Streetsblog New York City

A reader sends this photo of a huge rig using Kent Avenue's new protected bike path as its own, highly illegal shortcut. Our tipster says the trucker was bearing down on him at a rapid clip for several blocks before slowing down enough to hear an inquiry through the window: "What do you think you're doing?" The driver's response was unenlightening and filled with obscenities, we're told. This shot was taken after the confrontation.

The last time we checked in on the Kent Avenue project, which converted the street to one-way flow, truck traffic was the burning issue. The 90th and 94th precincts are supposed to keep trucks off streets where they don't belong. From the looks of it, police need to send a stronger message.

See the head-on view of the rig after the jump.

Read more...

We've got another dispatch from the ongoing bike lane drama that is Kent Avenue. At Wednesday night's information session hosted by Brooklyn CB1, the DOT team gave a short presentation [PDF] outlining their plan to address truck traffic changes caused by converting Kent to one-way flow. Then the public was invited to comment.

According to sources who attended the meeting, most of the 60 or so people who showed up were worried that the new pattern will send more trucks down their streets, especially North 11th Street -- an existing truck route -- and Wythe Street, which runs parallel to Kent and is not a truck route. While some stretches of the discussion were civil, a few opponents were not above browbeating tactics, shouting down testimony from bike lane supporters, we're told.

A couple of things to keep in mind. The traffic changes are happening in three phases. So far only the first has been completed. Once the whole thing is finished and truckers have had some time to learn the new traffic patterns, the straightest shot heading south goes nowhere near Wythe or North 11th. DOT intends to promote this route, which takes trucks down McGuinness Boulevard instead, and work with the local police precincts to keep truckers off streets where they're not supposed to drive.

As for the notion that the project makes streets less safe (some opponents went so far as to say the new traffic patterns will endanger children), it's hard to take seriously. This is not just a one-way conversion: The crossing distances will be shorter and the roadway narrower on Kent Avenue, which motorists used to treat as a little stretch of autobahn in Brooklyn. Now that traffic will be calmer.

The bike lane was always intended to be a precursor to the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway. The new design now occupies the greenway footprint, so opposing the bike lane is tantamount to opposing the greenway. An area undergoing as much residential development as North Brooklyn sorely needs this new space for pedestrians and cyclists. Walking to the waterfront will feel much safer and more appealing, and biking to the Williamsburg Bridge won't just be limited to a few brave souls. CB1 embraced those improvements when it approved the greenway plan last April [PDF]; the same benefits should feel much more tangible once the Kent Avenue bike lane is completed next month.

If you care about safe biking in Williamsburg and Greenpoint and you'd like to see the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway eventually reach completion, you'll want to show up at tonight's Brooklyn CB1 transportation meeting. The Kent Avenue bike lane is item number one on the agenda.

DOT representatives will be presenting their plan to address traffic changes caused by the new one-way vehicular flow on Kent. The new design establishes the greenway footprint and re-establishes on-street parking and loading zones. No new truck routes have been created, though southbound truck traffic will travel differently than before. Plenty can be done to mitigate the truck traffic changes, but there's a lot of hearsay and misinformation floating around. You can be sure that some North Williamsburg residents living close to those designated truck routes will be there tonight, and they'll be loud. A show of support for safe cycling would give a big boost to this important link in the city's bike network.

The meeting gets started at 6:30 (sorry about the late notice) at 807 Manhattan Avenue -- the entrance is on Calyer Street.

The Kent Avenue bike path was not the most hotly debated item at last night's Brooklyn CB1 meeting. That distinction belongs to the rezoning plan for the area known as Broadway Triangle. But DOT's team still encountered some skepticism from North Brooklyn residents concerned about truck traffic. The revised plan [PDF], which calls for a two-way protected bike path on Kent with one-way auto traffic, would divert southbound trucks along a different route.

By all accounts, the new plan enjoys the support of former opponents, including the Satmar Hasidic community and businesses along Kent that would see loading zones return. While supporters may have had the numerical advantage last night, they were not the loudest.

"DOT could barely get through its presentation," reports TA's Wiley Norvell, with lots of heckling coming from residents of North 11th Street (which is already a truck route but would receive diverted traffic). The meeting had already been going on a few hours by the time public comment on Kent Avenue started, Norvell said, and not that many people testified. "A lot of people who were there to speak in favor felt a little browbeaten."

There was no vote on the agenda last night.

No one is dismissing the issue of truck traffic, which could be mitigated, in part, by stricter route enforcement. But the latest plan is the product of an already long and contentious public process. "DOT came up with a design that satisfied those concerns," said Norvell. "There's never a perfect scenario that leaves everyone grinning ear to ear, but there's always a safest scenario."

Sheldon Silver's partial endorsement of the Ravitch Commission's MTA rescue plan [PDF], which includes East and Harlem River bridge tolls, offers the best political hope in years for reducing the daily truck tsunami pulverizing downtown Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan.

The truck inundation is due to the great counter-clockwise route that truckers take from New Jersey to Long Island and back to Jersey, to avoid paying the one-way, westbound, “double toll” on the Verrazano Bridge, or the two tolls on the George Washington Bridge and high peak hour tolls at the east bound Lincoln Tunnel. This state of affairs leaves a free path from Long Island to New Jersey across the Manhattan Bridge, over Canal Street, and out of the city via the westbound Lincoln and Holland Tunnels.

Because the trucking diversion -- the legacy of a deal cut on behalf of Staten Island Republicans -- is inherently political, the best policy options are not available. Congestion pricing would have solved the worst of the truck problem, as would restoring two-way tolls on the Verrazano Bridge, at least for trucks. But despite tough going in the State Senate, the MTA financial crisis and Silver's partial endorsement of the Ravitch Commission toll plan may offer some hope for neighborhoods battered by truck traffic, including downtown Brooklyn and western Queens.

Though no details have been released by the MTA, the Ravitch Commission or Sheldon Silver, it is very possible that truck tolls in the rescue plan will be set to match the truck tolls on other major MTA crossings. That would mean EZPass tolls of $20.25 each way for eighteen wheelers crossing the Manhattan, Williamsburg or Queensboro Bridges. (Trucks are not allowed on the Brooklyn Bridge.) This toll would greatly reduce truckers' financial incentive to cut across lower Manhattan on the way to New Jersey or further west. It's not perfect, but certainly enough to alter the time/money calculation so that some truckers will change routes. More effective, but also more politically difficult, ways to eliminate the great circle route include making the new tolls one-way for trucks westbound on the East River bridges and MTA tunnels, or following the Port Authority's lead and placing peak hour truck tolls on the new truck crossings.

Check out this video, via BikePortland.org, on bicycle safety, part of a Portland Water Bureau campaign to reduce truck-cyclist collisions there. Last month, the Water Bureau held a bike safety seminar, which involved cyclists climbing into the cab of a city truck to see (or not see) driver blind spots for themselves.

The accompanying vid definitely puts the onus on cyclists (since "drivers are trained for safety"). Still, there's valuable info here on how the road looks from a truck driver's perspective, and it's impressive to see a city not only acknowledging the dangers trucks pose to cyclists, but taking action to mitigate them. Writes BikePortland.org editor Jonathan Maus:

I’m usually skeptical of educational videos as they are often cheesy and pedantic. But this one worked. Much of the footage was taken from inside the truck’s cab on crowded bikeways I’m very familiar with, but they looked completely different from a trucker’s perspective. It was eye-opening and nerve-racking just to watch the truck’s rear and side mirrors as bikes darted in and out of view — I couldn’t imagine the stress of actually operating that vehicle.

This handy illustration, courtesy of DOT via "Gridlock" Sam Schwartz, should be in the training curriculum for every delivery driver who does business in New York. Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson, who came across this graphic last week, says his appeals to delivery drivers stationed in bike lanes are often met by the excuse that it is not illegal to double park. When a vehicle blocks a bike lane, the law says otherwise:

No vehicle is allowed to block a bicycle lane at any time. If there is no curbside spaces on either side of the street within 100 feet of a delivery/pickup location, commercial vehicles may stand, “double parked,” next to a bicycle lane. If there is no active loading or unloading taking place standing a vehicle in such a manner can result in a violation. Please note also that this does not apply to midtown Manhattan.

Streetsblog contributor Ethan Kent sends along this item from CoolTown Studios, profiling what it calls "the contemporary urban delivery vehicle":

So what's the delivery truck equivalent of the bicycle? Look no further than Paris, the home of 20,000 shared bikes, and there you'll find La Petite Reine, a delivery company that utilizes a fleet of 60 Cargocycles.

With a delivery capacity of 400 lbs. and 50 cubic feet within an 18-mile delivery radius, La Petite Reine completes 2500 deliveries every day for larger corporate partners like DHL that can't access the more intimate street networks of more pedestrian-oriented downtowns.

'La Petite Reine' translates to 'Queen of the Road', the name given by the French to the bicycle. Founded in 2001, the company now serves Bordeaux, Rouen and Dijon.

What's that? Great, but it could never work in New York?

Think again.

This image comes courtesy of TrucksDeliver.org, not the Onion.

If BP can stand for "Beyond Petroleum," what's to stop the trucking industry from claiming to "deliver a cleaner tomorrow"? Not much, apparently.

In a story about the current practices of K Street lobbyists, the Washington Post reports that even the American Trucking Associations -- a national trade group -- is adopting an eco-friendly tone:

Record gasoline prices have done more than boost advertising budgets for worried energy lobbies. They also have turned long-held positions of significant lobbying groups upside down -- and decidedly pro-environmental.

The American Trucking Associations last week did a 180 (or pretty close to that) on two key issues. In news releases notable for their use of the color green, the truck company lobby said it would accept a fuel tax increase -- once its most hated policy proposal -- if the extra revenue went toward reducing highway congestion. It also suggested tougher fuel economy standards for trucks, another shocker for the trucking industry.

Guess the ATA might have to iron out some differences with Truckers and Citizens United, a more grassroots-style group that staged a gas-guzzling, street-clogging "rally" in Washington last month to protest the price of fuel.

To get its green message across, the ATA has launched a campaign called "Trucks Deliver" touting six steps to reduce the industry's emissions. Their congestion mitigation strategy comes after the jump.

Read more...

From Transportation Alternatives: 

Tonight the DOT will be presenting their plans for improved Manhattan Bridge bike access via the Chrystie Street bike lane to Community Board 3. This plan is going to involve the removal of parking along Chrystie Street, so it is anticipated that there will be resistance at the Community Board level.

It would be great to have supportive cyclists in the room. The details are as follows:

What: CB 3 Transportation Committee Meeting on Chrystie Street Bike Lane

When: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 6:30 PM

Where: Confucius Plaza, Community Room - 33 Bowery (at Bayard Street)

Read more...