Plans for a new pedestrian area between Hoyt Avenue South and Astoria Boulevard. Pedestrians already crowd this space, which is only set off from traffic by striping (visible under the simulated sidewalk). Rendering: NYCDOT

NYCDOT has proposed a significant street redesign for the base of the RFK Bridge (a.k.a. the Triborough) in Astoria [PDF], a package that should improve public space, enhance safety for pedestrians and cyclists, and speed bus service across the bridge.

The redesign is the product of a DOT-sponsored safety workshop held in early 2009. Many of the pedestrian safety improvements will add greater protection to the paths that Astoria residents are already walking. A new sidewalk will link a senior center with the Astoria Boulevard subway station, for example, while a new pedestrian plaza will bring planted curb space between Hoyt Avenue South and Astoria Boulevard, where pedestrians currently stand between lanes of traffic as they cross to the train. 

The skinny arrows show new bike lanes for approaches to the Triborough Bridge. Buffered lanes are shown in blue, with regular painted lanes in orange and sharrows in light green. Image: NYCDOT

Cyclists crossing the Triborough will find safer bridge approaches, thanks to the addition of new bike lanes [PDF]. The DOT plan calls for buffered lanes along Hoyt Avenue North and South, and on 21st Street between Ditmars Boulevard and 20th Avenue. Regular painted lanes and sharrows are also slated for nearby streets.

New traffic signals will help get bus riders to their destinations faster. A special bus-only phase will give the buses a head start on traffic at the intersection of Hoyt Avenue North and 29th Street. Currently, buses have to pick up passengers along the right side of Hoyt Avenue North before quickly cutting across four lanes of traffic to get onto the bridge. Under the proposed redesign, buses would drive in a bus-only lane between 31st and 29th Streets, where the traffic signal would turn green for buses a few seconds before regular traffic. The only other exclusive bus signals in New York can be found at Columbus Circle and along the Select Bus Service route on Fordham Road.

Queens Community Board 1 hasn't voted on the proposal yet, but the bike, bus, and pedestrian improvements have proven uncontroversial so far. Changes like narrowing travel lanes to make room for cyclists or giving buses a head start didn't spur many comments when presented to the board's transportation committee on May 19, said district manager Lucille Hartman. One aspect of the proposal did draw criticism -- converting two blocks of Astoria Boulevard to one-way flow, a change DOT drew up to relieve bridge traffic congestion.

"Steel, Stone and Backbone," which runs through Sept. 19, is a protest against recessionary thinking. It's a strike against the idea that in hard economic times people should lower their expectations about what kind of city they want to live in. In fact, the point of the show is to offer historical proof to the contrary. When the going gets tough, the tough get ambitious about architecture. Much of the New York that is most admired -- its water and transportation systems, housing, cultural institutions -- emerged from periods of economic crisis.

The show, put together by Laura Rosen, an archivist with the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, offers a look at six of these periods and the public works they produced. Many viewers will already be familiar with one of them: the Great Depression and its astounding record in projects for housing, recreation and transportation. With segments devoted to such projects as La Guardia Airport, Orchard Beach in the Bronx and the Queens-Midtown Tunnel (with a video presentation on the "sand hogs" who built it), the 1930's takes up most of the exhibition space.

But the real news of the show is that the building boom of the 30's wasn't the exception. It was the rule. Such booms have frequently coincided with financial busts, or as they were termed in the 19th century, "panics." The Panic of 1837 saw the building of the Croton Water System, including the monumental Egyptian Revival reservoir that used to stand on the current site of the New York Public Library. After the Panics of 1873 and 1893, work began on the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History and the New York Zoological Society, later known as the Bronx Zoo. What a panic.

If the 1930s saw the completion of ambitious projects ushering in an age of cheap air travel and mass car commuting, might the near future see a transit renaissance and the mainstream emergence of non-motorized transport?

With municipal budgets reeling, a big question mark is where the money would come from. A national infrastructure bank? Carbon taxes and congestion pricing? Bill Gates and Warren Buffett? "History doesn't hand us a key," says Muschamp in his MAS review. "However, the implicit message of this show is that we will have to invent one for ourselves."

Photo of workers anchoring wire cables on the Triborough Bridge: New Deal Network

This photo comes to us from Bicyclesonly who is uploading photos (of, you guessed it, bicycles only) to Flickr and tagging them "streetsblog." By tagging your photos as such, they will automatically pop up on our newly revamped "Contribute to Streetsblog" page over there in the upper left corner of the screen. You can upload videos to YouTube and links to de.licio.us and tag them "streetsblog" also.

Regarding the photo above, Bicyclesonly writes:

One of the most pleasant Greenway routes in NYC is the Randall's Island Greenway Connector. Once the last segment of this route is complete, it will allow a car-free ride from the East Side Greenway to the new pedestrian/bicyclist ramp of the Triborough Bridge to Queens.