avenue already has a buffered bike lane, he said, work would start on Second. No work would be done in the Second Avenue Subway work zone south of 100th Street until construction there was complete.

Mark-Viverito took the floor immediately after DOT’s presentation to highlight her support for the plan. City streets need to balance the needs of everyone in the community, she said, “and bikers are a part of that.” In East Harlem, she argued, the need for safe cycling is particularly acute: The neighborhood has high obesity and asthma rates as well as a large senior population in need of shorter road crossings. She also noted that East Harlem was only getting these lanes after being dropped from the early rounds of construction and added back in after sustained activism from the community.

Mark-Viverito also forcefully laid out the case for parking-protected bike lanes. “I don’t think what we have in this community are bike lanes,” she said. “They don’t offer a level of protection and they’re not respected, since they’re just painted on the ground.”

The debate wasn’t unanimous — one community board member worried that with the bike lane, a double-parked car would narrow an avenue to only two through lanes, and a local health teacher complained about the 166 parking spaces that would be removed in the plan — but most who spoke were in favor of the plan.

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After over a year of protests from residents and electeds clamoring for safer streets, next week DOT will present its proposal for extending the First and Second Avenue bike lanes north to 125th Street. The presentations will mark the second time around the community board circuit for bike-ped safety plans on those streets, which were approved by local CBs in 2010 but put on hold soon after.

Last November, Council Member Melissa Mark Viverito, backed by State Senator Jose Serrano and Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh, helped deliver 2,500 handwritten letters to City Hall asking for protected bike lanes up to 125th Street. Photo: Noah Kazis

Presentations will be made on Tuesday the 6th and Wednesday the 7th to the transportation committees of Community Boards 11 and 8, respectively. If you walk or bike on the East Side, these will be can’t-miss meetings. Votes in favor of the project next week would lead to construction next year.

Between 1998 and 2008, nearly 4,900 pedestrians and cyclists were injured or killed on First and Second between Houston and 125th, according to the New York State Department of Transportation. Almost three-fourths of the incidents occurred between 34th and 125th streets.

Some background: In 2010 the city unveiled a comprehensive plan for improved bus, pedestrian and cyclist facilities on First and Second from Houston to 125th Street, including protected bike lanes on Second between 100th and 125th, and on First between 34th and 49th and between 57th and 125th, with a buffered lane in the gap. CB 6, CB 8, and CB 11 all voted for redesigns including protected bike lanes that spring.

Residents and officials — particularly in East Harlem, with its high cyclist count and hazardous conditions for walking and biking — were incensed when they later learned that work north of 34th Street would be delayed indefinitely. This April, progress was accompanied by further uncertainty when DOT announced plans to extend bike lanes on First and Second up to 57th Street in 2011.

Now that it looks like the rest of the project is moving forward, it’s crucial that supporters make their voices heard — particularly in District 8, where the concept of reallocating street space can always be contentious. Times and locations for the meetings are here and here. We’ll have more next week.

This is the generous new sidewalk extension at the five-way intersection of Washington Avenue, Park Place, and Grand Avenue in Brooklyn. Here you can see bell bollards protecting the added pedestrian space between Washington, on the left, and Grand on the right.

I live around the corner, and I can’t say enough about how much this addition has improved the walking experience. Before DOT put this in as part of a broader safety project, the area between Grand and Washington felt like a grey zone were pedestrians weren’t supposed to tread. Walking on the east side of Washington usually entailed weaving between a combination of parked police vehicles and metal barricades:

Image: Google Street View

The cops who operate out of the building at the corner of Grand and Park have staked claim to the sidewalks here, and they seem to consider any pedestrian space within a 200-foot radius of their workplace to be fair game for parking. Here are their vehicles hogging the sidewalk on Park:

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James Vacca and Janette Sadik-Khan take advantage of new pedestrian countdown timers crossing 165th Street at the Grand Concourse. Photo: Noah Kazis.

City Council Transportation Chair James Vacca showed his safety supporter side at a press conference in the Bronx this morning. Standing with DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan at the corner of the Grand Concourse and 165th Street to announce the installation of countdown pedestrian signals, Vacca had strong words for speeding motorists and endorsements for both automated speeding enforcement and slow speed zones.

“The accidents are too many and the speed is unacceptable,” said Vacca of the Grand Concourse. That avenue had 411 pedestrian injuries between 2005 and 2009 and nine pedestrian fatalities, according to Sadik-Khan. Vacca heartily endorsed the installation of countdown timers along the Grand Concourse, saying he hoped to see them throughout the city.

The countdown signals have also already been installed along Queens Boulevard, Hillside Avenue and Kissena Boulevard in Queens and West Street in Manhattan, among other streets. They will eventually be come to 1,500 intersections citywide.

Off the Concourse, Vacca called for two measures in particular to keep speeds down. He repeated his endorsement of 20 mile per hour speed limits, saying they could work in many neighborhoods, given “local input” in the process. Vacca had hoped that the city’s first 20 mile per hour speed zone would be located in his district, though DOT selected the Claremont section of the Bronx for the first site.

Vacca also urged Albany to pass legislation allowing the city to install automated cameras to enforce the speed limit. “Many motorists have to look themselves in the mirror,” he said. A pedestrian hit at 30 miles per hour, the New York City speed limit, has an 80 percent chance of surviving the crash; a pedestrian hit at 40 miles per hour has only a 30 percent chance of survival. Speeding, said Vacca, is “something we can’t have any tolerance for.”

Vacca’s commitment to promoting street safety through enforcement stands in tension with his positions on redesigning the streets themselves for the same purpose. The transportation committee chair seems more willing to let speeding continue if reining it in would require taking away a parking space, building a bike lane or creating a pedestrian plaza.

Borough President Scott Stringer and Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal press the DOT to install promised safety improvements at the dangerous intersection of Broadway, Amsterdam, and 71st Street on the Upper West Side. Behind them are neighborhood residents and members of Community Board 7. Photo: Noah Kazis

One year ago, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal stood on a traffic island in the middle of the intersection of Amsterdam Avenue, Broadway, and 71st Street to urge the Department of Transportation to install a slew of safety features at what they called “the bowtie of death.” That September, DOT put out a plan to expand sidewalks, add crosswalks and remove traffic lanes from both Broadway and Amsterdam.

This afternoon, Stringer and Rosenthal stood with Upper West Side community leaders on that same traffic island, urging DOT to finally put that safety plan into place. “Not next year, not during the fall, but now,” said Stringer.

Over the last two years, there have been 34 crashes at the intersection, according to Stringer’s office.

DOT had promised to make the safety improvements by this spring, Stringer said. The only change that’s been made so far are the installation of countdown timers on the walk signals. Knowing how much time you have to cross, he said, “is not the same as actually having more time.” Stringer explicitly called for each piece of the DOT safety plan to be installed, including the curb extensions, crosswalks, and the removal of traffic lanes.

“We shouldn’t be standing here today,” said Rosenthal. She’s been pushing for a safety fix for the intersection since 2007, when her office released a report on senior pedestrian safety in the neighborhood with Transportation Alternatives. The dangers of the crossing are so glaring that the Los Angeles Times led off a story on unsafe streets for the elderly with a discussion of that very corner, Rosenthal pointed out.

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At the southern end of Brooklyn Bridge Park, DOT will calm traffic and create space on the street to take cyclists off the sidewalk. Click for a larger version. Image: NYC DOT

Last week we covered DOT’s proposed safety improvements for the north side of Brooklyn Bridge Park, where sidewalk extensions, bike lanes, and planted medians will all be used to help pedestrians and cyclists safely reach the waterfront. DOT is also turning its attention to improving access to the southern entrance to the park, presenting a plan to Community Board 6 tomorrow evening [PDF]. The proposal reclaims some significant tracts of asphalt, giving pedestrians and cyclists more room on a critical segment of the evolving Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway.

The southern access point to Brooklyn Bridge Park, where Atlantic Avenue meets Pier 6, is if anything less hospitable than the northern one. Atlantic Avenue is a notorious speedway — on a stretch further east, cars were recently clocked at an average of 38 miles per hour — and pedestrians who use it to reach the park must cross BQE ramps. Atlantic comes to an end at the park in the form of a 90-foot-wide asphalt rectangle, where pedestrians and cyclists approaching on the south side squeeze onto a sidewalk only four feet wide.

The most prominent item in DOT’s menu of improvements for park access will re-allocate a chunk of that space to pedestrians and cyclists, carving out a plaza and two-way bike lane from all the extraneous pavement. On the sidewalk side of the bike lane, a ten-foot buffer will ensure that truck drivers leaving the adjacent Port Authority facility can see cyclists.

The proposal extends the two-way bike lane treatment south onto Columbia Street, clearly separating cycling space from walking space — no more fighting over sidewalk scraps. The plan calls for separating the bikeway from traffic with Jersey barriers. The room for this expansion of bike-ped space comes from removing a southbound traffic lane and narrowing the others, which should have a traffic-calming effect. A new pedestrian island will also make it easier to cross Atlantic at Columbia.

The DOT plan also includes a signal retiming and possible red light enforcement camera at the northbound BQE on-ramp on Atlantic.

DOT will present the plan to the CB6 transportation committee tomorrow at Long Island College Hospital at 6:30 p.m.

For the historical record, here’s three minutes of rather dull video capturing the pedestrian refuges on Fort Hamilton Parkway and 46th Street in Brooklyn. When the camera pans right you can also see the intersection at 47th Street, where there’s another refuge. I took the footage at the tail end of the p.m. rush this Wednesday, a few minutes before 6:30.

This is the Safe Streets for Seniors project that had local Assembly Member Dov Hikind up in arms for months, contending that the refuges impeded emergency response and interfered with deliveries to local businesses. While nearby Maimonides Medical Center and the FDNY said the islands posed no problem, the Hatzolah volunteer ambulance corps apparently felt differently and petitioned the local community board to have them taken out. Now DOT is going to remove these three refuges and add 24 blocks of striped center median, from 37th Street to 61st Street, to help compensate for the loss. A median island between 45th Street and New Utrecht Avenue will get shaved down but remain in place.

So, watch and see what all the fuss is about. In the snippet of time I got on video, the only person with any reason to complain is the cyclist who got a rude honking from a passing van driver at about the two-minute mark. Below is more footage from the intersection at 45th Street and the median island that’s slated for shaving.

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