Streetsblog New York City

Following the death of Dashane Santana, the transportation committee of Community Board 3 will hold a special meeting this Wednesday to address conditions on Delancey Street, where drivers are aggressive and crossing times are short. Responding to media coverage and pressure from residents and electeds, DOT is scheduled to present its plan to make Delancey safer for pedestrians.

Also on the calendar this week:

• Monday: Join Manhattan Community Board 2, local residents and business owners at a roundtable planning workshop to help decide how bike share should work and where stations should be sited in the West Village, Tribeca and and SoHo. Street-savvy participants are needed for this key meeting, which starts at 6 p.m.
• Also tonight: The transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 6 will take up the DOT proposal for crosstown bike lanes on East 29th and 30th streets from 1st to 8th avenues, as well as a request from the 13th Precinct for an eastbound left turn lane marking on East 20th Street at 1st Avenue.
• Tuesday: The Manhattan CB 2 transportation committee will discuss how to mitigate “congestion, noise and hazardous conditions from intense vehicular traffic on the Kenmare-Lafayette-Broome Street section of the route from the Williamsburg Bridge to the Holland Tunnel.”
• Thursday:  NYC DOT will present its Classon Avenue traffic calming proposal to Brooklyn Community Board 8. 
• Also Thursday: DOT and electeds will hold a public workshop to discuss the future of Fourth Avenue between 15th and 65th streets.

Keep an eye on the calendar for updated listings. Got an event we should know about? Drop us a line.

The big activity on the livable streets calendar this week — and perhaps for weeks to come — is bike-share station selection. The first local workshop, hosted by Manhattan Community Board 4 and West Side elected officials, will begin to determine where stations will be located in Hell’s Kitchen and Chelsea. One of the major questions to work out is whether bike-share stations will be placed on the sidewalk or in what are now parking spaces. Encompassing both Penn Station and the Port Authority Bus Terminal as well as the hard-to-reach Hudson River waterfront, CB 4 should have some very popular bike-share sites.

• Tuesday: People who live and work on Manhattan’s West Side can help choose where bike-share stations will go in Hell’s Kitchen and Chelsea at a workshop hosted by Community Board 4. 6:00 p.m.
• Wednesday: Second Avenues Sagas author Ben Kabak interviews former MTA open data expert Sarah Kaufman about how technology is reshaping public transportation, part of a series at the New York Transit Museum. 6:30 p.m.

Keep an eye on the calendar for updated listings. Got an event we should know about? Drop us a line.

Last April, the federal government announced a $3.5 million grant to a consortium of New York and Connecticut governments to promote transit-oriented development. In New York City, planning is focused on commuter rail stations in the Bronx and East New York. Tonight, HUD Regional Director Adolfo Carrión hosts a town hall meeting to gather public input on how to shape growth in the Bronx. Later in the week, Governor Cuomo hosts what is sure to be a fascinating presentation on public-private partnerships — but it will be closed to the press.

• Tonight: Adolfo Carrión hosts a town hall meeting in the Bronx to discuss the ongoing efforts, funded by the federal government, to promote transit-oriented development around the borough’s Metro-North stations. 6:00 p.m.
• Wednesday: DOT brings its bike-share demonstration to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, showing commuters the new transit option they’ll have access to later this year. 3:00 p.m.
• Friday: Andrew Cuomo hosts his fellow Democratic governors for a conference promoting public-private partnerships in infrastructure construction. 8:00 a.m.
• Saturday: DOT’s bike-share demo moves down to the Lower East Side’s Essex Street Market. 12:00 p.m.

Keep an eye on the calendar for updated listings. Got an event we should know about? Drop us a line.

Having set up a process for neighborhoods to request 20 mph zones, the city Department of Transportation has sparked a citywide discussion about appropriate traffic speeds on residential streets. That discussion will come to Park Slope this weekend in a public forum held by the Park Slope Civic Council weighing the merits of a slow speed zone and how it might be implemented in that neighborhood.

Also: Tonight the transportation committee of Brooklyn Community Board 2 will consider a proposal from local residents to stripe a bike lane on Lafayette Avenue, and the city’s extensive public outreach for its bike-share program continues, with discussions in both English and Spanish.

• Today: James Vacca’s City Council Transportation Committee won’t discuss the MTA budget, but will tackle four separate ways to make it more convenient to park illegally. 1:00 p.m.
• Tonight: Brooklyn CB 2′s transportation committee discusses the proposal for a bike lane on Lafayette Avenue, which has 1,400 signatures supporting it. 6:00 p.m.
• Wednesday: Manhattan Community Board 4′s transportation committee discusses both bike-share and bike lanes. 6:30 p.m.
• Thursday: A panel hosted by the Women’s City Club tackles the funding challenges facing the MTA’s capital program. 12:30 p.m.
• Also Thursday: The Department of Transportation continues its bike-share outreach with a Spanish-language presentation at Grand Street Settlement 6:00 p.m.
• Saturday: The Park Slope Civic Council discusses whether, where, and how to bring 20 mph zones to the neighborhood. 11:45 a.m.

Keep an eye on the calendar for updated listings. Got an event we should know about? Drop us a line.

Tops on this week’s livable street calendar is the second annual Youth Bike Summit, held this weekend by Recycle-A-Bicycle. Last year, teens learned everything from map-making techniques to organizing strategies. Also: Former Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch will speak on the economic perils of declining infrastructure, sounding a call he’s made repeatedly for proper transportation funding.

• Tuesday: The transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 7 discusses a proposal to turn part of 59th Street one-way, continues debating electric bicycles, and hears a presentation from Streetsblog publisher Mark Gorton on the place of the automobile in New York City. 7:00 p.m.
• Wednesday: To mark the opening of an exhibit on New York City’s plans for bike-share, the American Institute of Architects hosts a conversation between DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and Alta Bicycle Share President Alison Cohen. 6:00 p.m.
• Also Wednesday: The Department of Design and Construction gives Manhattan CB 3′s transportation committee an update on the Forsyth Street Plaza planned for the foot of the Manhattan Bridge. 6:30 p.m.
• Thursday: Former Lieutenant Governor and MTA chief Richard Ravitch speaks to the Transportation Research Forum about the economic consequences of underfunding infrastructure. 11:45 a.m.
• Friday to Sunday: Recycle-A-Bicycle hosts the second annual Youth Bike Summit, a national conference that brings young people together to explore “how bicycling can be a legitimate and safe form of transportation for today’s youth.” Rep. Nydia Velazquez will give the conference’s keynote address on Saturday. Friday, 5:00 p.m. Saturday, 8:30 a.m. Sunday, 10:00 a.m.

Keep an eye on the calendar for updated listings. Got an event we should know about? Drop us a line.

Happy New Year! In the first week of 2012, Manhattan community boards continue to discuss the expansion of the city’s bicycle infrastructure. DOT will present plans for new crosstown bike lanes on 29th and 30th Streets — routes whose importance was underscored by the death of Marilyn Dershowitz last year — to CB 5′s transportation committee. In addition, public outreach for bike-share continues at a meeting of CB 8′s transportation committee.

• Wednesday: The Upper East Side continues its discussion of bike-share with representatives of DOT at a meeting of CB 8′s transportation committee. 6:30 p.m.
• Thursday: DOT presents its plans for a new pair of crosstown bike lanes on 29th and 30th Streets to Manhattan CB 5′s transportation committee, which represents Midtown. 6:00 p.m.

The livable streets calendar is starting to quiet down for the holiday season, but there’s no holding back the city’s extensive public outreach for the roll-out of a public bike-share system. This week, the transportation of Brooklyn Community Board 3 in Bed-Stuy gets a look at the how bike-share would work.

• Tonight: Subway historian Joe Cunningham gives a lecture on the early history of the elevated railroad, focusing on an 1868 line that ran down Greenwich Street in the West Village. 6:30 p.m.
• Also tonight: The New York Cycle Club celebrates 75 years of recreational riding with a holiday party. Dinner and dancing for $25. 6:30 p.m.
• Tuesday: DOT takes its bike-share presentation to Brooklyn Community Board 3′s transportation committee, laying out how the system will work in Bed-Stuy. 6:30 p.m.

Keep an eye on the calendar for updated listings. Got an event we should know about? Drop us a line.

The main event this week, without a doubt, is tomorrow’s Manhattan Community Board 11 hearing on extending protected bike lanes on First and Second Avenue up to 125th Street.

• Today: Hunter College hosts a panel discussion about how women can combat sexual harassment and assault on NYC’s subways and buses. 7 p.m.
• Also Today: Come hear from NYC DOT about plans for a public bike-share system at the transportation committee of Manhattan CB 6. The committee will also consider a resolution supporting automated speed enforcement cameras. 7 p.m.
• Tuesday: Manhattan CB 11 holds a public hearing on the NYC DOT proposal to extend protected bike lanes to 125th Street. East Harlem has some of the most dangerous streets and highest rates of childhood asthma and obesity in the city. Building protected bike lanes would make walking and biking safer, encourage physical activity, add trees, and break the spatial monopoly of exhaust-spewing vehicles on neighborhood streets, but two local business owners have mobilized against it under the guise of protecting children’s health. Local residents have strongly backed the project and this hearing will be an important forum to express that support and cut through the noise. 6:00 p.m.
• Wednesday: At its monthly meeting, the transportation committee of Manhattan CB 3 will consider partnering with other local organizations to sponsor bike-share workshops. 6:30 p.m.
• Thursday: Take a bike-share bike for a test ride at an open house at the Center for Architecture. 6:30 p.m.

Keep an eye on the calendar for updated listings. Got an event we should know about? Drop us a line.

The highlight of the Streetsblog calendar this week is Wednesday’s rally led by Transportation Alternatives calling on Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and NYPD to uphold traffic laws and hold reckless drivers accountable. You can RSVP here.

• Today: The City Council Transportation Committee will consider a pair of bills introduced by committee chair James Vacca that mandate what NYC DOT already does: consult with other city agencies before implementing street redesigns and report on the effect of those projects. However, in addition to requiring safety and traffic speed measurements, one of the bills — Intro 671 –  would also mandate reports on vehicular level of service, the discredited traffic engineering metric often used to justify road expansions or thwart pedestrian, bike, and transit improvements. The hearing starts at noon.
• Tuesday: NYU’s Wagner Center hosts a discussion with Dr. Kelly Henning, director of public health programs at Bloomberg Philanthropies, about road safety from a global perspective. Traffic injuries cause 1.27 million deaths each year, according to the World Health Organization, predominantly in developing countries. Dr. Henning will talk about the current state of road safety in low- and middle-income countries, and share information about the Bloomberg Global Road Safety Program. 8:30 a.m.
• Wednesday: Reckless driving claims lives with alarming frequency in New York, but police and prosecutors almost always send the message that this behavior is acceptable. In the vast majority of cases, drivers who kill are not charged with a crime, even when they operate without a valid license or when witnesses observe them breaking traffic laws. More than 1,300 people have signed letters to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly demanding NYPD uphold traffic laws and take the investigation of traffic deaths seriously. Transportation Alternatives will deliver the letters at a rally at One Police Plaza. The public is invited to attend, and you can also add your voice by sending a letter to NYPD. 8:30 a.m.

Keep an eye on the calendar for updated listings. Got an event we should know about? Drop us a line.

It’s a jam-packed week on the livable streets calendar. So busy, in fact, that this post is twice as long as normal and we still couldn’t fit every good event in it. Check out the full Streetsblog calendar for a comprehensive listing. Tops on the agenda are two task forces in Brooklyn — one to improve the pedestrian-hostile Fourth Avenue and the other to work out conflicts on Prospect Park’s loop drive — and a major conference on transportation hosted by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

And, of course, you’re invited to join us Thursday for “Streets of the Future” — the annual benefit for Streetsblog and Streetfilms. Space is limited — buy your tickets now.

• Tonight: The traffic and transportation committee of Marty Markowitz’s Fourth Avenue Task Force holds its first meeting, discussing pedestrian safety among other issues. 6:00 p.m.
• Tuesday: The mayor himself will kick off the day-long “Zoning the City” conference, “designed to cultivate new thinking about zoning as a governmental tool that may be used to address major economic, social, environmental, and physical challenges facing New York City in the 21st century.” Bring your questions about parking minimums! All day.
• Also Tuesday: Interested in turning your block into a car-free play street next year? A meeting hosted by the Department of Health and Transportation Alternatives will look back at what worked in 2011 and help organizers plan for 2012. 4:00 p.m.
• More Tuesday: The Fourth Avenue Task Force holds a town hall meeting for Brooklynites to discuss a broad range of improvements for the street. 6:00 p.m.
• Still More Tuesday: The Brooklyn Community Board 2 Transportation Committee hears a presentation about the final route for the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway. 6:30 p.m.
• Wednesday: The Prospect Park Road Sharing Task Force brings together park users, city agencies, elected officials, and members of the public to discuss how the loop drives can be made safe and accessible for everyone, in the wake of some crashes where cyclists seriously injured pedestrians. The meeting is open and you’re invited to attend and share your thoughts. 6:00 p.m.
• Thursday: Manhattan Community Board 4′s transportation committee discusses where to place bike-sharing stations and on-street bike parking corrals. 6:30 p.m.
• More Thursday: Streetsblog and Streetfilms are throwing a party and we’d love to see you there. Tickets are still available for our “Streets of the Future” bash. 7:00 p.m.
• Friday: Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer hosts “Transportation 2030,” an agenda-setting conference tackling issues from street safety to transit access and parking reform. 8:30 a.m.
• Also Friday: The No Impact Project holds a transportation-themed International Day of Giving Back. Use sustainable transportation modes and be eligible for discounts at local businesses. All day.

Keep an eye on the calendar for updated listings. Got an event we should know about? Drop us a line.