At 1 Morningside Drive, parking minimums forced the construction of a 148-space garage. The developers put the parking on the ground floor, creating a blank wall facing a busy pedestrian street. Photo: Noah Kazis

Get your cameras ready, Streetsbloggers. It’s time to show Department of City Planning Director Amanda Burden what city-mandated parking garages are doing to the streets in your neighborhood.

In most of New York, it’s illegal to build anything of a certain size without a certain amount of parking, thanks to 1960s-era mandates in the city zoning code. Despite ample research showing that parking minimums encourage car ownership and cause traffic, DCP claims otherwise and clings to the position that these mandates are necessary.

Traffic isn’t the only cost of parking minimums, and under Burden DCP has at least acknowledged two other important ways they harm the city. Parking minimums increase the cost of housing, as the commissioner has stated, and parking on the ground floor erodes the pedestrian environment.

In some areas, DCP is beginning to rewrite the city’s archaic zoning regulations to try and prevent parking from taking the place of ground-floor retail, lobbies, stoops, and other uses that connect buildings to the sidewalk. On Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue, where a 2003 rezoning led to a wave of development with ground floors dominated by ventilation ducts and even surface parking, DCP reversed course. In June, the department put out new rules forbidding curb cuts across the sidewalk, barring parking along the ground floor street frontage and encouraging retail uses. A draft rewrite of the parking regulations for much of Manhattan would eliminate a key incentive to build ground floor parking. In these select locations, Amanda Burden is making good on her widely-touted commitment to quality urban design.

Most of the city isn’t so lucky, however. In Upper Manhattan and the outer boroughs, parking is required in new developments. In practice, because developers often find it impractical to build underground parking, that often means the city is reserving ground floors for parking. Instead of new development fostering an engaging public realm, pedestrians encounter blank walls and curb cuts. The good news is that DCP is in the process of revising parking regulations for the “inner ring” of neighborhoods around the Manhattan core, which presents an excellent opportunity to stop forcing these dead spaces on neighborhoods everywhere.

Writing about parking regulations can get dry, so Streetsblog is going to start making the case visually. We need your help for our new photo series: “Pedestrian Burdens.”

Send us pictures of buildings in your neighborhood where parking harms pedestrian space, whether it’s a ground-floor garage, an egregious curb cut, or an ugly surface lot. Bonus points for buildings covered by parking minimums (larger buildings in Upper Manhattan or the other four boroughs) and built during the Bloomberg administration. Email your photos to tips@streetsblog.org and make sure to include the address of the buildings. We’ll feature the best on Streetsblog, building a visual case for Amanda Burden and DCP to act decisively on this critical urban design issue.

We’re starting with three of our own. The photo at the top of the post is from 1 Morningside Drive. That blank wall contains a garage with 148 parking spots, right at ground level.

On that site, on the north side of 110th Street, developer AvalonBay was required to provide a space for 50 percent of the building’s 295 units. It didn’t build a single parking spot beyond what was required by law. Had the same building gone up literally across the street, it would have been subject to parking maximums, not minimums. That solid brick wall of parking might have been more housing, retail, or open space. No wonder AvalonBay Senior VP Fred Harris has publicly called for parking minimums to be reformed.

Another blank wall created by a city-mandated parking garage, this time at 111th Street and St. Nicholas. Photo: Noah Kazis

A few blocks east on 110th sits 111 Central Park North, the most expensive building in Harlem. The front door, facing the park, boasts an elegant setback and sculpture. The luxury building presents the rest of the neighborhood, however, with a featureless wall, one-story tall. That’s its 34-car garage.

Again, the developers didn’t build a single space more than they were required to by the district’s 40 percent parking requirement. The building sits on top of the 2/3 train, three stops from Times Square.

Even without parking minimums, ground-floor garages get built on pedestrian-oriented streets. Photo: Ben Fried

City requirements aren’t the only reason parking interrupts the public realm, of course. At 655 Washington Avenue, the architect placed two single-car garages at ground level. The ten-unit building earned a waiver from the area’s parking minimums, so these were spaces the developer wanted. In fact, they’d have been eligible to build them even under Manhattan’s strictest parking maximums. Even so, the garages interrupt what is elsewhere a mixed-use street with ground-floor retail.

With a curb cut, surface parking along the street frontage, and no retail use on the ground floor, the pedestrian-hostile design for the "Le Bleu" hotel wouldn't cut it under newly proposed zoning rules for Brooklyn's Fourth Avenue. Photo: Ben Fried.

When the Department of City Planning put forward its rezoning of Park Slope in 2003, one of the earliest of the now 111 rezonings under Mayor Bloomberg and City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden, it was intended to help turn Fourth Avenue into “a grand boulevard of the 21st Century.”

The sought-after residential development has started to take place, but at street level, there’s been widespread disappointment with the results. Instead of providing a healthy pedestrian realm, the ground floor of many new developments has been taken up by ventilation equipment and even a surface parking lot.

In response, the Department of City Planning has put forward a new set of rules intended to ensure that as Fourth Avenue develops further, it does so in a way that invites people to walk along the street.

At least half of the ground floor frontage of each new building along Fourth would be required to be retail, and parking wouldn’t be allowed anywhere along the ground floor street frontage. Requirements for a certain amount of glass storefronts would provide opportunities for window-shopping, while strict restrictions on curb cuts across Fourth Avenue sidewalks will give pedestrians more space and comfort.

With the endorsements of local Council Members Brad Lander, Stephen Levin and Sara González, the plan is likely to move relatively smoothly through the land use review process over the next few months.

The underlying zoning, including bulk, use, and parking requirements, will remain the same along Fourth. However, many of the worst offenders of the last development cycle would not be up to code under the new regulations.

The “Le Bleu” hotel, for example, includes a curb cut to a surface parking lot in front of the building, two would-be violations of the new zoning rules. Behind the parking lot is a lobby without any retail, another violation. If that project had been built under the proposed rules, the hotel could still have parking, but it would have to be structured parking, at least thirty feet back from the street or underground and accessed from a side street rather than Fourth.

It will be interesting to see how developers respond to the tighter restrictions on where parking can be placed. Building underground parking on Fourth is even more expensive than usual due to the subway tunnel that runs under the street, so it’s not unlikely that, on the margin, barring parking from part of the ground floor will result in less total parking being built along the street.

While parking requirements along Fourth generally require a parking space for 40 percent of the dwelling units, much of the parking built along the street was a result of developers’ profit motive. At the Novo, for example, the developer built 60 spaces when only 45 were required by zoning. At the Crest, a DCP spokesperson said, the developer was eligible to have parking requirements waived entirely. In buildings like those, neither of which engages the sidewalk, making it slightly more difficult to build parking could mean the developer would choose to build less parking altogether.

When DCP originally rezoned Park Slope, a department spokesperson told Streetsblog in 2008, it opted against retail requirements on the grounds that in a less-established commercial area, such requirements might inhibit development altogether or result in empty storefronts. That they are ready to put those requirements in place on Fourth — similar transparency rules are in effect on 125th Street and the St. George area of Staten Island, according to DCP — suggests that even in a downturn, the real estate market in that rapidly gentrifying section of Brooklyn is strong.

The intersection of Northern Boulevard and 108th Street is dangerous enough that Mayor Bloomberg announced the city's Pedestrian Safety Study there, but has Corona received the livable streets improvements found elsewhere in the city? Image: Google Street View.

New Yorkers think their city is very livable, a new survey conducted by the Municipal Art Society shows, but livability isn’t equitably distributed across the five boroughs. To make the city truly livable, said panelists today at an MAS conference, New York needs to figure out how to bring its best features to all neighborhoods.

Overall, New Yorkers like their city: 84 percent of those surveyed said they were satisfied or very satisfied with living in New York City, and 82 percent said the same about their neighborhoods.

Perhaps part of that satisfaction comes from living in the American city least dominated by the automobile. The two neighborhood characteristics that New Yorkers were most satisfied with were access to transit (93 percent) and neighborhood walkability (85 percent).

However, the MAS survey showed huge disparities in the degree to which New Yorkers find their neighborhoods to be livable. Overall, while 22 percent of African-Americans and 29 percent of Latinos were dissatisfied with their neighborhoods, only nine percent of whites were. Only eight percent of whites disagreed that their neighborhood was a good place to walk, while 18 percent of African-Americans and 19 percent of Latinos disagreed.

In the words of MAS Urban Fellow Mary Rowe, “If you’re white, you’re male, you’re under 45, and you’re making more than 75K, the city’s working well for you. Duh.”

Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Paul Steely White offered a pair of specific examples from the transportation perspective. “It’s troubling that those improvements on First and Second Avenue,” which had been presented earlier in the morning by Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, “stop at 34th Street,” said White. T.A. is receiving letters from East Harlem residents asking what happened to their bike lanes, he said.

Additionally, White brought up the city’s plaza program, which reclaims street space for pedestrians. He noted that the marquee plazas along Broadway are maintained by the local business improvement districts, which in those neighborhoods have the capital to invest in public space. Implementing that same funding model in Corona, where the safety and open space that plazas bring is badly needed, might not be possible, explained White.

Accordingly, much of the discussion focused on how to make sure all neighborhoods are livable, not just those with a certain demographic profile. Robert McNulty, the CEO of Partners for Livable Communities, urged large, established city institutions — like the government, museums and universities — to invest more in disadvantaged neighborhoods. “Take your wealth and spread it into the other boroughs,” he urged.

Rowe called attention to housing authority land as an underutilized resource. “Invest in assets we already own,” she said. “Turn those areas in public space, into the mixing space that Jan Gehl talks about.” Working through NYCHA could also help focus livability efforts on areas in need of them.

White pointed to another agency as ideal for bringing livability into low-income areas: the city’s Economic Development Corporation. Job creation and livable areas are mutually reinforcing, he said, and EDC would be perfectly equipped to make livable places a part of its efforts to bolster local economies, if it weren’t so in thrall to mega-developments and mega-parking lots. “EDC really needs to undergo a revolution and understand that this stuff isn’t just window dressing,” said White.

A later panel on the city’s changing demographic highlighted two groups likely to make up an ever larger shared of the city’s population in coming years, and who may have particular demands for a livable neighborhood.

Between 2007 and 2030, explained Joseph Salvo, the director of the Department of City Planning’s Planning Division, New York City’s senior population is going to rise from around 926,000 to 1,352,000. At the same time, the city’s population will continue to be fed by a stream of immigrants from across the world (in a graph showing the countries of origin of New York City’s immigrants, a full 46 percent had to be lumped under “other”).

And as the face of New York City continues to change, so too will the definition of livability. Gordon Campbell, the head of the United Way of New York City, pointed to the Age-Friendly New York City initiative as a model. Regarding city streets, he argued for pedestrian improvements targeted at slower walkers, elevators in the subways, and age-friendly bike paths.

Salvo noted that 1.8 million New Yorkers over the age of five have limited English proficiency and that almost half of Queens’ population is foreign-born. Equal access and open communications, therefore, are key to any livability initiative that would include the city’s entire population.

When the MTA service cuts took effect last month, 570 bus stops around the city suddenly became a collective no-man's land. Buses weren't pulling up to the curb anymore, creating an irresistible vacuum for motorists. If you belong to a neighborhood message board or listserve, you may have come across a few dispatches from car owners salivating over the prospect of more parking.

Maybe it's impolitic to discuss how to use this space while the pain of the service cuts still stings, but the NYPD isn't waiting to manage all that real estate: They've stopped ticketing motorists for parking in the bus stops. Acres of space that used to accommodate transit riders are now de facto parking spots.

We reported in May that this is mostly what the city has in mind anyway. DOT's plan is to turn most bus stops into parking spaces, or convert them to loading zones where deemed necessary. At a meeting of Brooklyn Community Board 6 last night, a DOT representative reiterated the department's intention to primarily use the bus stops for storing private vehicles. He also expressed some openness to installing bike parking in the bus shelters, but not on the street itself.

While the loading zones will help reduce double-parking, it looks like we're still on track for a significant redistribution of public space that won't benefit the 55.7 percent of New York households which don't own a car. 

It doesn't have to end up this way. In San Francisco, the city took some highly visible steps to convert defunct bus stops to non-automotive uses. Some bus stops were re-purposed as bike corrals, with secure parking for six to twelve bikes at each stop. Elsewhere, they used the free space to shuffle around the street's parking spaces and install a "parklet," a temporary public plaza built along the curb.

This is an important time to act on the idea, exemplified by Summer Streets, that streets form the bulk of the city's public space and belong to everyone. Here are a few treatments that would make life better for New York's car-free majority:

• At dangerous intersections, shift the parking spaces around so that the pedestrian crossings are daylighted, allowing drivers and peds to see each other better
• If a BID or other group can maintain the space, set it off with planters and add some seating
• On streets with lots of foot traffic, designate official zones for food vendors
• We said it before but it just makes so much sense: bike corrals

DOT has figured out how to do some pretty ingenious things with newly available curbside space, and really, the only equitable way to divide up these stops would be to devote most of them to car-free uses. New Yorkers who don't own cars shouldn't be shut out of using our old bus stops.

A typical New York street fair. This one's on the Upper West Side, not that it makes a difference. Photo: Ed Yourdon/Flickr

With so much room for improvement, the Center for an Urban Future asked 24 New Yorkers what they'd do with the city's street fairs. Though particular proposals spanned the entire spectrum of the possible, nearly all agreed that street fairs need to be tied more closely to their particular community and that the city needs to allow more experimentation.

With notable exceptions like the acclaimed Atlantic Antic festival, most of New York's street fairs are nearly indistinguishable. Fully half of all permits to sell food at street fairs are held by only 20 vendors, according to a 2006 study by the Center for an Urban Future.

To make matters worse, dissatisfaction with the current crop of street fairs, which anger many residents by blocking traffic and creating piles of garbage, has led to a moratorium on new street fairs. That means that what you see is all you're going to get. There's no competition from new kinds of fairs.

To top it all off, the city loses money on every street fair because of overtime costs for police officers. Something's got to change.

Most people interviewed highlighted the importance of tying the street fair to the local community. "New York has very distinctive neighborhoods," said Kent Barwick, president emeritus of the Municipal Art Society, "so it seems to me that we should encourage elements of street fairs that are distinctive." The most praised fairs -- the Ukrainian Festival in the East Village, International Pickle Day on the Lower East Side, the Queens Art Express -- all drew their inspiration, and their vendors, from the surrounding community. 

As for how to force street fairs to actually reflect the local community, ideas varied. Perhaps the best thought-out was a plan by Deborah Martin, the executive director of the Design Trust for Public Space, to create a tiered system of permits, with vendors required to pay more to participate the further away their bricks-and-mortar operation is located. 

Currently, all street fairs are sponsored by non-profits, a set-up that's intended to create that desired community atmosphere. But most just use their street fairs as fundraisers, contracting out fair operations to the same handful of companies. "A few promoters have figured out how to make a lot of money," said Sean Basinski, the founder of the Street Vendor Project. "They know the political levers, they have connections with the vendors." These promoters are the ones operating the same fair across the city. (In fact, according to Jim Leff, the founder of Chowhound, the same fair can be found from Nova Scotia to Georgia.)

Of course, from a purely financial perspective, that model works. People show up and they spend. "So what do street fairs offer that is not available elsewhere?" asked Leslie Koch, who's in charge of the public space on Governors Island. "The virtue of them," she answered, "is that they close off the streets." New Yorkers are desperate for that kind of public space. 

If it's that simple, there are lots of other ways to use the public realm better. Many interviewees called for more live music, dance, and theater. "It brings out the community, young, old, different nationalities," said hip-hop pioneer D.J. Kool Herc. 

One of the more innovative ideas for bringing performance to the streets comes from Paris, by way of author Suketu Mehta. "La Fête de la Musique" installs stages across the city for musicians to use as they see fit; permit requirements and noise ordinances are suspended for the day. Another unique model, suggested by Project for Public Spaces President Fred Kent, is the Dutch kid's market: On the Queen's birthday, children, and only children, set up stands selling old toys or snacks and showing off their talents.

Of course there's always the simple, successful model of New York's Weekend Walks. There are 18 this year. Maybe some neighborhoods would be happy to simply trade in their fried dough for more car-free space with programming courtesy of local organizations.

Let us know: What would you like to see done with New York City's largest street closing program?

Jackson Heights residents and Council Member Daniel Dromm (bottom left) marched to Queens Community Board 3 to call for expanding the car-free 78th Street Play Street. Photo via Jackson Heights Green Alliance

Nearly 200 Jackson Heights residents marched on their community board last Thursday night to support the expansion of car-free public space in their neighborhood. That feat of organizing helped win the approval of Queens Community Board 3 for a summer-long 78th Street Play Street, reversing the stance of the board's transportation committee.

The play street debuted in the summer of 2008, but up until this year, it's only been in effect on Sundays. Now the street will be free from traffic for the entire months of July and August.

The play street occupies the block of 78th between Northern Boulevard and 34th Avenue, functioning as an extension of the heavily-used Travers Playground, which many parents in the neighborhood say is overcrowded during hot summer months. "We've got to find creative ways to increase the green space in the neighborhood," said Dudley Stewart of the Jackson Heights Green Alliance. "We're second to last in city districts as far as green space is concerned." Jackson Heights residents have used the play street for activities from chalk painting and ball games to learning to ride a bike.

Extending the play street to last through the summer was one of the planks in Daniel Dromm's campaign for City Council last fall. "Without him, it would have been almost impossible to have this happen," said Stewart. Since taking office, Dromm has leafletted neighbors and commissioned a traffic study on the play street. The summer-long extension also enjoyed support from City Council Member Julissa Ferreras, Assembly Member Michael DenDekker, Senator Jose Peralta, and U.S. Congressman and Queens Democratic Party Chair Joe Crowley.

Even so, the transportation committee of Community Board 3 voted against extending the duration of the play street, claiming that it would bring crime and noise to the neighborhood after dark, eliminate parking spaces, and block emergency vehicle access. 

After that setback, local activists decided that they'd have to make a big push to convince the full board to overturn the committee's recommendation. Stewart told supporters to meet at Travers Park last Thursday before walking over to the board meeting. "I was expecting 30 people, 50 at the most," he said. "When 150 or 200 people arrived, it was just a wonderful spectacle." The crowd marched to the board meeting, chanting and singing the whole way. 

It was an unprecedented display of neighborhood activism, said Stewart, who is a community board member himself. "It's never happened," he said. "It's unheard of in this district."

The marchers, many of whom were children, spoke to the board, and their testimony, along with some revisions to the plan to allow emergency vehicle access, helped win a 27-9 vote in favor of the extended play street. The plan now requires a formal go-ahead from NYCDOT, which, along with the health department, has spoken strongly in favor of the plan. FDNY and NYPD have also endorsed the extended play street. 

What's next for the livable streets activists of Jackson Heights after this impressive victory? According to Stewart, open space remains the area's greatest need. If the summer-long play street is a success, he said, "We're going to try and work very hard to make it a permanent expansion to the park." Stewart also proposed looking for similar locations elsewhere in the neighborhood where summertime play streets could be put in place. 

Image: NYC Department of Buildings

Walking through parts of New York can feel like walking through a tunnel. The city's ubiquitous sidewalk sheds -- typically blue scaffolding holding up green plywood to protect pedestrians from construction overhead -- corral people into cramped, dark spaces wherever development or building repairs are underway. There are about 6,000 of these sheds throughout the city.

Today's sidewalk sheds may soon be a thing of the past. Image: threecee/Flickr

Now the city hopes to start phasing them out. The NYC Buildings Department and the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects announced the winner today of their competition to redesign the sidewalk shed: "Urban Umbrella," by 28-year-old design student Young-Hwan Choi.

Choi's design has a number of advantages over current sidewalk sheds, which have been the standard since the 1950s. It leaves much more of the sidewalk free for pedestrians and eliminates the cross-bracing that prevents people from getting on or off the sidewalk anywhere but at intersections. The design also figures to be, quite simply, more pleasant. It lets in significantly more light and air to the sidewalk.

Businesses will be encouraged but not mandated to use the "Urban Umbrella." Since Choi's sidewalk shed has lower maintenance costs than the current model and hides less of the building, the city expects that those incentives will eventually lead to widespread adoption of the design. 

More images after the jump...

Image: NYC Department of Buildings

Image: NYC Department of Buildings

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.

Relax guys, you can keep your jackets. Photo: SliceofNYC/Flickr

Intro 416-A would require motorcycles in New York to be equipped with EPA-stamped exhaust systems -- a federal mandate since 1983, but one that is rarely enforced. Though replacing or altering EPA-approved mufflers is against the law, installations of louder after-market equipment are common.

NoiseOFF, a Queens-based org dedicated to combating noise pollution, writes:

Modified motorcycles can reach noise levels in excess of 100db(a); a level that easily triggers an involuntary stress response commonly known as "flight or flight." This results in the secretion of adrenaline, with ensuing spikes in cardio-respiratory rates, muscle tension, and elevated blood pressure. For affected residents, the never-ending cycle of noise constitutes a serious health issue.

"It is already illegal to ride with loud pipes in NYC," says NoiseOFF founder Richard Tur. "Intro 416-A is designed to allow better enforcement of the law."

A similar local ordinance was adopted in Denver. The New York iteration is sponsored by Council Member Alan Gerson. It would allow for graduated fines for repeat offenders, as well as confiscation of illegally-equipped motorcycles.

Not surprisingly, such laws are unpopular with motorcycle owners and lobbying groups, who claim they discriminate against their vehicle of choice while letting drivers of loud cars and trucks off the hook. Sound from other vehicles is, in fact, already regulated under current city code, but the New York bill nevertheless got plenty of attention from motorcycle enthusiasts when it was introduced late last year.

"We're still working diligently to get it passed," a Gerson spokesperson told Streetsblog.

While the new bill would ideally raise the profile of noisy motorcycles as a quality of life concern city-wide, some NYPD precincts are already well acquainted with the problem. Police in Inwood and Washington Heights, where neighborhood streets often double as a race course, routinely ticket riders and have impounded over a dozen motorcycles this year.

Motorcycles confiscated by the 34th Precinct in Upper Manhattan. Photo: Manhattan Times

This year has been especially bad already, and with the dangerous and noisy recreational traffic has come an uptick in criminal activity. Crime levels remain relatively low in the 34th Precinct, but robberies are up. Inwood in particular has seen a spate of alarmingly violent muggings lately. Not to say that the two are necessarily related, but to harried residents they are part and parcel of the same problem: lawless and increasingly unsafe streets.

In response, the 34th Precinct says it has ticketed drivers and even confiscated vehicles, and has promised to step up patrols and take a zero tolerance approach to noise. Last weekend was a bit calmer than usual on my Inwood block, but Upper Manhattanites are accustomed to selective enforcement, and have learned that complacency is never an option.

CB 12 has asked the city to install speed bumps in trouble spots, but DOT says daytime speed tests conducted last November (a month when motorcycle racing isn't normally an issue) didn't meet required criteria. The board has requested that tests be performed again on a weekend as late at night as possible, since DOT told transportation committee members that the agency doesn't gather such data overnight.

Tomorrow's meeting, which is co-sponsored by Council Members Robert Jackson and Miguel Martinez, will be held at CB 12 headquarters, 711 W. 168th Street in Washington Heights, at 7 p.m. As always, the more locals in attendance the better.

For the latest on this and other relevant issues in Upper Manhattan, keep an eye on the Inwood and Washington Heights Livable Streets group.

Alaska's Copper River Highway runs through forest land. (Photo: alaska-in-pictures.com)

As the Associated Press reports, the most immediate impact of Vilsack's move will come in Alaska, where the Tongass National Forest was poised for a road-building project linked to new logging. But preserving roadless forests is a hot issue all across the west, particularly in California, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has sought to keep roads out of three national forests that are close to the Los Angeles metro area.

It's important to note, though, that Vilsack's directive is only in place for a year -- meaning that roadless forests won't be assured protection unless Congress steps in to pass the bills sponsored by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA).

And for anyone wondering whether keeping roads out of forests is a local issue, check out the Forest Service's list of pavement-free zones in each state. You may be surprised to know how many protected areas there are.

This morning our friends over at Transportation for America are launching a new site called My Commute Sucks, designed to give people around the country a place to vent their frustration over the nation's overburdened and inefficient transportation systems. Commuters can share their tales of commuting woe, upload photos and videos, and also take action by contacting members of Congress to ask for a more sane and sustainable approach to transportation policy.

Already the stories are starting to pile up. Here's one from a New Jersey commuter named Betty:

The Garden State Parkway in New Jersey is a nightmare, just like Jersey's other main arteries.

I would love to bike to the train, but the town of Little Silver doesn't have safe cycling roads. Pedestrians are also at risk on some of the very busy, sidewalk-free and shoulderless roads. 

Finally, the trains are a mess with many discontinuous lines, requiring bus/taxi/light rail connections between stations. ugh 

Build bikeways and we will come! Fix the trains and we will ride!

Brian Fellows asks:

Why should we tolerate 1- and 2-hour commutes?  Think how much time we spend away from our families, burning fossil fuels, and getting stressed out -- every day, every month, every year.  The quantity is staggering.  Even now, just 5 months after the start of our metro area's light rail system (which people are flocking to!) it still takes me an hour to get to work.  Building more lane-miles simply induces more people to drive -- and there you have it: even more traffic.  I would like Congress to attach requirements to highway money that mandate recipients/states to design higher-density and mixed-use development along the highway corridors. 

Go ahead and add your own story. The site has lots of interactive features, including a Twitter feed for micro-rants (tag with #mycommutesucks). You can also follow them on Twitter, they're @mycommutesucks.

Photo by pawpaw67 via Flickr.

Now she's making the publicity rounds promoting her book, Free-Range Kids. In a recent interview with Salon, she pointed out that  while many American parents are terrified to let their children walk a few blocks or ride public transit, they think nothing of driving them everywhere -- even though car crashes are the leading cause of death for children in the US:

Skenazy: If you don't want to have your child in any kind of danger, you really can't do anything. You certainly couldn't drive them in a car, because that's the No. 1 way kids die, as passengers in car accidents.

Salon: Rationally, why aren't cars the bogeyman instead of stranger abduction?

Skenazy: It would change our entire lifestyle if we couldn't drive our kids in a car, and it's a danger that we just willingly accept without examining it too much, because we know that the chances are very slim that we're going to have a fatal car accident. But the chances are 40 times slimmer that your kid walking to school, whether or not she's the only one, is going to be hurt by a stranger.

Skenazy's answer gets to the heart of why it is so hard for people to accept the many ways in which automobiles hurt everyone in society, perhaps especially children -- through crashes, through polluting the air, through promoting obesity. We can imagine a life in which our children are not allowed to play outdoors, walk to a friend's house or spend any time unsupervised. But we just can't imagine life without cars.

Or can we?

Before and after: Fulton St. and Marcy Ave. Image via DOT.

• Brooklyn: Fulton Street & Marcy Avenue; Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, applicant. Just off the bustling commercial corridor of Fulton Street, the Marcy Avenue plaza will narrow the width of Marcy Avenue between Fulton and MacDonough Streets to create 8,000 square feet of new pedestrian space in the heart of Bedford Stuyvesant. This project dovetails with the Bedford Stuyvesant Gateway Streetscape project by the Mayor’s Office of Comprehensive Neighborhood Economic Development and the NYC Economic Development Corporation, which is redesigning Fulton Street from Bedford Avenue to Troy Avenue.
• The Bronx: Boston Road & E. 169th Street; South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation, applicant. By removing a slip lane this project will expand McKinley Square by 8,000 square feet.  This will allow the community to enhance a farmers market and create a town center for the neighborhoods of Morrisania and Clermont. The removal of the slip lane will allow children arriving by bus to walk to nearby PS 63 without having to cross a street, reducing conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles.
• Manhattan: Forsyth Street (between Canal Street and Division Street); Renaissance Economic Development Corporation, applicant. The Forsyth Street plaza will provide additional sidewalk space along the western portion of Forsyth Street to enhance the street environment currently alongside and underneath the Manhattan Bridge. In addition, the project will create an upper plaza on a vacant portion of property adjacent the bridge’s off-ramp so that residents and cyclists traveling off the bridge can enjoy public open space that looks down upon Forsyth Street and the surrounding neighborhood. In total, the project provides up to 10,000 square feet of new public space.

DOT, along with the Department of Design and Construction, will work with the applicants to develop site plans. Construction is expected to begin in 2011, as funding allows.

SeeClickFix users report Union Street gridlock

Unlike most 311 systems, the visual mapping function enables users to see all existing complaints about a particular problem or to add their voice to an existing case, thus promoting it to a more urgent position in the queue. Users can create "watch areas" and receive notices when other users identify a problem within it. Each case generates an e-mail that is sent to the appropriate agency responsible for fixing it.

According to founder Ben Berkowitz, who is based in New Haven, Connecticut, SeeClickFix got its first trial run last year when New Haven's mayor, John DeStefano, Jr., was looking for a way to better respond to public quality-of-life complaints and to reduce duplication of efforts within agencies. DeStefano required the city to respond to cases that had been generated by the public on SeeClickFix and report the status of the cases online.

The system was so successful that the city now uses SeeClickFix as a proxy 311, with agencies such as the DOT, DPW, and police department using it for non-emergency issues. DeStefano was so happy with the service that he sent a letter to more that 100 other mayors encouraging them to try it.

Berkowitz says the system has now expanded beyond the local government to utility companies and non-profits.  He said they have seen numerous cases of good Samaritans responding to complaints without prompting, such as one carpenter who fixed several park benches he located on the site.

"That's the beauty of open source," says Berkowitz. "At first, we thought of calling it Little Brother, like 'Little Brother is Watching,' but then we realized we needed to be a bit more kind to government."

Berkowitz explains that SeeClickFix often coordinates with newspapers, such as those in Boston, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, to promote the software to the public, then advocates for the city to try responding to cases and noting the progress online. When the Philadelphia Inquirer added the SeeClickFix widget to its site, Philadelphia 311 soon started responding online to newly-generated cases.

In San Francisco, Phil Bronstein, editor-at-large of Hearst Newspapers Division, is a big fan of SeeClickFix and is planning to use the mapping widget on SFGate.com. Kevin Skaggs, executive producer of SFGate, said a collaboration with SeeClickFix has been in the works since Bronstein blogged about them last year, and that SFGate will use the widget in a few months on its new hyper-local Chronicle sites.

The new Chron sites will resemble the New York Times' recently launched local blogs, where SeeClickFix is already a presence. As of now, the Times has incorporated the map widget into the New Jersey edition of "The Local," which covers Maplewood, Millburn and South Orange. Berkowitz hopes the Times' Brooklyn blog, targeted at readers in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, will follow suit. If that happens, he sees city residents using SeeClickFix as a tool for broad scale community improvement.

"We know that it can be much bigger than 311 in New York," says Berkowitz. "It's a really great method for getting a dialogue started."

With reporting by Brad Aaron.

A DOT team received a mix of gratitude and derision at Tuesday's public forum about recent pedestrian improvements in the Meatpacking District, which attracted an audience of about 100 people to the Housing Works offices on West 13th Street. It was an interesting window onto the competing interests now vying to shape what has been, from the beginning, a genuinely community-based project seeking to put pedestrians on equal footing with vehicle traffic.

Those who came to praise described the new sense of safety they feel walking around the area near Gansevoort Plaza. Those who came to scorn suggested rolling back those improvements in the hopes that livery passengers might not have to wait another minute or two to be dropped off right at their luxe destinations. The former enjoyed a two-to-one advantage over the latter among those who spoke, with much of crowd opinion resting with a sizable, aesthetically-driven middle ground -- people who professed support for street reclamation in theory, but just don't like the look of nipple bollards.

The goal of the meeting, said DOT Manhattan Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione, was to get "a sense of the overall feeling and a sense of what can be tweaked" about the project, which is slated to enter a permanent design phase this July, followed by construction the next year. There was no shortage of thoughtful ideas -- and clunkers -- for a neighborhood attempting to deal with the influx of cab and limo traffic on weekend nights. Taxi stands, anyone?

One solution for the Meatpacking District's livery congestion: taxi stands. Image: NYCDOT

On the side of preserving safety gains, longtime resident Cynthia Penney encapsulated the sentiment of many locals. "I love the fact that I can cross the street without taking my life in my hands," she said. "Judging by the crowds outside Pastis, I don't think anyone is having trouble getting here."

On the side of maximizing vehicular throughput, Andrew Winter, a representative of luxury resto/lounge tandem Vento and Level V (a favored haunt of "good-looking, well-heeled New Yorkers in their late twenties, happy about how, well, good-looking they are" says New York Mag), put it to DOT thusly: "Instead of spending money on moving these cement block things into new areas, can we focus our funds on how to get the traffic in and out much easier?"

Not that all testimony hewed to the residents-vs.-businesses pattern. Paolo Secondo, owner of the restaurant Revel on Little West 12th Street, was firmly in favor of the pedestrian improvements. "I believe that a privilege we can no longer afford in New York is to be able to arrive at a restaurant in a cab or a limo," he said, assigning blame for traffic congestion in the area to the willy-nilly pattern of livery pick-ups and drop-offs. "I would much prefer to have stands or drop-off zones." His call was bolstered by comments from a CB4 member who recounted how taxi stands had eased traffic tie-ups and quieted late-night honking in Chelsea's nightclub district.

One of the most intriguing storylines to develop was -- brace yourself -- the question of management. As Project for Public Spaces can tell you, the success of any public space depends on programming and maintenance. Someone has to care for it. The Meatpacking District, unlike Madison Square and other areas where DOT plazas have bloomed, does not have a BID to assume this role. It does have a merchants' association -- the Meatpacking District Initiative -- and here's the Catch 22: The MPDI is funded through voluntary contributions, not mandatory assessments, so if the businesses don't like the new public spaces, they don't have to pay for things like putting on events or keeping planters looking good, and perceptions of the pedestrian zones will suffer.

"People want us to fund something that our members are not pleased with," said MPDI founder David Rabin, who called for some of the pedestrian areas on Ninth Avenue to be narrowed or removed. "It is unacceptable for me to hear people say they think it's okay that it's hard to get to the Meatpacking District."

Rabin was followed immediately by Florent Morellet, one of the first restaurateurs to set up in the area and a driving force behind the public space plan. "Cabs can come to the outskirts of the neighborhood but not to the middle," he said in a plea to fellow business owners. "The concept that people can drive wherever and whenever they want is over. You're going to kill business with the old way of thinking. Don't think the old way."

Judging by much of the testimony, many of Rabin's design-conscious members would be satisfied with changes to surface appearances -- nipple bollards, apparently, offend their haute sensibilities. As one boutique owner put it, the street furniture doesn't match the "Paris-like setting" that first attracted her to the neighborhood. Finding a substitute may prove tougher than you'd think. Any device to demarcate pedestrian space will have to meet DOT traffic engineers' exacting safety standards, which the reflective tops of nipple bollards manage to achieve.

With the final design phase slated to commence this July, the Gansevoort project is one to keep an eye on. Some changes may already be in the works. We checked in with DOT the day after the meeting, and the agency said they hope to install taxi stands in the next month or two.

Bus Chick's "Chicklet" is happy to take public transit.

One of our favorite recent discoveries on the national transpo blogging scene is Carla Saulter, a third-generation Seattleite who documents her transit-going life in a blog called Bus Chick for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

A lot of people who do without cars before they become parents think that once they do have a kid, life without a vehicle is no longer possible. Not Carla, who recently wrote a post about what she's learned in her first year as a "bus parent." Here's some of what she has to say:

Planning is essential. The single biggest difference between being a bus parent and being a car parent is the amount of mental energy that's required to make it through the day efficiently, productively, and free of stress.

Comfort is key. As a childless bus chick, I advocated shoes that were comfortable and cute. Today, I say: Cute, schmute! When I'm traveling with Chicklet, it's all about comfort.

Crying is not an option. If you take a cranky baby on a car trip, you're the only one who has to endure the howling. Cranky babies on buses, on the other hand, share their howling with dozens of innocent bystanders. Because of this, I consider it my responsibility to keep Chicklet content and well-behaved for the duration of every ride.

On the plus side: Car free is gear free. (or, Who needs a baby travel system?)

Busing means bonding. Attachment parents--listen up: Unlike car moms, who have to strap their kids into car seats, I get to ride face to face with my chicklet. We read, talk, cuddle, make new friends, and watch the world together.

Bus moms are buff moms. A year after waddling to the hospital to deliver, I'm back at my pre-pregnancy weight (after gaining a wee bit--OK, a lot--more than my doctor recommended), and I haven't counted a single calorie or even considered visiting a gym. …Believe me, my life as a bus parent is exercise enough.

I've made plenty of adjustments this year, but then, what new parent doesn't make adjustments? The good news is, Chicklet has not been deprived of any advantage or experience that is available to the children of car-owning parents, yet she's been enriched and educated in many ways that car kids have not. I can honestly say that the benefits (to my family and to the planet) of my first year bus parenting far outweigh any challenges. Bring on the next 17!

Jan Gehl and Enrique Penalosa often talk about the important role that public space plays in a healthy, functioning democracy. I was reminded of that last night as joyous Brooklynites took to the streets for spontaneous celebration following Barack Obama's election victory. This was the scene at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Union Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn last night around 1:15 a.m.

By that time I'm guessing there were about 350 people out there chanting "O-BA-MA" and "Yes We Can!" People were cheering and high-fiving the drivers of horn-honking taxis and garbage trucks. Things were festive, conflict-free and traffic was managing to squeeze its way through the intersection without any real problem. Until....

...the NYPD showed up. In their apparently never-ending quest to keep the city safe for vehicular throughput, the cops seemed intent on turning a peaceful, Park Slopey neighborhood celebration into a mini-riot (likewise, over in Williamsburg). If the goal was to keep the streets clear for traffic, the genius officer, above right, didn't help matters when he stopped a limo driver in the middle of the street and wrote him a summons. Another officer cranked up his most obnoxious siren and slowly drove his cruiser into the throng in an apparent attempt to push people back on to the sidewalk. This had the effect of dispersing people into the middle of the intersection and putting an angry edge on the crowd. 

Finally, someone at the precinct used his brain and decided to just cork the four intersections around Fifth and Union, diverting the small amount of late night motor traffic around what had become a kind of spontaneous town square. By 1:30 a.m. the neighborhood's outpouring of democratic fervor was spent and the intersection was once again safe for gypsy cabs and private carting trucks.

Transportation Alternatives' CrashStat 2.0 is now out of beta, with improvements in performance and functionality.

The most obvious change is that the data loads a lot faster, and the icons are cleaner. There are more data points, too: the map now features stats by borough as well as community district. And there are icons indicating community facilities like schools and hospitals.

Originally launched in 2004, CrashStat allows users to access official data on city pedestrian- and cyclist-involved crashes from 1995 to 2005.

Stats are now viewable by community district.

What makes the report notable are the numbers it contains. It's jam-packed with quantifiable benefits that would result from increased investment in infrastructure that encourages and supports pedestrians and cyclists.

For instance, the report's authors write:

• Increasing the bicycle and pedestrian share of trips of one mile or less from its current 31 percent, to 40 percent under a Modest Scenario, or to 70 percent under a Substantial Scenario, would result in 28 billion or 49 billion reduction in miles driven, respectively.
• Modest increases in bicycling and walking for short trips could provide enough exercise for 50 million inactive Americans to meet recommended activity levels, erasing a sizeable chunk of America’s activity deficit.
  
• For the price of a single mile of a four-lane urban highway, approximately $50 million, hundreds of miles of bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure can be built, an investment that could complete an entire network of active transportation facilities for a mid-sized city.
• The financial value of improved mobility, fuel savings, greenhouse gas reductions, and health care savings amounts to more than $10 billion annually under our Modest Scenario. For the Substantial Scenario, benefits would add up to more than $65 billion every year. These benefits dwarf historic spending for bicycling and walking, which was $453 million per year for 2005–2007 under SAFETEA-LU, and a mere $4.5 billion cumulative federal investment in these modes since 1992, when bicycling and walking first received documentable federal funding.