To mark its 50th anniversary, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recently pitted a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air against its contemporary counterpart, a 2009 Malibu, in a 40 mph crash test. As you can see in the video, the Malibu destroys its predecessor.

The results were intended to demonstrate how much safer cars are now than a half-decade ago, but my first thought was that the new vehicle is the same make and model that NYPD Detective Kevin Spellman drove into Drana Nikac at an estimated 30 mph -- a speed that carries a pedestrian fatality rate of up to 45 percent.

So while modern-day engineering may be better at protecting drivers and passengers, the auto industry and the IIHS -- whose "bigger is better" philosophy ignores those outside of vehicles -- have a long, long way to go before they can crow too loudly about overall safety.

Nighttime visibility on the Hudson River Greenway north of W. 102nd Street has not improved since Jacob-uptown took this photo a year ago.

Due to the absence of lighting, once clocks are rolled back for daylight-saving time the Greenway between W. 102 and W. 125 Streets is plunged into darkness during the evening rush. Making matters worse is the glare of headlights from the Henry Hudson Parkway. Writes Upper Manhattan commuter Brad Conover:

The combination of no lights on the path and oncoming headlights of southbound traffic makes it impossible to see the bike path. There should be three new lines painted marking north and southbound biking lanes, not just one line separating bikers from pedestrians with no indication as to N/S-bound bikers, and there should be lights on the path and/or hedges to block the lights of oncoming traffic. I am sure someone is going to get seriously hurt on that path through no fault of their own.

Jacob-uptown, who sent in photographs of the area last year, was informed in a January 2009 letter that DOT would be recommending that the Parks Department include Cherry Walk lighting in its next round of capital construction contracts (though Parks previously indicated to Streetsblog that such a project would fall under the purview of DOT). Aside from some new shrubbery that "only helps a bit," Jacob reports that no changes have been made since last fall.

Last week, DOT told Streetsblog that defective highway lights along the Cherry Walk stretch would be replaced, but said there are no plans to install lighting on the Greenway itself.

So, I hope you'll forgive me for posting these Halloween pictures halfway through November. I took them on Fifth Avenue at the south end of Park Slope, and I've been meaning to share them since election week. 

Usually on Halloween I'm cooped up in an office until dark, but since it fell on a Saturday this year, I got to head out and enjoy the trick-or-treating with everyone else. And I mean everyone. The kids, the parents, the grandparents. The merchants who give away candy. The people who just happen to be out on the street. Halloween has got to be the most active day of the year for New York City streetlife (even more than marathon day, I'd say).

Halloween is really the ultimate livable streets holiday. Consider: We plan streets to accommodate peak rush-hour traffic, and we pave parking lots big enough for the oceans of cars that arrive for Black Friday shopping. If we treated infrastructure for walking the same way, we'd plan to accommodate the pedestrian volumes on Halloween. Our sidewalks would be much bigger.

Because so many people are out walking, Halloween is also a day of horrific traffic violence. Nationally, the incidence of child pedestrian fatalities doubles on this day. In New York, DOT feels compelled to send out safety tips for parents and drivers. On Fifth Avenue, large platoons of trick-or-treaters would gather on corners, spilling into the street while waiting for the walk sign.

Sometimes, they'd get cut off even after the traffic signal gave them the all clear.

I don't think bright costumes and safety awareness campaigns for drivers really do the trick here. How much safer and more enjoyable would Halloween be if kids and families could go trick-or-treating without worrying about getting hit by a car?

Halloween falls on a Sunday next year, so here's an idea. Why not combine this holiday with Summer Streets and make trick-or-treating car-free on neighborhood commercial streets all over New York? Logistically, I'm sure this would be quite the commitment. But DOT already seems intent on expanding car-free events. Hitching Summer Streets to the Halloween wagon could pay off big-time.

Mayor Bloomberg has already shown how much his administration can accomplish in just a few years. Since Janette Sadik-Khan's appointment to head the DOT in 2007, the city has striped hundreds of miles of bike lanes, reclaimed acres of street space for pedestrians and improved bus travel for tens of thousands of New Yorkers. "More of the same" is no longer a dirty phrase when it comes to local transportation policy. During the next four years, the mayor needs to accelerate this progress, and introduce a few key innovations to maximize the value New Yorkers get from their new streets.

There is plenty of room to build on the Bloomberg administration's record of support for safer, greener streets. Photosim of 34th Street: Luc Nadal and Marc De Decker, ITDP.

Well, the release of DOT's Street Design Manual back in July was an especially auspicious development. This groundbreaking playbook contains templates that can transform streets in neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs. The manual is an engineering document, but it also makes sense as an outreach tool. Community groups concerned about street safety could use the manual as a menu, requesting traffic calming solutions for their neighborhood from DOT. Liberal use of these new designs, applied through a smart community-based process, could pay huge dividends all over the city.

For a fraction of the cost of subway line construction, buses could move millions, if the mayor throws his weight behind BRT.

One sensible way for the NYPD to roll out this approach to traffic enforcement would be to start in areas frequented by children and seniors. Seniors make up 12 percent of New York's population, yet account for 39 percent of pedestrian fatalities. And according to the Department of Health, auto traffic is the leading cause of injury-related death in children ages 1-14. DOT's Safe Routes to School and Safe Routes for Seniors programs have spawned imitators around the country, but our city is no longer the national leader. Other cities are now far ahead of New York when it comes to implementing these street safety programs. Combined with police enforcement, short-term and inexpensive improvements such as leading pedestrian intervals, reductions in signalized crossing speeds, and a citywide slower speed limit in school zones would prioritize pedestrians, save the lives of children and seniors, and get New York City back in the forefront of planning streets for safety.

Greater safety helps more New Yorkers feel at ease riding on our streets. As the city's bike network matures, a large-scale public bike-share system is a no brainer. Bike-sharing weaves cycling into the larger transportation network. In Paris, Velib tripled cycling in a few months with 20,000 bikes spread over 1,400 stations. Montrealers took more than a million rides on Bixi in fewer than six months, and similar gains have been repeated around the globe. The same explosive growth would happen in New York overnight, if Mayor Bloomberg backed bike-share in a big way. Seventy-four percent of trips here are five miles or less, meaning they're very bikeable and easily converted to bike-share trips. If he builds it, they will come.

The same is true of new and better bike facilities. Since the city installed the Ninth Avenue cycle track, biking on the West Side has gotten safer, and so has walking. In Brooklyn, the Kent Avenue protected path is having an identical effect. Traffic-protected bike lanes on Queens Boulevard, through upper Manhattan, down the Upper West Side, and all along the East Side -- where there is a dearth of safe space for cyclists -- would encourage thousands more New Yorkers to ride.

Mayor Bloomberg is a MetroCard guy, but it's much easier to spot him on the subway than riding the bus. That should change in the next four years. Although 2.4 million people ride New York City Transit buses each weekday, the bus system is the city's most underperforming transportation resource. Improvements like pre-paid boarding and signal priority, which have been installed along Fordham Road in the Bronx, could speed service on bus routes around the city. And a true Bus Rapid Transit network, with dedicated lanes for buses and level boarding for passengers, would add another dimension to our transit system. For a fraction of the cost of subway line construction, buses could move millions, if the mayor throws his weight behind BRT.

Mayor Mike has a lot on his plate in the coming weeks, months and years. But if he wants to keep New York City moving toward a sustainable future and shore up his legacy as the Livable City mayor, then safer streets, robust bike-share and better buses are the fastest way to get there.

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.

Seth Kahn, pictured here with late TV pitchman Billy Mays. Photo via Facebook

Inevitably, some media reports portray Kahn, who was in the crosswalk, as trying to beat the light, while making less of the fact that the bus driver, turning left from 53rd, must have also rushed into the intersection. The driver was not charged.

Despite the constant presence of pedestrians, Ninth Avenue is a notoriously dangerous place for people to walk. The quotes have been removed from the story now, but a local resident told NY1 (via Gothamist): "That particular corner always has some accidents. All the cars travel very fast and there's too many buses using 53rd Street and they don't even look for pedestrians."

Kahn was the fourth known pedestrian to die in the city in less than a week. On Tuesday a corrections officer with a suspended license hit Dorothea Wallace of Prospect Heights as she walked to work. Luis Rivera of the Bronx was struck and killed by a city bus driver on Halloween after he reportedly threw something at the bus' windshield. And last Friday, off-duty NYPD detective Kevin Spellman ran down 67-year-old Drana Nikac as she crossed a street in Kingsbridge.

A Parks Department sanitation truck struck a 78-year-old woman using a motor-assisted wheelchair in the Eighth Avenue bike lane this morning shortly before 10 a.m., just north of Bleecker Street. The victim suffered head trauma and was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital, where she is in serious condition, a police spokesman said. No further details on the collision are available at this time. NYPD said the investigation is ongoing.

The driver was heard repeating that he "didn't see" the victim, according to Michelle Ernst of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, who passed the scene of the crash this morning and sent in this picture.

Streetsblog has requests in with DOT and the Parks Department to determine if a policy is in place governing the use of protected bike paths by city vehicles. We'll post more information as it becomes available.

When will pedestrians and cyclists be able to feel safe and secure on New York City streets? Photo: Bryan Goebel.

In a recent interview with Streetsblog, Tompkins evokes "Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs," a traditional marketing and psychology concept, to explain why ensuring public safety was the crucial first step in the renaissance of Times Square, and a pre-requisite for reclaiming sections of Broadway for pedestrians and public space.

You need to take care of the basics of comfort and security first before you can even think about anything else. That played out with respect to nature and parks, but wasn't really playing out in the streets and sidewalks. I think not only in Times Square and in New York City, but in a bunch of places... we've been paying attention to that. And that's been the paradigm shift that's driving a lot of this.

Tompkins' assessment has important implications for the movement to tame the streets. If establishing basic security is a fundamental prerequisite for widespread public use of any space, what about creating order and safety on our streets?

Crime and the perception of disorder have plummeted in public spaces like parks, squares, and sidewalks. But it is abundantly clear to anyone who bicycles, walks or drives in New York City that this isn’t true in the streets. Speeding and dangerous driving are epidemic. This perception is backed by study after study and by the reality that thousands of cyclists and pedestrians are struck every year. The dangerous chaos on the streets also means very few children or older people feel comfortable bicycling, and only a small portion of people who consider cycling actually ride regularly.

It will take decades before the Department of Transportation can re-engineer most of the city's big streets for cyclists and pedestrians. Even then, laws must be enforced. New York City has changed the equation in parks and on the sidewalks. What about the streets?

Via TreeHugger, Copenhagenize reports that Volvo is in the final stages of testing technology to improve safety for people outside its products -- a "pedestrian detection" system available in S60 models next year:

It is meant to spot all pedestrians in front of the car as well as off to the sides in a 60 degree angle. It will warn the driver with a red flashing light on the windshield if the car is on a collision course with a pedestrian.

If the driver doesn't react quick enough it will brake automatically up to 25 km/h and stop by itself if the car is traveling under 25 km/h.

The system cannot recognize bicyclists yet, but engineers are working on it.

At first blush, a car on the lookout for pedestrians seems like a can't-lose safety measure. But a lot depends on how drivers compensate, knowing that their vehicles can mitigate their own lapses in judgment and attention. Might a safer, smarter car lead people to take more risks and exercise less care behind the wheel?

Since this is exactly the sort of question that comes up again and again in Traffic (recipient of the 2008 Streetsie for best book), I emailed author Tom Vanderbilt to get his take on the merits and drawbacks of Volvo's new tech. Here's what he wrote back:

It's hard not to be of two minds about this. On the one hand, I'm all for personal responsibility and putting the driver in charge. On the other hand, there are certain times when even the most cautious driver might be plagued by some shortcoming in perception or attention -- e.g., a few months ago I almost hit a cyclist because I did not see them in my right-rear blind spot, and I wasn't expecting a cyclist to be there. It's unfortunate that it doesn't work at night, given the overrepresentation of pedestrian fatalities at that time, partially having to do with visibility. But in any case the real question is whether even with negative behavioral adaptation there's still a net safety gain. And the other bright spot is at least someone besides Honda is actually thinking about pedestrians from the car's point of view.

Interestingly, I've heard that some of the settings at which auto engineers place these systems for activation are much more stringent than what drivers themselves seem to desire -- so maybe the car really would know best in this situation.

And of course there's other things we could do, vis a vis technology, to improve urban traffic safety, "Intelligent Speed Adaptation" being top of the agenda here. This too is a form of "collision avoidance," as obviously the slower you're going, the more time to avoid a crash.

I should note that the pedestrian detection system will be optional on those new Volvos, part of a $3,500 premium package. So for now, this potentially life-saving tech remains a luxury item.

"This past month at CB 8 has really been all about neighbors convincing neighbors," Samponaro says. "Residents of all stripes came out to support protected lanes at the last committee meeting, and it made a big impression on the board."

Turnout will be crucial for tomorrow night's meeting, when board members should be reminded of the benefits of protected bike lanes for all street users, including reduced crossing distances for pedestrians and fewer conflicts between sidewalk users and cyclists who don't feel safe riding in street traffic. Longtime UES advocate Glenn posted salient talking points earlier today.

If you've ever made the case for safer streets to Community Board 8, or if you've been waiting for an opportune moment, now's the time to follow up or follow through.

WHAT: Community Board 8 Full Board Meeting
WHEN: Wednesday, October 21, 6:30 p.m.
WHERE: Ramaz School Auditorium, 125 E. 85th St.

In August, 8-year-old Axel Pablo was killed by a cab driver in Harlem. Witnesses say the cabbie was on his cell phone. Though police cleared him of wrongdoing, the TLC has since revoked his hack license. Photo via Daily News

According to the News, keeping cab drivers off the phone should only be required when passengers are present -- apparently because News editors believe distracted driving is a mere annoyance, rather than a well-documented threat to public safety:

The present TLC rules forbid cell chatting while cabbies are driving. That's reasonable; you shouldn't have to listen to your hack yack while you're paying $2 per mile, no more than you should be forced to listen to the radio at full blast.

But when drivers are alone, using their cabs as cars -- just like millions do -- they should live by the same rules as the rest of the population.

So instead of advocating for more stringent distracted driving laws for everyone who gets behind the wheel, the editors of the Daily News would prefer that we "cut some slack" to thousands of professional drivers who patrol streets teeming with vulnerable pedestrians and cyclists 24/7/365. Never mind that cell-phone-using drivers, hands-free or no, are four times more likely to be involved in a crash. And remember that national summit a couple of weeks ago, when the U.S. secretary of transportation declared distracted driving a "deadly epidemic"? Honestly, people: Where have you been?

For the record, the Post is in favor of the new TLC rules. And no wonder. It's hard to believe a position so ill-informed as that of the Daily News editorial board could be held by anyone who reads a newspaper on a daily basis, much less publishes one.

Can't make the light in time? In the eyes of the Post, you're a scofflaw.

If only New Yorkers stopped jaywalking, the Post posits, we wouldn't suffer so much needless death and destruction. Adding to a news-ish feature on reckless pedestrians published yesterday, the paper bemoans "jaywalking's steep toll" but says nothing about the rampant speeding and lawless driving that make the simple act of crossing the street so risky. No mention of the fact that many city streets are so wide that elderly New Yorkers can't get across during the allotted time. No indication that the Post editors have the slightest clue about engineering and enforcement improvements like leading pedestrian intervals, red light and speeding cameras, and, most obvious of all, wider sidewalks, which hold the most promise for improving street safety.

It takes a special kind of windshield perspective to look around at the vehicular carnage in New York City -- the hundreds of lives lost and thousands of injuries suffered every year -- and point fingers at the most vulnerable people on the street. You'd think real New Yorkers would recognize that the only way to make our streets safer is to embrace our inherent strength as a walking city. So, I'm curious: Do any Post editors actually live here?

Cars blocking crosswalks, drivers failing to yield to pedestrians, unnecessary honking -- New Yorkers have to contend with these violations every day on nearly every corner in the city.

As Streetsblog publisher Mark Gorton says in this Streetfilm, most drivers are not bad or mean people, but few seem to realize how their conduct behind the wheel inconveniences and endangers pedestrians. It's a level of rudeness and carelessness that we tend not to tolerate in other spheres of life, especially when you consider the risks involved in piloting a multi-ton vehicle. New Yorkers can get brusque or nasty on the subway, but you rarely see straphangers engage in behavior that poses an immediate danger to the people around them. So what is it about driving a car that lets people disregard the safety of others?

WHEREAS, Manhattan Community Board 8 is concerned about the safety of all people who use our streets and sidewalks,

WHEREAS, protected bike lanes have brought measurable safety improvements to other neighborhoods in Manhattan,

WHEREAS, many members of the Upper East Side public, business community, and elected officials have all expressed support for protected bike lanes in petitions, surveys, letters, and public testimony,

WHEREAS, Manhattan Community Board 8 wishes to encourage safe, responsible cycling in, to, and from this district,

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that CB8 supports the DOT's initiative to create protected bike lanes and requests that DOT prepare a study for a neighborhood bicycle network that includes Class 1 protected bike lanes (including information on projected impacts on pedestrian safety, bike safety, parking, truck traffic, and neighborhood business) that would be subject to review and comment by Community Board 8.

The resolution passed unanimously.

Though there were glimmers of hope at CB 8 forum last week, given the board's history when it comes to bike infrastructure, this is an amazing development. We'll have more coverage later, but for now cycling and pedestrian advocates, and anyone interested in safer Upper East Side streets, should mark their calendars for the big day: October 21, when the resolution is scheduled to be taken up by the full board.

In the meantime, congratulations to everyone who made this happen.

Newly digitized AAA mag: crazy for cars, mad about pedestrian streets.

The “test project,” now four months old, has been criticized by some as both tacky and ill-suited to the location. While we tend to agree, we are more concerned with serious safety issues created by mixing cross-town traffic and pedestrians, particularly where many of them are vacationing tourists. We also have yet to see the environmental and congestion benefits to justify the experiment’s costs.

The pedestrian plaza concept was the brainchild of city transportation officials intrigued with the idea of importing the pedestrian zones common in Europe to New York City. But so far, the project appears to be an unnatural fit for the heart of America’s biggest city. After all, Times Square is not Rome, Paris or Barcelona, where piazzas and squares lined with cafes and restaurants evolved naturally in the urban landscape.

Yep, all of a sudden pedestrians are mixing with crosstown traffic. Remember back when that never happened? Me neither.

Have fun picking this apart, Streetsbloggers. I'll just go out on a limb here and wager that the editorialists at AAA, headquartered out in Nassau, don't represent the views of real New Yorkers and probably never walked around with all those "vacationing tourists" squeezed into traffic by the sidewalk crunch at the old Times Square.

After the jump, a nice rejoinder from genuine city dwellers, courtesy of City Room, about the pleasures of having places to socialize in public.

On busy evening in Times Square, at the pedestrian mall on Broadway, E. J. Bonilla and Melissa Oyola found an empty table and two chairs, content among the seas of calm and waves of chaos surrounding them.

This is date night.

“Ever since they hooked this place up, it’s like a lifesaver,” Mr. Bonilla, 21, said. “If you’re with somebody, you’re with them because you like each other. You shouldn’t necessarily need something else to help you guys along.”

Here's another installment in what could ideally become a series on how police departments are doing right by pedestrians and cyclists. We posted the Chicago bike video a couple of weeks back. We now present the Sacramento crosswalk sting. (Warning: Insufferable Geico commercial may precede video.)

Back in April, TV station KCRA filmed a plainclothes Sacramento officer busting motorists who couldn't be bothered to yield the right of way. Notice how, though they cite the potential amount of the fine, neither the anchor nor the reporter ever intimate that the operation is a money-making scheme? Instead of sticking a mic in a driver's face for a quick-and-dirty accusation of extortion -- a near-must in most any mainstream media story about traffic enforcement -- the reporter is completely sympathetic to the pedestrians in harm's way, and rightly credits the officer for putting his life on the line.

Ben wrote earlier this year how similar measures could be effective here in New York. Wouldn't it be great if we could all point to a law-breaking vehicle and have NYPD swoop in?

Thompson tells NY1 he'll "review" recent safe street projects.

• After the Ninth Avenue protected bike lane was installed in 2007, injuries among all users dropped 56 percent.
  
• The protected Broadway bike lane between 42nd and 35th Streets brought a 50 percent drop in injuries.

Given quality of life improvements like these, it would make sense for mayoral challenger Bill Thompson to promise to at least stay the course, if not to one-up the incumbent. And in his responses to the Transportation Alternatives Candidate Survey, Thompson comes across as a big believer in the benefits of livable streets. New MTA revenue streams, expanded BRT service, ramped-up traffic enforcement, on-street parking reform -- when playing to the TA crowd, the candidate is nearly pitch perfect.

But depending on whom he's talking to, Thompson is either eager to expand on the safe streets initiatives of the past few years or eradicate them on day one -- starting with a shake up at DOT and removal of the Grand Street lane.

If increased safety and community board approval wouldn't be enough for a project to be judged a success by Mayor Thompson, what criteria would he use? Though we were assured several times that the candidate supports bike lanes, our conversation with a Team Thompson spokesperson did little to clear things up.

"It's a wide range of factors," said the spokesperson. "It's not just the small businesses in the area, it's also the community. I can't comment on something in the future. I mean, obviously you have to look at each bike lane separately, right?"

Despite a lot of talk about "community," the spokesperson did not mention health or safety as factors in determining worthy projects.

"We've heard from the community. Not just the community board, but from small business community members, neighbors in the area that felt like the bike lane has actually hurt business in the area. Obviously with the economy the way it is, you want to do all you can to help the small businesses of New York. Again, I just want to make it clear that he does support bike lanes. He's said it over and over again."

So when it comes to livable streets initiatives under the Thompson administration, the litmus test won't be public health, or even environmental impact, but feelings and anecdotes. When you single out one of the city's most effective cyclist safety improvements for immediate demolition based on who's screaming loudest, a promise of theoretical support simply doesn't hold water. No matter how many times you say it.

Photo: artgyrl/Flickr

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.

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.