Full seating in the new Jackson Heights plaza last fall. One merchant opposed to the project told a local paper that the plaza is "like a ghost town." Photo: Clarence Eckerson, Jr.

Earlier this month you might have noticed a few press accounts about merchants in Jackson Heights who think a new public plaza on one short block of 37th Road is crimping their bottom line. The plaza is actually part of a much broader plan to improve street safety, speed bus trips, and reduce traffic congestion in Jackson Heights, which neighborhood groups and NYC DOT have been working on for years without receiving much media attention. Now that there’s a tinge of conflict, the press is all over it — an innovative and community-driven transportation project has turned into a story about shopkeepers upset over the removal of 20 parking spaces.

The plaza reclaimed the block of 37th Road between 73rd Street and 74th Street. Before the plaza, traffic on that block degraded the neighborhood street network. Drivers turning left onto 37th Road used to cause traffic to back up on 73rd Street and beyond, causing epic fits of horn-honking. Buses routed onto the block more than a decade ago to make way for the construction of the 74th Street transit hub had to make a series of zigzagging turns, slowing down more than 10,000 bus riders every weekday. When the proposal came before the local community board, the vote in favor was unanimous.

“The objective was to get that traffic to move more smoothly and reduce that honking,” said Council Member Daniel Dromm, who has championed the changes and shepherded the project through to completion. Now Q47 and Q49 buses make one turn instead of three, and Dromm says bus drivers have told him they save seven minutes on each trip compared to the old route.

Merchants knew about the changes well in advance and most of the neighborhood’s business groups were supportive, said Dromm. After the plaza installation last fall, complaints began to surface about the loss of parking. But the parking loss — 20 spaces, according to one plaza opponent — is insignificant compared to the foot traffic that could be drawn to a well-run public space. Not only is Jackson Heights compact, walkable, and full of pedestrian traffic, but it has the least amount of park space per capita of any neighborhood in the city. The plaza is also right next to the 74th Street subway station, which sees more than 40,000 boardings on a typical weekday.

Some local merchants apparently don’t see the value of having a public plaza on their doorstep. “Our customers come to do shopping, not to sit,” said Mohammed Pier, president of the Jackson Heights Bangladeshi Business Association.

But it’s clear that the overwhelming majority of people who come to Jackson Heights don’t drive there. According to DOT’s 2010 neighborhood travel survey, 94 percent of interview subjects didn’t drive cars to get to Jackson Heights:

Image: NYC DOT

Other merchants believe that the benefits of the plaza outweigh the effects of having less parking. “Right now the business is slow because of the economy,” said Vasantrai Gandhi, who owns a shop called the New York Gold Company and used to chair Community Board 3. “Nobody can judge how much this affects business. One thing is sure. Now there is no accidents, no horn honking, no pollution, no fumes. Some areas benefit and some areas are at a disadvantage, but what’s important is safety.”

I spoke to some residents familiar with the project who think any loss in foot traffic is probably due to the re-routing of buses, not the plaza. They also speculated that the plaza would have received a better welcome if it had opened during the warmer months and started drawing crowds immediately. (Although even in the fall and winter, the space attracts people.)

The missing ingredient, more than great sunny weather, is a lack of vision and leadership from the businesses around the plaza, said Afzal Hussein, who opened Espresso77 on nearby 77th Street in 2007. “77th Street never used to have foot traffic,” he said. “Since I opened it people walk here.”

Hussein sees the potential of the plaza to become a destination, and he says he’d be glad to help make it work. “In the summer you can have art exhibits or performance,” he said. “You need a community working together, it’s no one person’s job. They need a leader. It’s a lot of potential there but nobody’s thinking that way.”

Without a merchant group taking ownership of the plaza, Dromm’s office has been coordinating events and maintenance. So far, he said, several community organizations have asked to use the plaza for events, including the Bangladeshi Youth Congress, Queens Community House, and Sindhu USA.

“We’re really working hard to make this successful and I’m calling on the business community to do the same thing,” said Dromm. “We want to help them, but it may require a little different thinking than they’ve had in the past.”

A reader passed along this photo of a new sign announcing that Fowler Square, a small triangle of grass in Fort Greene, is in line for a public space upgrade courtesy the Fulton Area Business Alliance and NYC DOT’s plaza program. Head to the Facebook group advertised on the sign and there’s more information. The next public workshop to help design the space, for example, will be on Thursday, February 16, at 6:00 p.m.

In past meetings, Community Board 2 endorsed the idea of a plaza wholeheartedly, according to a report in the Brooklyn Paper. Supporters haven’t always made a strong showing: At one meeting, some residents complained that by cutting off through traffic on a block of South Elliott Place and creating more space for pedestrians, the plan would “countrify” an urban area.

James Vacca got a lot of press for attacking the DOT plaza program at a hearing in his committee, but didn't seem to listen to the business reps he invited to testify. Image: CBS 2

James Vacca should know better.

On Tuesday, the City Council passed his bill requiring the Department of Transportation to consult with the Department of Small Business Services, among other agencies, whenever it implements major changes to a street. Vacca gave this explanation of the bill’s significance: “Many of the bike paths, many of the pedestrian plazas negatively impact small businesses and their ability to survive in the City of New York.”

Say what?

Just about every single plaza that DOT has built or approved (see here, here, here, and here) is sponsored by a local business association. The tiny handful that are not still have prominent local sponsors like Heritage Health and Housing in West Harlem. We reached out to Vacca’s office to ask him to specify some of the “many” plazas that have hurt small business. So far, there’s been no reply.

As chair of the City Council Transportation Committee, Vacca has a talented staff to make sure he understands the issues. So why does he keep mangling them in public?

Vacca can’t plead ignorance. At a hearing on public plazas in his own committee earlier this year, Vacca heard from representatives of four business groups: the 34th Street Partnership, the Dumbo BID, the Pitkin Avenue BID, and the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation. Each of them raved about the plazas.

Mario Bodden, the assistant vice president of community development at SoBro, had this to say about DOT’s Roberto Clemente Plaza to his fellow Bronxite: “I am so proud of it. I am very passionate about it. I want the City Council to put more money in the plaza program.” If business representatives like Bodden didn’t feel that way, they wouldn’t keep lining up to sponsor more plazas.

The available data bolster what these business leaders know in their gut: A better pedestrian environment is good for the bottom line. Retail rents in Times Square continued to rise after DOT turned traffic lanes into public plazas on Broadway in 2009. This year Times Square cracked Cushman & Wakefield’s list of the world’s top ten retail districts for the first time.

As for the effect of NYC bike lanes, hard data is scarce, but walk down any of the commercial avenues with protected lanes, and the retail environment looks healthy. Yes, Columbus Avenue business owners complained about the new bike lane’s effect on parking and deliveries, but merchants are notoriously bad judges of the issue, and a 2007 survey found that only two percent of the people on Columbus Avenue got there by driving [PDF]. Studies from other cities, meanwhile, show solid evidence that bike lanes can improve business.

The plaza, which was completed around six weeks ago, closed a short block of Ashford Street between Livonia and New Lots Avenues. That enabled the Department of Transportation to connect a tiny, 800 square foot triangle in the middle of the street to the sidewalk, creating a new 3,800 square foot space.

All that new public space was in heavy use today, as visitors were treated to a DJ playing hip-hop and reggae, a Thanksgiving turkey raffle, and the gospel choir of the local America Come Back to God Christian Academy, seen above singing “The Best Is Yet To Come.”

The best sign of a successful plaza? It's already in use by locals, including Ceciline Frank, on the right. Photo: Noah Kazis

But even before the event kicked off, East New York residents were enjoying the movable furniture in place. Ceciline Frank was walking past the area with a friend and decided to sit down and drink a coffee. “It’s a different environment,” she said of the plaza. “It’s an upliftment for us here.”

Eddie Di Benedetto, the owner of a local pizza parlor and the head of the New Lots Avenue Triangle Merchants Association, which sponsored the plaza, said businesses have already seen a boost from the new pedestrian space. “They love the fact they’re having tables and chairs,” he said. The plaza, he predicted, will become “a crown jewel of our community.”

According to Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, in 18 months the plaza will be upgraded from its current design, which uses granite blocks and planters to mark off the space, to a more permanent form.

The New Lots Triangle sits directly below the final stop on the 3 train in Brooklyn, and the station exit lets deposits people onto what used to be a narrow sidewalk. “You would get off the number 3 and actually step right off into traffic,” said Sadik-Khan. The plaza, she said, creates “a great new welcome mat for the community.”

The plaza is also expected to improve safety. Sadik-Khan noted that 14 people had been injured in traffic crashes over the last five years at this location.

City Council Member Charles Barron also spoke in support of the plaza this morning. “This beautification is a step in the right direction to let people know we’re taking pride in our community,” he said. To open his remarks, Barron led the crowd in chanting “East New York is on the rise.”

Also in attendance were staff members for Assembly Member Inez Barron and Senate Minority Leader John Sampson.

More photos of the plaza below:

The plaza adds a whole lot of public space to this corner of East New York. Photo: Noah Kazis

Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan officially opened the New Lots Triangle plaza along with community leaders and City Council Member Charles Barron. Photo: Noah Kazis

Most New Yorkers spend a lot of time walking, so pedestrian infrastructure is bound to be popular. Image: Municipal Art Society

The Municipal Art Society’s second annual survey on livability, released today, provides still more opinion data showing that New Yorkers want to see more bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. They’re more conflicted, however, when it comes to new, large-scale development.

The MAS poll, a survey of 1,000 residents performed by the Marist Institute, found that a preponderance of New Yorkers think that both bike lanes and pedestrianized streets make their neighborhoods better places to live. Bike lanes proved more popular, with 56 percent saying they improved livability and only 17 percent opposing them. Even the bold proposal of closing streets entirely to traffic had a citywide approval rating of 42 percent to 29 percent. Previous polls have shown similarly sizable levels of support for bike lanes.

MAS found more conflicted feelings toward new, dense development. While 62 percent of those surveyed believed that “large real estate development” is a good idea, an equal number said that development should “maintain the character of the neighborhood.” Bronx residents were much more willing to embrace development while Staten Islanders and Manhattanites were the least.

As MAS found last year, New York City’s staggering levels of inequality are reflected in New Yorkers’ opinions towards their neighborhoods. “We continue to see some underlying discontent, especially among people living outside Manhattan and those with lower incomes,” said MAS president Vin Cipolla. “It’s clear that citywide organizations like MAS need to step up our individual and collective efforts and presence in neighborhoods and forge new partnerships with community-based organizations to address these issues.”

Clarence sends over this photo of the newly car-free block of 37th Road between 73rd Street and 74th Street in Jackson Heights. Since this picture was taken, the asphalt on this block has been coated with an epoxy-and-gravel surface, and it looks like a two-way bike path will be striped on one side of the street.

The new plaza is part of a package to improve pedestrian safety, bike safety, transit effectiveness, and traffic flow in the commercial core of Jackson Heights, which DOT has been working on with neighborhood residents since the beginning of the year. You can track the changes and give DOT your comments through the online portal for the project.

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.

No longer will you have to step down from the sidewalk to the reclaimed street space. The width of Broadway will be laid with concrete pavers in two dark, alternating tones. In another touch from architecture firm Snøhetta, which designed the project, stainless steel discs will reflect some of Times Square’s neon back off the ground. Benches will be sited to separate areas meant for lounging from areas meant for walking.

The concrete pavers will extend into the roadbed where crosstown streets interrupt the plaza space. Hopefully, that will send a strong visual message to motorists that they are entering a busy pedestrian space.

The new design also includes a bike route through the area, but not on Broadway. According to DNAinfo, cyclists riding south on Broadway’s protected lane would switch to a short contraflow segment on 47th Street, turn onto the west side of Seventh Avenue, cross to the east side of the street at 45th Street, and then cross back onto Broadway at 42nd. For those five blocks, the lane would not be protected.

Construction would begin in 2012 and be complete by 2014, according to DNAinfo.

As seen in this plan, the Broadway bike lane would turn onto Seventh Avenue at 47th Street and run alongside the plaza until it switches to the other side of the street at 45th Street. Image: NYC DOT

“People can enjoy it now, and have been since about five minutes after the street was closed,” said Phillip Kellogg, the manager of the Fulton Area Business Alliance, which sponsored the plaza. Five minutes after the work crews left, he said, a skateboarder was trying out the new space. Immediately after tables and chairs were put out, locals brought out their chess sets. People escaped the heat of the laundromat and waited for their loads to finish out in the fresh air. “Everybody’s been giving it a thumbs up,” said Kellogg.

The plaza, still only a week old, has so far been the boon for business that the FAB hoped it would be. “Enhancing the pedestrian experience along Fulton makes it more appealing to walk on Fulton Street, to shop and come to our restaurants and get dinner or a drink,” said Kellogg. That theory was put to the test on Sunday and passed with flying colors, he added, convincing even the skeptical businesses that the plaza works, so far. “The deli sold a lot of soda and seltzer. The cafés were jam-packed, with lines out the door.”

Because Fulton cuts through the Fort Greene and Clinton Hill grids diagonally, said Kellogg, there are lots of underutilized triangular spaces created at three-way intersections. In addition to the Putnam plaza, which was built quickly with less permanent materials, FAB is also sponsoring the Fowler Square plaza, at the intersection of Fulton, Lafayette Avenue and South Elliott Place, which is going through the DOT’s formal plaza program and will be built with higher-quality materials. Right now, Fowler Square “is the kind of place where people just walk through on the way to somewhere else,” said Kellogg. “It’s really important that people realize that it’s theirs.”

Considering that streets and sidewalks make up 80 percent of New York City’s public space, the pedestrian plazas, car-free spaces, neighborhood bike networks and world-class bicycle lanes you have created are vital to the public health of our city. In piloting Safe Routes to School and Safe Streets for Seniors programs, reducing car hours in our largest parks and producing events like neighborhood play streets and Summer Streets, you are pioneering the redistribution of our public space for health’s sake.

While one can imagine a tsunami of ink engulfing the city if over a hundred doctors and other providers had joined up to condemn bike lanes and public plazas, with media types refusing to print a positive word about measures that are making streets safer, it will be quite a feat if this ringing endorsement pierces the news cycle.

Read the text of the letter after the jump; see the original with signatures here.

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

We, the undersigned medical professionals, write to acknowledge and encourage your efforts to calm traffic and make New York City streets safer for bicyclists and pedestrians. As a result of your efforts, from re-envisioning Times Square to building the first protected bicycle lanes in the U.S., more New Yorkers are biking and walking than ever before. Mayor Bloomberg, we urge you to continue to set ambitious goals for how our streets and public spaces can help make all of New York City more healthy and safe.

Considering that streets and sidewalks make up 80 percent of New York City’s public space, the pedestrian plazas, car-free spaces, neighborhood bike networks and world-class bicycle lanes you have created are vital to the public health of our city. In piloting Safe Routes to School and Safe Streets for Seniors programs, reducing car hours in our largest parks and producing events like neighborhood play streets and Summer Streets, you are pioneering the redistribution of our public space for health’s sake.

These changes help pave the way for a city that breathes cleaner air and is in better physical condition. Commuting to work by bicycle or increasing the distance of daily walks has been shown to promote weight loss better than any exercise program or medication we could prescribe. Vital to fighting the epidemics of asthma and obesity is the opportunity for children to have safe places to play and clean air to breathe. The traffic calming infrastructure you have built is as valuable as a playground toward encouraging active youth and instilling healthy habits that will last a lifetime.

Thanks to your leadership, bicycling is the fastest growing mode of transportation in New York City and pedestrian safety is at an all-time high. Mayor Bloomberg, we enthusiastically support your efforts to improve bicycling and walking in New York City. As you shape your legacy, please continue to make safe, complete streets part of the prescription for a healthy New York City.

NYC DOT is implementing this pedestrian plaza in partnership with the Fulton Area Business Alliance. We’ll have a detailed story on the project in the days ahead. For now, enjoy the pictures courtesy of our tipster.

Watch the asphalt disappear...

...beneath the new epoxy-and-gravel surface.

The strip of asphalt before it was reclaimed for use as public space. Image: Google Street View

The Union Square Partnership interviewed local business people to see what they thought of the redesign of traffic patterns around the square. Each green dot represents a business that liked the changes, each blue dot signifies no opinion, and the three red dots represent businesses opposed.

It’s been a year since DOT made more room for pedestrians and cyclists around Union Square, and a recent survey shows a neighborhood happy with its new public spaces.

Feedback from businesses and residents led DOT to back away from its original proposal to, among other things, close two blocks of Union Square West to drivers during part of each day. Recognizing that remaining opponents were hopelessly intransigent, the local community board ultimately approved the plan by a vote of 24-1. By last September the changes were in place. In addition to installing roomy new public plazas, the city extended the protected bike lane on Broadway through 17th Street and around Union Square.

In August the Union Square Partnership collected surveys from 60 area businesses asking what they thought of the redesign. Thirty-six said it was a “good thing,” 21 had no opinion and three thought it was a “bad thing” [PDF]. Even the three who disapprove admitted that it hadn’t hurt their business. According to the New York Times, no businesses or store managers complained to elected officials, either.

“The vast majority of visitors in the district arrive on foot and public transportation, therefore the enhanced pedestrian environment has made the area more attractive to shoppers and diners,” explained Jennifer Falk, the executive director of the Union Square Partnership.

Most important, the streets are safer. On Broadway north of the square, for example, DOT reports the share of vehicles speeding dropped from 28 percent to 12 percent after the redesign [PDF]. Pedestrians crossing 17th Street at Broadway were given more than twice as much time to cross a street that is almost half as wide as before.

At the same time, motor vehicle speeds were not negatively affected by the changes. Taxi speeds fell by four percent on Fifth Avenue but rose by 14 percent on 18th Street, where the worst congestion was predicted by project opponents. On Park Avenue, speeds rose by marginal amounts.

Business people who were previously opposed came around to the plan, said Falk. “Their major concerns — increased traffic congestion, difficulty finding parking, delivery problems — never came to fruition,” she said. “Vehicles adapted to the new traffic patterns without disrupting normal flows.”

A broader Partnership survey, which included area residents, employees and visitors, found that 74 percent liked the new traffic pattern, with only 16 percent opposed.

DOT made some alterations after installation and plans to make more adjustments. Already, a few signals have been re-timed. A traffic calming neckdown was removed at 17th and Park while another was shaved down to make for easier vehicular turns at Broadway and 22nd. To alleviate crosstown traffic congestion, DOT is considering installing additional turn lanes at certain locations.

Herald Square, summer 2010. Photo: Ed Yourdon/Flickr

Before Dan Biederman came to Bryant Park, there were no movable chairs, no free movies on summer evenings, no kiosks selling sandwiches and refreshments. No lunch time crowds and not much in the way of civic life or social activity, either. There was, basically, an open-air drug market in the New York Public Library’s backyard.

In 1980, Biederman co-founded the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, beginning a long career in public space management. He blended a business executive’s managerial expertise with an urbanist’s sense of what makes places work — the latter honed at the side of pioneering public space analyst William “Holly” Whyte. Property owners in other parts of Midtown sat up and took notice of his success at Bryant Park, and by the 1990s he was also leading the 34th Street Partnership and the Grand Central Partnership. Today he continues to oversee the Bryant Park Corporation and the 34th Street Partnership, while also bringing lessons from his New York business improvement districts to cities all over the country.

Dan Biederman

A firm believer in the importance of a quality pedestrian environment, Biederman has advanced a number of street safety and public space improvements over the years. In 2009, NYC DOT’s reclamation of Broadway for pedestrians and cyclists augmented two of the 34th Street Partnership’s big public space success stories: Herald Square and Greeley Square. When the city announced the changes would be permanent last year, Biederman stood in front of the TV cameras and said, “This is a 21st century idea.”

Streetsblog recently sat down with Biederman at his Sixth Avenue headquarters, across from Bryant Park, to talk about the transformation of Broadway, the 34th Street Transitway, and how New Yorkers adjust to change. The first installment of the edited interview is below.

He started off our discussion by noting that critics of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan have managed to command more attention than her supporters.

Ben Fried: Any theories as to why?

Dan Biederman: First, cab drivers are terrible participants in public fora. They don’t know shit because they’re on the phone all day long, yet they’re able to drive. The fact that they’re also, in their minds, better transportation analysts than people who went to school in that subject and have all kinds of citywide roles, baffles me. But the view of most business people is that you can count on cab drivers to tell you what the right answer is. I think that’s crazy. They will tell you that they’re annoyed that something isn’t going their way, but they don’t have the broader view.

We don’t pay that much attention to Steve Cuozzo. I think he’s a great real estate reporter but he doesn’t know this field.

They don’t understand because they over-emphasize the inconvenience that is experienced right after a change. They don’t understand that things work themselves out because people eventually get smart, including them. If 34th Street had been closed from Fifth to Sixth [for the transitway plaza], it defies belief that cab drivers would continue driving right into the blockage and therefore there would be horn-honking at Seventh Avenue and Sixth Avenue from now till the rest of time.

But if you could go into the mind of the average building manager in midtown Manhattan, that’s what they’re picturing: “Cab drivers are right because if you close something there will be horn-honking and trouble.” So we can’t make transportation policy that way. We have to go with the better-informed people who either are consulting or working for DOT.

BF: As president of a few Midtown BIDs, you have to both represent the property owners that you’re talking about and advocate for change to some degree. How do you end up balancing that?

DB: I usually try to calm them down by saying, “First, you need to understand this very arcane field of traffic.” People confronted with new regulations will alter their behavior, and it’s not as simple as saying if 34th Street has less traffic on it, there’ll be more traffic on 35th and 33rd and 36th and 32nd. Things are not that simple.

The second way to walk that tightrope is, very often the owners who are upset with some of Janette’s plans have specific problems, and I find the agency fairly responsive to those very specific problems. For example, the 34th Street transitway, we said a number of times to the DOT, there are three or four really specific points being raised against you. One is, Vornado has a garage that enters out into the eastbound lane of 34th Street now. What do we do about that? The Empire State Building has a concern about tourist buses. Third was Macy’s and their parade. Fourth was retail on the north side of the street between Seventh and Eighth, raised by the owner of the Pennsylvania Building, 225 West 34th. Plus we wanted 33rd Street opened westbound. [It is currently interrupted by pedestrian space at Broadway.]

If you can make those people happy, all that will be left is the general concerns, as far as our district goes, about curb access, and I think two or three of those problems have disappeared. I don’t hear the Empire State Building squawking. Macy’s is satisfied because of the elimination of the Fifth to Sixth pedestrianization, although I never was 100 percent sure why that hurt their parade plans.

So those are the five points that were left after all the shouting and hubbub. We don’t pay that much attention to Steve Cuozzo. I think he’s a great real estate reporter but he doesn’t know this field. He just loves to scream and rant about it.

BF: I think it would help to clarify exactly who the BIDs speak for. Is it entirely property owners? Is it retailers?

DB: Owners, tenants and in some cases the retailers are the owners. Macy’s owns their real estate. So owners and tenants, which includes retail and office tenants and office owners and the employees, theoretically, in those buildings. We try to speak for all. The people that pay the freight are the owners and tenants.

With the initial plans come screaming and yelling. A lot of times it’s not really accurate.

Now I try to lead on this because I feel after 30 years of doing this job, I’m pretty well qualified to steer the district’s point of view in a certain direction. When people challenge me on whether this is good for the district who are influential owners and tenants, I say, “Are you telling me you would like to go back to Broadway the way it was two years ago with lanes of traffic rushing down past Macy’s and Greeley Square? I’m convinced you don’t.” The real estate community is starting to come around.

BF: What does that look like? How skeptical were they in 2009 compared to today?

DB: A lot of this skepticism bubbles up from below. The principal in the past was normally more open to changes than somebody three levels down, who’s the building manager. Building managers are as stubborn about change in the street pattern as taxi drivers are. They sound very much like taxi drivers when they talk about this stuff. So with the initial plans come screaming and yelling. A lot of times it’s not really accurate.

For example, “Traffic will continue heading right in that direction and there will be horrible traffic jams.” Well, now we’ve had Broadway Boulevard, as we call it, in for a long time. What’s happened? Sixth Avenue is clearly moving faster. There’s no question about it at Herald Square. Traffic is moving better. At Seventh Avenue there’s debate. [Janette's] numbers show a tiny decline in speed. The screamers say that it’s much worse. I think her numbers are probably accurate. It’s a tiny bit worse.

I’m starting to hear some advanced property owners say that they think Broadway retail is more valuable than it was before.

Broadway is a pleasure because if you walk across Broadway – when you leave this meeting, you ought to go west on Broadway at 40th Street at rush hour, it’s just fantastic. In the old days you’d have to rush across. You’d think you were going to be run over from cars rushing through Times Square. They finally got through the Times Square bottleneck and they’re going to race down and make up the time.

Now we have a quieter environment, much better for retail. People walking in a New York manner in all different directions. It’s a pleasure.

I kidded Janette. I said when I go past 40th and Broadway, if I’m carrying something, I start reading. She said, you shouldn’t read and cross streets. But I said, that’s how confident I am the traffic has calmed. If a car’s coming, it’s coming at 12 miles an hour so I can take evasive action. I’m enjoying this immensely. Traffic has been calmed by this move. There are very few cars going between 40th Street and 35th Street right now.

BF: How do you measure success? Are there ways to gather information that the BID is pursuing?

DB: We haven’t been scientific about it but we’re pretty good urbanists at this point, so we know and improve the pedestrian environment when we see it. We’re really good at this. There’s no doubt the pedestrian environment is better. If you can get that at the expense of only a tiny bit of decline of one avenue and a great upgrade in the other, then you’ve got a success.

Now I am hearing from some people – they think Ninth Avenue is worse. I don’t. The parts of Ninth Avenue that they claim are worse are not in my district so I have not stood on the corner of Ninth Avenue and 39th Street and analyzed it. My traditional view is the Lincoln Tunnel decides whether Ninth Avenue is bad or not. Because anybody on Seventh going south knows, if they’re a New Yorker, that it’s not a great idea to go down Ninth. If you’re coming from the west side and you’re trying to get to Chelsea, Eleventh might be a good answer but Ninth, everybody thinks Lincoln Tunnel at almost all hours of the day.

To me, at least the stuff that affects us most – Sixth better, Seventh at least close, maybe a tiny bit worse, pedestrian environment upgraded. This is a better deal for our district. I’m starting to hear some advanced property owners say that they think Broadway retail is more valuable than it was before the change, including the owners of this building. [Blackstone owns 1065 Sixth Avenue.] They own a lot of Broadway buildings – they said this change has led to measurable increases in retail rents on Broadway.

Just like two-way traffic is better for retail, 12 mile-an-hour traffic is better for retail. It’s completely accepted by everybody who knows anything about urban planning.

Coming up in part two of the interview: Biederman discusses the caliber of NYC DOT under Janette Sadik-Khan and reveals the ultimate example of NYC provincialism.

On Allen Street between Hester and Grand, the outline of the upgraded bikeway is visible. It bends toward the median at intersections, providing a space for pedestrians to pause between the bike lane and the traffic lanes as they cross the street. Photo: Noah Kazis

Crews are currently at work turning the new pedestrian plazas and protected bike lanes on Pike Street and Allen Street into more attractive, long-term fixtures of the Lower East Side. The new construction will add landscaping and higher-quality materials, helping the local community achieve the vision developed for Allen and Pike Streets in a multi-year grassroots process.

After the first phase of this project was completed in 2009, traffic injuries dropped by 40 percent at the intersections with pedestrian plazas, according to NYC DOT. At the corner of Allen and Delancey, injuries dropped 57 percent.

Work on upgrading the improvements with better materials began on the southernmost end of the corridor, on Pike between South and Madison Streets, in February. Right now, crews have dug up the median on the block of Allen between Hester and Grand Streets, with plans to work north to Delancey. Check below the fold for a rendering of what the new sections of Allen will look like once completed.

A rendering of what the intersection of Allen and Broome will look like after construction. Image: Parks Department

The Old Fulton Street redesign imposes some order, reclaims space for pedestrians, and fortifies bike routes. Image: NYC DOT

Last week NYC DOT presented plans for expanded pedestrian areas and upgraded bike markings on Old Fulton Street, which serves as the primary gateway to the recently opened Pier 1 of Brooklyn Bridge Park. The plan [PDF] calls for a new pedestrian plaza, treatments to improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists crossing highway exits, and a concrete median intended to prevent illegal parking and bus drop-offs in the middle of Old Fulton Street. The transportation committee of Brooklyn Community Board 2 approved the plan in a 7-2 vote with one abstention.

Old Fulton Street is seeing a lot more use since the opening of Pier 1 last year, and it should only attract more people as the park adds new sections. The street also leads right to Fulton Ferry Landing, one of the stops along the route of the city’s new East River ferry service. But Old Fulton Street currently meets the park and the ferry landing with big open expanses of asphalt, leading to something of a free-for-all among drivers and buses making drop-offs at the park.

The redesign aims to impose some order, give priority to pedestrians, and prevent buses from unloading passengers and making U-turns at the end of Old Fulton Street. Tour buses will be encouraged to load and unload on Furman Street, out of the way of the main walking and biking routes to the park.

The full project includes a number of features to make walking and biking to the park safer and more convenient:

• Sidewalk extensions, planted medians, and crosswalks where Old Fulton Street crosses entrances and exits to the Brooklyn Queens Expressway
• Additions to the bike network: Sharrows on Old Fulton will be upgraded to striped lanes, and a short stretch of Front Street will get new markings, enhancing the connection between DUMBO and the route of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway
• A neckdown where York Street empties onto Front Street will narrow the crossing distance from 71 feet to 25 feet

As part of the reconfiguration, the B25 will be re-routed to avoid performing a U-turn on Old Fulton on weekends, most likely by following the same circuit it takes on weekdays. More details from the DOT presentation after the jump.

Currently the open asphalt at the end of Old Fulton Street leads to a lot of illegal parking, U-turns, and drop-offs in the middle of the street. Image: NYC DOT

New plaza space on Old Fulton Street should give people some breathing room on the sidewalk even when the line at Grimaldi's is at its longest. It's hard to tell from the rendering, but the project also adds striped bike lanes to both sides of this block. Image: NYC DOT

Further inland, the project would add new sidewalk space and medians where Old Fulton meets traffic heading to and from the BQE. Image: NYC DOT

Photo: Valerio_B/Flickr

Yesterday the 18th Annual Taste of Times Square filled up the crossroads of the world, serving dishes to throngs of people. DNAinfo reports that the event broke with tradition a little bit, and the vendors were better off for it:

This year the festival concentrated all its booths on Broadway, instead of to placing them on West 46th Street between Broadway and Ninth Avenue as they had last year. Participants said the move helped them reach more people.

“With all the tents on Broadway it’s gotten better visibility, it’s more popular. And the weather always helps,” said Gus Montesantos, director of food and beverages for Doubletree Hotel, home of Ginger’s restaurant.

Eat your heart out, Steve Cuozzo.

Photo: Valerio_B/Flickr

Madison Square Eats, a month-long food event at Worth Square, on the western edge of the park, wrapped up last Friday. Photo: Lindsey Ganson

The City Council wants more potholes filled, like this one on Linden Boulevard, but budget pressures and a harsh winter have strained DOT's capacity. Image: NYC DOT.

Call it the case of the missing demagoguery. Yesterday’s City Council transportation budget hearing was less notable for what was said than what wasn’t. Attacks on the city’s proposed parking meter rate increase were largely absent, and the scapegoating of bike lanes and pedestrian plazas that has dominated recent hearings in James Vacca’s committee failed to materialize. Mostly, council members just talked about potholes.

That isn’t to say that the hearing was entirely free of grandstanding. Vacca told DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan that he intended to again oppose a proposed increase in parking meter rates from 75 cents per hour to one dollar. “Increasing parking meter rates will discourage people from going to those mom and pop shops,” he argued.

And Queens Republican Dan Halloran asked whether the engineers who designed a traffic island in Little Neck that got on the wrong side of Marcia Kramer had been disciplined.

But unlike recent transportation committee hearings, neither Vacca nor other committee members put DOT on trial, and the hearing never strayed beyond garden-variety political theater. That’s somewhat surprising given the main topic of conversation: The fact that there are more potholes on city streets than ever and that there isn’t money in the budget to pay for more repair.

“There’s not enough money to get all of the pothole pieces done,” Sadik-Khan told the committee at one point. Although the city has filled 27 percent more potholes than at this point last year and increased its repaving target by 250 miles, bad winter weather left the roads in unusually bad shape. At the same time, said Sadik-Khan, the DOT’s capital plan, currently budgeted for $7 billion over the next decade, has been reduced by a full 47 percent over the last four years as the recession has led the city to slash its budget.

That might have opened the door for repeats of May’s plaza hearing, when Eric Ulrich wondered “why can’t we just get back to basics and worry more about paving the streets than we are about installing bike lanes and putting in pedestrian plazas even if people don’t want them.” Maybe it was the absence of CBS2 cameras, or maybe it’s actually sunk in that far larger forces are affecting the multi-billion dollar capital program than a few bike and pedestrian projects, but for whatever reason, no one, Ulrich included, took the bait.

In fact, a few more City Council members joined the significant number of their colleagues who have spoken in support of the plaza program. “I want to congratulate you on the plaza program, which I strongly support,” said Oliver Koppell, while Ydanis Rodriguez told Sadik-Khan that he wanted another plaza for his district in addition to the planned Plaza De Las Americas.

The view across Chatham Square, looking east from Worth Street. Image: Google Street View

Just a reminder: Chatham Square, the intersection where Chinatown NIMBYs have fended off the reclamation of street space for pedestrians, is a huge expanse of asphalt with chaotic traffic patterns and a terrible safety record. According to CrashStat, dozens of pedestrians and cyclists were injured in traffic crashes at Chatham Square from 1995 to 2005, and five schools are located within three blocks.

In 2008, the city put out a conceptual plan for pedestrian improvements at Chatham Square that would have simplified intersections and added significantly more sidewalk space. But a contingent of opponents, contending that the economic health of Chinatown depends on auto access to Park Row, mobilized against the project. (The Chatham Square project would have altered the street pattern at one end of Park Row, but the street, which goes by NYPD headquarters, has been closed to private traffic since the days after 9/11.)

Today DNAinfo reports that opponents have succeeded. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation will be taking the $30 million set aside for those pedestrian improvements and spending it on other things. Jan Lee, owner of the antiques showroom Sinotique and a vocal opponent of the project in his role as leader of the Civic Center Residents Coalition, told DNAinfo that “at least some of the money should remain in Chinatown.” Now that an actual safety improvement is off the table, Lee suggested spending some cash to study the feasibility of re-opening Park Row to traffic.

Here’s one more look at what Lee and other opponents have thwarted:

Chatham Square layout under the proposed redesign...

...and the intersection as it is today.

Flushing Council Member Peter Koo likes pedestrian plazas so much that he wants hundreds of them to be built. Photo: Daily News.

You wouldn’t know it from opening the newspaper or turning on the television, but yesterday’s City Council hearing on pedestrian plazas actually showed how widespread support for the plazas are. Only two council members appeared to be at all opposed to the plaza program — though of course those two have dominated the headlines — while the rest were busy figuring out how to get a plaza in their district. It’s no wonder why: the community members and business leaders who spoke at the hearing were nearly unanimous in their support for the plaza program, testifying to its success in creating high-quality public space in neighborhoods that badly need it and helping business along the way.

Perhaps no one, even at DOT, was as excited about plazas as Flushing rep Peter Koo. “I want you to do more plazas in other boroughs,” said Koo before offering DOT a litany of suggestions for new kinds of plazas. He suggested plazas dedicated to specialty markets — one just for electronics vendors, say, and one just for clothes merchants — and suggested late-night plazas along the model of Taiwan’s famous night markets.

Perhaps most ambitiously, Koo suggested that one plaza be dedicated for every nationality of immigrant in the city, 148 in total. It could be a tourism draw, he said: “Visit New York, see the whole world, because we have these 148 different plazas.”

Other reps asked DOT how to improve the chances for plaza applicants in their neighborhood. Jackson Heights’ Daniel Dromm, who made a point of showing up even though he doesn’t serve on the transportation committee, asked DOT for examples of model programming for the plaza space and for an explanation of what standards sponsoring community organizations need to meet. “I have a community that is very much in favor of having plazas in our district,” he explained. Brad Lander, too, wanted guidance for his plaza-requesting constituents.

Deborah Rose hoped that a waterfront site in her North Shore district — she seemed to have a couple in mind — would become the first pedestrian plaza on Staten Island. Clinton Hill’s Letitia James interrupted DOT’s testimony with a few “yays” and an “amen” when they discussed the Myrtle Avenue plaza under development in her district. David Greenfield, representing Midwood, concluded that “overall, it seems like a good program,” while the Upper West Side’s Gale Brewer hoped her district could have the plazas that Eric Ulrich didn’t want.

The widespread enthusiasm for the plazas should come as no surprise. The facts on the ground show they’re working, as the community and business leaders who testified at the hearing attested.

Dan Biederman, the head of the 34th Street Partnership and the Chelsea Improvement Company, called the plazas in his districts “hugely successful.” If the businesses he represents were suffering, he said, he’d know. “I’m not hearing complaining anymore,” he reported. Traffic flow and loading work fine, he said, while the pedestrians who actually shop are far safer. Concluded Biederman, “This is the best team we’ve seen at DOT in the 30 years I’ve worked in the public sector.”

But plazas aren’t just for the heart of Manhattan. Daniel Murphy, the head of Brownsville’s Pitkin Avenue BID, recalled “our great happiness” when DOT approved plans for a plaza at the Zion Triangle. Now he walks down the street and hears excitement about the project from neighbors who walk by. “Their interest is not simply passive but active and positive,” he said.

Alexandria Sica of the Dumbo Improvement District explained how much the two plazas in her neighborhood have done for business and for community. The arch under the Manhattan Bridge, which used to be used for DOT storage, has become a “place for a casual lunch meeting, neighborhood stoop sales, public art and exciting community events,” she said. Next to the Pearl Street triangle, said Sica, three new businesses have opened despite a rough economic climate.

Other community leaders testified about how much a plaza could do in their area. “Corona is the most overcrowded school district in the entire city,” said Prerana Reddy, the director of public events at the Queens Museum of Art. “We need a place for young people and families to enjoy public spaces.” Reddy talked about how Corona Plaza, which she said was mostly a parking lot right now, is already used for a greenmarket and diabetes screening. With real high-quality public space, Corona Plaza could do so much more for Corona residents.

Statements of support for the plaza program also came from residents of the South Bronx, Jackson Heights, the West Village, and Hell’s Kitchen, as well as advocacy organizations like Transportation Alternatives, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, and Project for Public Spaces.

Only two people spoke in opposition: a representative from who claimed to worry about the environmental impact of the plazas and Corey Bearak, the anti-congestion pricing activist, who argued that any removal of street space from motor vehicles should require environmental review. An advocate for the blind also expressed concern that the DOT’s temporary plazas do not include tactile safety features so the vision-impaired know where pedestrian space begins and ends.

If City Council Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca wanted media attention for "getting tough" on DOT, he got it. Image: CBS 2

When James Vacca called a hearing of the City Council transportation committee to discuss the DOT plaza program yesterday, what was he trying to get out of it?

For many neighborhoods, the plaza program offers the best and only chance of expanding their limited supply of public space, and most of the council members who showed up used the opportunity to clarify a few points about how to get a plaza for their neighborhoods. (We’ll have more on that in a follow-up post.)

Vacca struck a much more theatrical tone than his colleagues. He tiptoed around attacking DOT directly, preferring insinuations and gotcha questions instead. It was the performance of someone looking to score points in the tabloid media — knowing full well his inquisition had no merit.

In one line of questioning, for instance, Vacca grilled DOT over the cost of making the Times Square plazas permanent. DOT Assistant Commissioner Andy Wiley-Schwartz explained that Times Square had been set for a full-scale reconstruction for years, well before any plans to pedestrianize Broadway had been introduced. The funding for the plan was the same, he said, only the design of the reconstruction changed.

Vacca put on his best prosecutorial demeanor. “So what will it cost?”

Wiley-Schwartz again explained that the price tag was for a much larger project than the plazas, reconstructing the street from sidewalk to sidewalk on both Broadway and Seventh Avenue, but that the total will be $20 million. The pedestrian plazas barely added to the cost. “Basically, instead of putting asphalt there, you’re putting concrete there,” he explained.

Vacca seized on the $20 million and feigned ignorance, pretending that the plaza would cost $20 million itself. “It’s going to be a very expensive pedestrian plaza at the end of the day.”

But Vacca isn’t dumb. After one more back-and-forth, Vacca made clear that he understood that the plaza wasn’t a significant cost item and moved on. He “got tough” with DOT for the benefit of the tabloids and the TV cameras, but then corrected course, presumably to avoid embarrassing himself further in front of the people in the room.

Vacca’s loaded questions presented DOT with several “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” moments. After asking whether the Midtown plazas were an attempt to keep people from driving into Manhattan, Vacca followed up by asking whether traffic volumes in the area had gone down. If the answer had been yes, it would no doubt have been taken as proof positive that the plaza program is really a plot to make life more difficult for car owners.

According to DOT, though, total traffic was the same. At Times Square, it just flowed more smoothly down Seventh Avenue instead of Broadway. That set Vacca off on a string of accusatory questions implying that the increased traffic on Seventh was destroying that street. “That concerns me from an access point of view, from a traffic movement point of view, and certainly from a pedestrian safety point of view as well.”

Just to be clear, neither safety risks, congestion, nor air pollution shifted from Broadway to other avenues. Pedestrian injuries fell by 35 percent in the entire study area for the Green Light for Midtown project, which included not just Broadway but also Seventh near Times Square and Sixth near Herald Square. And while air pollution plummeted in Times Square after the creation of the plazas, according to recent environmental data, it didn’t rise in the rest of Midtown.

Vacca played the same game when asking whether DOT planned to bring plazas to every community district. It was a no-win: Either DOT would be favoring certain parts of the city or foisting plazas on potentially unwilling communities. (For the record, the plaza program is entirely opt-in — a paragon of community engagement — and Wiley-Schwartz nailed the answer, saying that the goal is for every community to eventually request one.)

While the mainstream press coverage today is mainly about a “contentious hearing,” the only council member who really blasted the plazas was Eric Ulrich. Unlike Vacca, Ulrich hewed to his conviction: that making any more room for pedestrians and public life is a waste of money. That’s a foolish position, but at least a coherent one. Vacca never took such a stand — he never had to. By using his committee chairmanship to lob innuendo and false assumptions at DOT, he did far more to impede the continued improvement of NYC streets than Ulrich.

Eric Ulrich

We are talking about a program, after all, that’s founded on the premise that many neighborhoods in New York lack park space, and that public spaces need community support and local partners to succeed. The plazas are entirely an opt-in proposition: Local organizations can choose to apply for a plaza, and DOT receives more applications than it can approve. It seems like New Yorkers would be this close to the spectacle of a hard-hitting City Council hearing on the amount of parking taken up by farmers markets, or the impact of block parties on traffic — if those things were run out of the Department of Transportation.

Streetsblog’s Noah Kazis will be filing a full report later on, but I think it’s safe to say that the biggest farce today was Queens Council Member Eric Ulrich, who displayed what can only be described as stunning ignorance about how the city’s transportation system works. Ulrich, you may recall, is the same young man whose contribution to the public discussion of street safety consisted of proposing an unworkable licensing scheme for cyclists. Here’s how he began his time at the mic:

As I was driving to the hearing today, I couldn’t help but think that we’re living in the Twilight Zone, because as I’m driving on the BQE, and the roads are in horrendous condition, I’m driving to a hearing talking about pedestrian plazas, I just say to myself all the time — this is a constant criticism that I’m always applying to the department — is that why can’t we just get back to basics and worry more about paving the streets than we are about installing bike lanes and putting in pedestrian plazas even if people don’t want them. That’s my biased rant for the day. (Editor’s note: Much more biased ranting followed. You may be able to catch some of it on CBS2 tonight.)

That’s right. In the mind of Eric Ulrich, duly elected City Council representative, the decrepitude of the BQE is not caused by the daily armada of multi-ton SUVs barreling toward the free East River bridges. Nor is it due to the pulverizing truck traffic generated by the one-way toll on the Verrazano Bridge. It has nothing to do with our stagnant gas taxes or wasteful spending on highway widening in the Catskills.

No — it’s because of the damned bike lanes and pedestrian plazas.

According to Ulrich, none of the three community boards in his district are interested in creating plazas. Council members Gale Brewer, Peter Koo, and Dan Dromm offered to take Ulrich up on his offer to offload his share of the plaza program to other districts.