Photo: Mike Epstein

Reader Mike Epstein sends in this shot of DOT bike corral construction on Ninth Street between First and Second Avenues in Manhattan. It’s good to see this treatment expanding. Corrals that accommodate multiple bike racks offer a much more efficient use of street space than a one-car parking spot. They make streets safer by improving sight lines, and they don’t leave cyclists and pedestrians fighting over sidewalk scraps.

Looks like a couple of bikes are already in the queue for this one.

In a few weeks, the bike-share station map that accompanies this legend will be available online. Image: NYC DOT

After several months of public meetings and online feedback on bike-share station siting, NYC DOT is beginning to tour community boards with preliminary station maps in preparation for launching North America’s most expansive bike-share system this July.

Yesterday evening, NYC DOT Policy Director Jon Orcutt walked the transportation and public safety committee of Manhattan Community Board 3 through the current station siting plan for the district, showing roughly a dozen map segments with a handful of stations pinpointed on each. The agency will be making adjustments to the station plan based on feedback from community board members. A preliminary station map of the whole service area will be available online in the next few weeks, Orcutt said, and the system is on track to launch sometime in July.

In the CB 3 district, which encompasses Chinatown, the Lower East Side, and the East Village, DOT aimed to put most stations on the street in response to the board’s request to avoid taking up sidewalk space. The committee was pleased with the site selection, with District Manager Susan Stetzer saying the agency did “a good job” of locating stations. Community board members suggested a few places to add stations and one or two sites they’d like to see shifted elsewhere. Overall they seemed pretty jazzed about getting bike-share up and running.

DOT is waiting until they’ve completed the entire system map before posting station locations online, so I don’t have a map to share, but here are a few takeaways from last night’s presentation.

• Some of the largest bike-share stations will go near the district’s subway stations, including a 55-dock station next to the uptown 6 train entrance at Astor Place.
• Several stations on the east side of the district, which is home to lots of public housing, will be sited in the park areas of NYCHA properties.
• DOT avoided siting stations on some arterial streets, including Delancey and 14th. Instead the agency will put stations on lower-traffic streets nearby.
• Some stations in the street will be bookended by concrete stops, like you see at bike corrals, adding a bit of protection from motorists.
• There will be wayfinding maps for pedestrians and cyclists at each bike-share kiosk.
• DOT is working with contractors Alta Bikeshare and the Public Bicycle System Company to give the NYC kiosks a sleek look to match other street furniture like bus stops.

A template to prioritize walking, biking, and transit at the intersection of Third Avenue and 117th Street. Image: Transportation Alternatives

Earlier this week, Laurence Renard was killed as she crossed First Avenue when a dump truck driver turned into her path from 90th Street, hitting her from behind. Renard was one of at least six pedestrians and cyclists who have lost their lives in traffic crashes on East Side streets since last August.

People are seriously hurt and killed with terrible frequency on the East Side of Manhattan: 148 pedestrians and cyclists died on its streets between 1995 and 2008, and more than 15,000 were injured. The area is rife with wide streets and intersections that invite speeding and reckless driving. At the same time, the East Side is home to high percentages of walk-to-work commuters, car-free households, and senior citizens. East Siders lead walkable lifestyles and make many trips by foot or bike, but their streets are extremely dangerous.

Last night, more than 100 people gathered at St. Mark’s Church on East 10th Street for the unveiling of Transportation Alternatives’ East Side Action Plan [PDF], which outlines a broad vision for making this part of Manhattan safer and more livable.

In a series of public workshops, more than 600 East Siders helped TA put together recommendations to redesign their streets and put walking, biking, and transit first. The Action Plan came out of those workshops to serve as “a tool for local East Side experts to use as citizen planners, so they can educate their communities and generate the local support needed to engage decision makers around design and policy change,” said TA’s Julia De Martini Day. Dozens of community groups from Chinatown to Harlem have signed on to the campaign.

With political attacks on pedestrian and bicycle improvements fresh in everyone’s mind, the kick-off event last night was something of a rallying cry for the coalition. New Yorkers who want safer streets have to organize and mobilize as effectively as possible, a point that former Bogota Mayor Enrique Penalosa brought home when he told the audience that the allocation of street space “is a political decision, not a technical decision.”

The East Side campaign has an ally in Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh, who told the crowd that he’s been very encouraged by last year’s improvements for transit, biking, and walking on First and Second Avenues, and that he wants to see the NYC DOT and the MTA do more to prioritize those modes of travel. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and City Council Member Dan Garodnick also lent their support to the campaign in TA’s press release.

The East Village Community Coalition is one of the neighborhood groups that will be making the case for safer streets. EVCC Managing Director Kurt Cavanagh said he hopes to meet with the local community board and elected officials in about a month to talk about the recommendations in the East Side plan. Other community groups in Harlem, the Upper East Side, and Chinatown will be approaching their CBs and electeds in the months ahead as well. Stay tuned.

Video: Clarence Eckerson

CB 2 voted unanimously to create this new public plaza at Cooper Square, with the proviso that seating be removed at night. Image: DDC

Last night, Manhattan Community Board 2 resoundingly endorsed the city’s plans to transform Astor Place and Cooper Square from asphalt expanses into pedestrian-friendly public spaces. After including some language in its resolution to appease the concerns of certain residents, the roughly 40 community board members in attendance voted unanimously for the plan to transform street space into plazas and expanded sidewalks.

The plan includes a new 8,000 square foot pedestrian plaza at Cooper Square, a plaza replacing one block of Astor Place below the cube sculpture, widened sidewalks, 113 bike racks, 64 new trees, and thousands of square feet of new plantings and environmentally-friendly permeable surfaces.

In the days before last night’s vote, some opposition to the plan had emerged from former CB 2 members active in the NoHo community. At the meeting, Jeanne Wilcke, the president of the Downtown Independent Democrats, requested a delay to “fine tune” the plans, which has been in the works for about a decade, worrying about the traffic effects of narrower streets and the management of the new public spaces.

Another speaker, Marty Tessler, demanded that the plan’s hard-surface open space be replaced with landscaping in order to keep too many people from gathering there. “We are hopeful that we will not be subjected to the street performers and all that,” he added.

Following testimony from six people, the community board voted unanimously for an amended resolution supporting the city’s plan. None of those amendments take away from the overall support for the redesign.

The resolution recommends that the city follow some best practices in building and managing the new public space: avoiding the removal of existing trees where possible, ensuring that the plaza space is actively managed, and double-checking with the fire department to ensure that emergency vehicles will be able to use the narrowed streets. As transportation committee vice-chair Ian Dutton explained, however, the board fully expects that the city has already been doing all those things. “The current DOT administration has been very collaborative,” he said.

In fact, those criteria are already being met. The Grace Church School announced last night that they’d take the responsibility for maintaining the new Village Plaza, which will be in front of their new high school. “We think it’s going to be beautiful,” said the school’s representative. “We’re just delighted with the design.”

The sole request for a substantive change came at the request of Community Board 3. They wanted the seating at the southern end of the project to be removed late at night, a condition which CB 2 agreed to. “They were concerned about noise for the elderly people” in nearby senior housing run by the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged, said transportation committee chair Shirley Secunda. Secunda added that JASA was thrilled about having more open space and safer crossings; late night noise was the only worry.

A revived Astor Place would feature thousands of additional square feet for pedestrians. Image: NYC DOT

Tonight, Community Board 2 will vote its recommendation on DOT’s plans to make Astor Place more accommodating and inviting to pedestrians.

While it’s hard to imagine how, for an area between the East Village and NYU, traffic lanes could be considered more desirable than space for people, the outcome of the vote is very much in question.

This project has been in the pipeline for years, yet could be jeopardized by those opposed to change, unless supporters turn out to speak up in favor of better public space.

If you can make it, tonight’s meeting will start at 6:00 p.m. in the gym at Grace Church School, 94 Fourth Avenue.

The Astor Place project would return asphalt to pedestrians and create a welcoming environment to -- gasp! -- sit and eat lunch. Image: DDC

If you can’t make it to Brooklyn for the Prospect Park West forum tomorrow, there’s a Manhattan livable streets effort that needs a show of support.

The reclamation of Astor Place, years in the making, would transfer thousands of square feet to pedestrians, and lay the foundation for a great public space to take shape between the East Village and the NYU district. It’s also reportedly under fire at the community board level. Manhattan CB 2 is voting its recommendation Thursday night, and sources say that a handful of opponents are organizing a “campaign of fear” to influence the decision, reminiscent of the one cooked up against improvements on Prince Street in 2008 (remember the mimes)?

It’s clear that opponents are more interested in obstructing a new public space than in making it as good as it can be. One straw man is the supposition that, if street space is rededicated for use by the general public, the area will be overtaken by corporate events (as opposed to being dominated by cars, which is presumably preferable). Another argument that’s been made against the new pedestrian plazas goes something like, “If the place is nicer, people will have lunch there and leave their wrappers littered around.”

Absurd as it may be, there is a chance that such piffle could carry the day. The local community boards are generally supportive of the project, but have already shown a tendency to waver on amenities like public seating. A few rational voices can help inject common sense into the discussion and stiffen the spines of those who’ll be voting.

If you’d like to help, Thursday’s meeting will be held at 6:00 p.m. in the gym at Grace Church School, 94 Fourth Avenue.

New plazas would return Astor Place to pedestrians. Image: DDC.

Plans to transform another asphalt tangle into a great public space are moving forward at Astor Place, and Curbed has the details. With significant street space being reclaimed for pedestrians, the plan should serve as a new gathering place in the East Village and make the neighborhood safer for walking.

Here are a few of the highlights from the presentation made by the Department of Design and Construction to Community Boards 2 and 3 last night:

• The block of Astor Place south of the cube will be completely replaced by a new plaza, integrating the island where the sculpture sits with the pedestrian environment.
• The plaza around the subway entrance at Astor Place will be expanded considerably, as will the sidewalks around that intersection.
• 8,000 new square feet of pedestrian space will be built at the southern edge of Cooper Square, roughly between E. 5th and 6th Streets.

As a capital project, the reconstruction will include more heavy-duty elements than the pedestrian reclamations built out on Broadway so far. Think concrete, granite, street trees, benches, bike racks, and a new green stormwater management system.

We’re still waiting for additional information about the plan from DDC and the local community board, like when exactly this plan, which has been in the works for several years, will become a reality. In the meantime, though, be sure to check out Curbed for the most comprehensive look at the new design so far, including 24 images. Here are two more images from last night presentation:

UPDATE: A DDC spokesperson informs us that the project will be put out to bid this summer and that construction should begin in spring 2012.

A diagram shows just how much new public space will be created under the new design. Image: DDC.

A rendering shows the southern "Village Plaza" in use by people, not cars. Image: DDC.

A New York City Transit employee helps riders board at the middle door on a Second Avenue SBS bus. Photo: Noah Kazis

Select Bus Service is up and running along First and Second Avenues, bringing rapid bus enhancements to the second busiest bus line in New York City. Though riders will need some time to adjust to the new system, many are already praising the faster service.

A NYCT employee helps a student headed for school learn how to pay his bus fare before boarding. He didn't have any trouble. Photo: Noah Kazis

The thousands of bus riders along Manhattan’s East Side were surely in need of some relief. Though the M15 bus was one of the highest-ridership routes in the country, with 16,541,900 annual rides, it was also one of the slowest in New York City, moving at an average speed of less than six miles per hour. The lack of a decent transit option east of Lexington Avenue also contributes to intense and uncomfortable crowding on the 4, 5, and 6 subway lines.

With the SBS improvements, this critical route should run far more smoothly. Buses will spend less time stopped and more time in motion, thanks to off-board fare collection and three-door loading and unloading. During peak hours, passengers will speed through traffic in camera-enforced bus lanes. New York’s first SBS route, along Fordham Road, improved bus speeds by 20 percent and ridership by 30 percent, according to MTA chief Jay Walder.

First and Second Avenue could see similar gains. On the first weekday of service, at the outset of what figures to be an initial period of adjustment, riders were already noticing the difference.

“It’s definitely faster. You don’t have to wait in line for people to find their MetroCard,” explained Monica Sunwoo, who was headed to work in Midtown.

“It feels a little bit faster,” judged a rider named Miriam, who was traveling from 116th Street to 68th, “especially getting to enter all the doors.”

A bus traveling in a new, camera-enforced dedicated lane on Second Avenue. Photo: Noah Kazis

Where the lanes were marked with paint, they remained largely clear of obstructions. I saw only one motorist drive or park in the terracotta bus lane over a roughly fifteen minute period, as well as a dozen or so cyclists.

Both this SBS bus and the local bus ahead of it were forced out of their dedicated lane by a car idling in the right turn lane. Photo: Noah Kazis

With changes as significant as the SBS improvements affecting several miles of streets and tens of thousands of daily riders, there are bound to be some kinks to work out at first, both in terms of the way the service operates and the way passengers use the service. Today there was a recurring enforcement problem where the bus lane paint is interrupted before right turns. In those areas, cars are allowed to pull in next to the curb to turn right. However, the lack of red paint appeared to signal to motorists that this was an unrestricted area. A number of drivers used those zones to park or drop off passengers, often occupying the space with their blinkers on, which forced multiple buses out of the dedicated lane and into mixed traffic.

A line of people waited to pay their fare as the bus pulled away. Photo: Noah Kazis

As Ben Kabak pointed out on Second Avenue Sagas this morning, the “media moment” of a new bus service’s debut happens at the same time that riders are making their first adjustments to differences in their routine. Riders still lined up at the front door and sometimes entered at the middle of the bus. Only very rarely were all three doors employed. And despite the best efforts of the MTA staff on-site, one woman managed to break an off-board payment machine at 116th Street by trying to force her MetroCard into the receipt slot. These kinds of small inefficiencies are to be expected on the service’s first weekday.

On a day like this, it’s very easy to get quotes from New Yorkers who are skeptical of change. Almost every person I spoke with, for instance, complained that you wouldn’t be able to run for the bus anymore, because you have to get your fare receipt first.

But paying fares before boarding will, overall, make Select Bus Service more attractive by shaving a lot of time off people’s trips. We can’t measure that effect on the first day or the first week of the new service, but the real success or failure of SBS on the East Side should be clear a few months from now, when we’ll know how many more riders are opting for the M15 because it gets them where they want to go faster.

Riders are adjusting to the fact that they can board at any of the SBS bus's three doors. Photo: Noah Kazis

New bikes lanes don't extend above 34th Street in current plans for the East Side, though they extended to 125th originally.

Select Bus Service remains on track to debut on October 10, confirmed NYC DOT and the MTA at a meeting of the project’s Community Advisory Committee last night. Bus service improvements along the corridor are as crucial as ever and will be bolstered by camera enforcement, which DOT announced would be in effect starting in November. The changes that take effect in 25 days, however, won’t be the full complete streets package originally promised. Above 34th Street, bike lanes and pedestrian refuge islands were unceremoniously stripped from the plan some time this spring.

When pressed last night by Scott Falk, the secretary of Transportation Alternatives’ East Side Committee, to explain why protected bike lanes had disappeared from the street design between 34th and 125th, DOT Director of Transit Development Joe Barr had this to say:

We still remain committed to getting that plan done. That’s our goal. We’re learning a lot from this summer’s implementation. Right now, we’re just focused on making 10/10/10 a success. Once that’s passed, we’ll be in a better position to say what next year’s plan will be, what we can get done, what the community’s reaction will be. The success to date, seeing more cyclists out there, the number of complaints about the implementation has been very very low. That all points to being able to expand that treatment successfully next year.

It’s worth parsing that statement more closely. Barr came across as wanting to see the original bike lane plans carried out and was clearly choosing his words very carefully.

Though he said the city is “committed” to the full safety treatment, it’s still just a “goal,” not a promise. Barr mentioned “being able to” bring bike lanes all the way uptown. What, or perhaps more relevantly, who, is preventing that? Whoever’s decision it is, Barr gave a glimpse of the political considerations at work. Safe cycling uptown depends on “the community’s reaction.” (Streetsblog has a request in with DOT about who will decide whether to extend the lanes and what the criteria will be.)

Perhaps part of the problem is that some of the people with a stake in complete streets aren’t being heard. At last night’s CAC meeting, members of Midtown’s Community Board 6 said loud and clear that their top concern with plans for First and Second Avenue are new left-turn bans for vehicles at four intersections in their neighborhood.

No one from East Harlem’s Community Board 11, however, spoke up about their concerns last night. It wasn’t clear whether anyone from CB 11 even attended the meeting. If they had spoken up, however, DOT might have received an earful of that community’s anger at having safety improvements offered and then taken away. Which community will the city listen to?

One other interesting exchange from last night’s meeting came after a discussion of bus lane enforcement. Susan Stetzer, the district manager of Community Board 3, noted that in her neighborhood, police vehicles have blocked the new bus and bike lanes. What could be done about that, she asked.

“There are a couple of locations along the corridor where we’ve had to move police parking or police storage of stuff, off Second Ave in particular,” explained Barr. “The broader issue of police vehicles or other city vehicles deciding that’s a great place to stop while they run into a store, that’s a more complicated issue that we’re trying to work on.” Just a peek into the inter-departmental politics of New York City…

A few details about SBS operation you may be interested in:

• It will be in operation from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. northbound and 5 a.m to 10 p.m. southbound. Where the bus lanes are curbside, they will only be in effect from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.; the midday gap is for commercial loading.
• Headways will be 4-5 minutes at peak hours and 7-8 minutes off-peak.
• A preliminary enforcement blitz will accompany the launch, and police will be targeted cyclists as well as drivers who use the bus lanes.
• It will be legal for cars to stop in the bus lane to quickly pick up or drop off passengers.

The beginnings of the First Avenue protected bike lane, at St. Mark's Place. Photo: Ben Fried

It's not finished yet, but some segments of the First Avenue bike lane are quite rideable. I used about eight blocks of it this weekend.

This Saturday, I was able to bike from my apartment in Prospect Heights to the East Village, and back again, without really leaving a marked bicycle path. The only exceptions were the side streets at each end of the trip, and those felt a million times safer than crossing high-speed traffic sewers like Atlantic Avenue and Houston Street.

A lot of the bike infrastructure on that trip -- including the Allen Street lane, the Sands Street bikeway, and the brand new Vanderbilt Avenue bike lane -- didn't exist a year and a half ago. The protected lanes on First and Second are creating some extremely useful connections to these recent improvements. You can ride for long stretches and feel like you're using the genuine article: a safe, connected bike network.

Living where I do, I'm lucky enough to be able to take advantage. New Yorkers who live in East Harlem and on the Upper East Side deserve an ironclad guarantee that they'll get access to this network of safer streets as soon as possible.

New plans call for an un-protected curbside lane on nine blocks of Second Avenue. Image: NYCDOT

Yesterday brought another disappointing development in the city's plan to re-design First and Second Avenues. While upgraded bike routes are still guaranteed below 34th Street -- a far cry from what was presented to the public -- even that portion will not be a continuous protected route.

A new map of the project [PDF], which DOT presented at last night's Community Board 11 meeting, shows that between 14th and 23rd Streets, Second Avenue is only slated to receive a normal curbside lane. For nine blocks, cyclists will have to navigate a zone where a single illegally-parked car can thrust them into fast-moving traffic.

Earlier this week, when we asked the press shops for DOT and the mayor's office about the overall scaling back of the East Side plans, we only received a response from DOT. A spokesperson said that the hold-up is caused by time constraints on construction work, and the need to accommodate construction of the Second Avenue subway.

Here's their full statement:

Work on First and Second Avenues is being phased to complete as much transit work as possible this construction season. The project's first phase will enhance pedestrian safety along the corridor and increase the citywide total of parking-protected lanes by one-third while also enhancing existing bike lanes north of 72nd Street on 1st Avenue. 

We will look to make even more bike network improvements when we start the second phase of construction next year.

The omission of protected lanes along nine blocks of Second Avenue, however, is a clear indication that other factors, like preserving space for rush-hour traffic, are at work. Sometime between DOT's presentation to Community Board 6 on April 5, and the mayor's official unveiling of the project on Monday, the Bloomberg administration's commitment to continuous protected bike routes for the East Side faltered.

The plan unveiled today for First and Second Avenues leaves bigger gaps than anticipated in the bike network above 34th Street. Click here to enlarge [PDF]. Image: NYCDOT

While Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan attributed the delay to the time constraints of building such a large project, stressing DOT's intention to finish the job, there is lingering uncertainty about the full 250-block re-design. The city's plans call for more bike and pedestrian improvements to be built during next year's construction season but no longer specify the addition of protected lanes to segments of First and Second north of 34th Street.

As presented to several Manhattan community boards, the project was supposed to include protected bike lanes on Second between 100th and 125th, and on First between 34th and 49th and between 57th and 125th, with a buffered lane in the gap. (Here's an earlier map of the project.)

Following today's announcement, it's unclear whether the mayor is committed to delivering all the bike and pedestrian improvements in the original plan. Above 34th Street, the changes on tap for this year call only for widening the existing bike lane on upper First Avenue by one foot and adding a painted buffer. The project web site does not identify segments that will receive protected bikeways in the future, going only so far as to say that the 2011 and 2012 construction seasons will bring "additional pedestrian and bike improvements throughout the corridor."

For now, advocates for safer streets will need to keep up the pressure to ensure that Midtown, the Upper East Side, and East Harlem receive the bike and pedestrian safety features originally promised. Today they stressed the groundbreaking nature of the re-design and the importance of completing the bikeway.

"When it's completed up to East Harlem, the East Side will have the best streets for biking, walking and buses anywhere in the country," said Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Paul Steely White. "It's critical that the full slate of improvements -- including physically separated bike lanes -- be extended north as rapidly as possible."

Support from local residents and representatives has been robust along the length of the East Side corridor. Last December, 19 elected officials representing the East Side signed a letter requesting physically separated bike lanes and bus lanes along First and Second Avenues. This spring, Manhattan Community Board 6 approved a design including major segments of protected bike lanes north of 34th Street. Community Board 8, which represents the Upper East Side, passed a resolution supporting protected bike lanes for East Side avenues last fall.

"For the city to kind of back off of its plans for Upper Manhattan, that really makes you scratch your head," said Michael Auerbach, director of Upper Green Side, a neighborhood advocacy group. "They have the support of the community. People want to see safe streets right now."

The Select Bus Service portion of the plan remains mostly unchanged. October 10 is still the target launch date, and work begins on resurfacing the streets next week. 

There was one significant addition to the bus plans. Starting in 2011, buses on First and Second Avenues will receive priority at traffic signals, with green lights lasting a bit longer if buses are approaching. Traffic signal priority, which is currently in effect on the Fordham Road SBS route, wasn't part of the original plans for the East Side. 

Enforcement of the bus lanes remains a big question mark, however. The plan calls for automated cameras to keep dedicated lanes clear of traffic, but that requires an OK from Albany -- far from a sure thing. The MTA's Ted Orosz wouldn't specify how much Select Bus Service would be slowed by the potential lack of camera enforcement, but noted that a delivery truck blocking the bus lane in a particularly congested area, such as near the Queensboro Bridge, could slow a bus by five minutes. 

When asked what the city's back-up plan was for enforcing the bus lane if Albany doesn't come through with enabling legislation in the next few weeks, Bloomberg answered only that "it makes it more difficult." He then proceeded to make the case for action by the legislature. "It's right that they should do it," said the mayor. "It's our city." 

Second Avenue shoppers are far more likely to arrive via bus, bike, or foot than private car. Photo: akuban/Flickr

Wherever parking spaces are replaced with infrastructure for sustainable transportation, you can usually find a local merchant yelling about how it will destroy his livelihood. With the redesign of First and Second Avenue bringing safer biking and faster buses to their neighborhood, five NYU undergrads set out to measure what local merchants stand to lose or gain. Their findings suggest that protected bike lanes and Select Bus Service are going to be good for business in the East Village.

The overwhelming majority of shoppers along Second Avenue walk, bike, or take transit to get there, according to the NYU students' research, which you can look over here. Overall, shoppers who don't arrive by private car spend more than 26 times as much as motorists at East Village businesses every week. 

Employing a method recommended by Transportation Alternatives, the students conducted 500 random interviews along Second Avenue between 14th Street and Houston Street, asking people on the sidewalk how they got to the neighborhood, how often they visit, how much they normally spend in the East Village, and other questions to gauge their shopping behavior. 

Their findings were striking, if unsurprising. Of the people they interviewed, 45 percent had come to the East Village by transit and another 43 percent on foot or a bike. Another five percent had taken a taxi, leaving only seven percent who took private cars. 

Drivers spent much less money in the East Village than non-drivers. Interviewees who had arrived in a private car spent an average of $82.20 in the neighborhood each week. Everyone else spent an average of $154.13 a week, almost twice as much. Altogether, drivers spent only $2,712 of the $74,690 that the interview subjects spent in the neighborhood weekly, making them a rather small fraction of merchants' bottom line.

The students' findings echo those of a 2006 study of SoHo shoppers by Bruce Schaller. That study, also based on sidewalk interviews, found that almost no SoHo shoppers were arriving by car and that transit riders, pedestrians and cyclists tended to be the big spenders.

The NYU report did find that, per trip, drivers spent more money in the East Village than shoppers who arrived by other means. That might help explain why some local merchants believe that parking is so important, even while the overwhelming majority of their business comes from people who take transit, walk, and bike. However, this argues for implementing performance parking measures in conjunction with Select Bus Service and street safety enhancements. Together those changes would generate more foot traffic from sustainable modes and increase parking turnover while reducing congestion caused by shoppers cruising for spots.

The students certainly see the conclusion of their research as unambiguously pro-transit. "We recommend that businesses support the [East Side] project," they write, "and we recommend that Community Board 3 specifically, and community board 6, 8, and 11 more broadly, vote in favor of the project."

The safety data and the workshop are part of a new campaign organized by TA called the East Side Streets Coalition, which aims to dramatically improve safety from East Harlem to Chinatown. The goal is to reduce traffic collisions that injure and kill pedestrians and cyclists by 50 percent over the next ten years.

Upper East Side workshop participants discussed street safety using a new map of the most frequent sites of traffic collisions that injure pedestrians and cyclists. Click here for the full version of the map, showing the whole East Side. Image: Transportation Alternatives. 

The campaign started by mapping out precisely where pedestrians and cyclists are most at risk of getting hurt by cars. Using advanced mapping techniques and new data from the state Department of Transportation, TA has identified and visualized the intersections where the most crashes occur along the entire East Side. These intersections will be the principal targets of the campaign. (The campaign will explicitly refrain from focusing on First and Second Avenues, which are already slated to receive major pedestrian and cyclist safety features.)

The coalition is beginning outreach to develop a vision for a redesigned East Side. The first workshop, for Upper East Side residents, was held last night, with about thirty participants meeting in the cafeteria of the Wagner Middle School to share their concerns about local streets and develop solutions.

Using tools like the city's Street Design Manual and detailed maps of some of the most dangerous intersections in the district, they plotted out their safety ideas. Some of the most popular fixes, like leading pedestrian intervals or sidewalk extensions, would make sense throughout the city. Others were specific to the neighborhood or even the intersection.

One especially interesting proposal was to give 86th Street, where two deep red ovals are visible on the safety map, the same treatment that DOT is proposing for 34th Street: a physically separated bus lane and a full block closed to cars. As Upper East Side resident Steve Vaccaro noted while presenting this idea, 86th Street is choked with cars even though it doesn't actually connect anything; the street doesn't directly connect to either the FDR Drive or a Central Park transverse.

The solutions didn't fall on deaf ears. City Council Member Dan Garodnick gave opening remarks, telling the group that he "will be very eager to look at the plans and then advocate for them." Representatives from Assembly Member Jonathan Bing and Council Member Jessica Lappin's office also participated in the group exercises and presented ideas.

The workshop was a success in another respect as well. Two local organizations, the E. 86th Street Association and Upper Green Side, became the first members of the East Side Streets Coalition, in addition to a local committee composed of TA members. According to Day, more organizations have already committed to joining the coalition but haven't officially signed on yet. Five more visioning workshops are scheduled for the rest of the East Side between now and mid-May. 

Officers from the Ninth Precinct first came to Busy Bee in June of 2008 to buy bikes which they said would be used in special operations targeting bike theft, Malewich told Streetsblog. "They bought two bikes for $350, and we donated two bikes, so they got four bikes for $350, and they wrote us a check," he explained. "Then strange things started happening quite a while later."

Undercover officers started dropping by the store in October 2009, attempting to sell back the same bikes the precinct purchased. Store workers bought back the bikes, Malewich said, unaware of what had happened fourteen months prior.

According to Malewich, the NYPD affidavit states that undercover officers made it clear to Busy Bee employees that they were trying to unload stolen bikes, an assertion that he disputes. "What bike shop employee would say, 'Oh, okay, I'll buy the bike you just clearly described to me as stolen'?" he asked.

Since October 2009, three of Malewich's employees have been arrested for buying bikes from undercover officers. Two have since been cleared in court, Malewich said, but a third, arrested last Friday, still has a court date coming up.

Malewich contested the NYPD's grounds for arrest. "In one instance, the undercover officers claimed they described the bike they were selling as a 'hot bike,'" he said. "What bike lover hasn't used the term 'hot bike' to describe a bike that catches their eye, or that they're trying to sell?"

When officers from the Ninth Precinct came in to the Busy Bee with a search warrant on October 29, Malewich said they failed to turn up a single bike listed as stolen.

Streetsblog has a request in with NYPD to speak to Allison Arenson, the department's attorney handling the case.

Malewich added that after bikes are purchased, the store's policy is to put them in the front window, or on the sidewalk, so that if somebody has lost their bike, they'll see it and be able to get information about how the store acquired the bike. "We were being as careful as we could," he said.

The Busy Bee bike shop has been shut down for criminal possession of stolen property. Photo: Jack Savage.

Busy Bee Bikes, a familiar destination for local cyclists, was forced to close its doors last Friday for criminal possession of stolen property, according to Lt. Patrick Ferguson of the Ninth Precinct.

One Busy Bee employee was arrested at the store that day after purchasing stolen property from an undercover officer, Ferguson said, adding that the owners of Busy Bee will appear in civil court on Wednesday. We are awaiting further information from the police on how they determined that the shop intentionally dealt in stolen goods. We also have a request in with the Manhattan DA's office on the charges facing the store employees.

Ferguson told Streetsblog that another Busy Bee employee was arrested at the store last month, also for criminal possession of stolen property. A business will usually face closure by the city following two such arrests on the business's property, according to David Duhan, an attorney who specializes in civil enforcement cases.

Friday's arrest capped an ongoing investigation spearheaded by the NYPD's Ninth Precinct, Ferguson said. The operation had been in progress for months, first coming to Streetsblog's attention at a Ninth Precinct community council meeting in January, where police stressed the usefulness of having one's bicycle registered with the local precinct. NYPD serial numbers can help police recover bike frames lost to theft.

East Side electeds continue to express support for the MTA and NYCDOT's redesign of First and Second Avenues while pushing for a more complete corridor. In exchanges with Streetsblog this week, they called attention, in particular, to the absence of plans for separated bus lanes along the corridor.

Assembly Member Jonathan Bing, who represents the Upper East Side and East Midtown, praised the redesign, "even if it's not everything that we asked for." The release of a specific design, he said, "brings into sharper focus the major benefits we will get." But Bing didn't hide his displeasure with the bus lanes: "I was one of the signatories to a letter a couple of weeks ago calling for segregated lanes and obviously anything that does not comport with the terms of the letter is disappointing."

Two years ago, a bill sponsored by Bing enabling the use of bus-mounted enforcement cameras fell short in Albany, a measure which he says is now urgently needed. "This current decision makes it even more important that we push for cameras, as that's going to be pretty much the only means of enforcement," he said.

State Senator José M. Serrano, whose district stretches from the West Bronx down to East Harlem and Yorkville, didn't single out the corridor's design itself but called on DOT and the MTA to implement the project equitably. Many improvements are on hold in Serrano's district pending Second Avenue Subway construction.

"This new service will improve the commute for East Side residents from the Lower East Side, all the way north to my district in East Harlem," he said. As such, Serrano "would like to emphasize how important it is that the design be completed in full throughout the corridor... We must ensure that, wherever possible, equal facilities and infrastructure -- such as the separated bike lane or the red painted bus lane -- are provided to the entire corridor."

Assembly Member Micah Kellner, who also represents the Upper East Side, told Streetsblog he's excited about the project, particularly after some of his concerns about station placement had been addressed. Even so, he isn't satisfied. "My remaining concern is the lack of physically separated bus lanes," Kellner said. "While I appreciate the need to address the needs of businesses that rely on deliveries," he added, "the primary goal of SBS must be to provide mass transit consumers with uninterrupted, speedy service along the First and Second Avenue corridors -- this should be the priority over all other small inconveniences."

With regards to separated bus lanes, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer didn't stake out a position but restated his belief that the current designs are not yet final, saying that he will be "working closely with members of the East Side Community Boards and the Department of Transportation" to keep communication open and guarantee that "the final proposal balances the needs of the community and the logistical realities of these two corridors." Stringer was not a signatory of December's letter calling for separated bus and bike lanes. 

City Council Member Jessica Lappin, also an Upper East Side representative, agreed that "the most important thing is that we move forward with Select Bus Service," while standing by her position that the corridor should receive separated lanes for both bikes and buses.

Lappin noted that in many parts of her district, subway construction would leave much of Second Avenue without any improvements. "I can understand that they don't want to put in infrastructure that they have to take out, but we need infrastructure that works," she said. "I don't want people thinking that they're in a free-for-all zone when the barriers suddenly end." She called on the MTA and DOT to develop a solution to ensure that, even in construction zones, First and Second Avenue cyclists and pedestrians are safe and buses move quickly. 

The MTA and DOT both said they'll take the response from electeds into account. "We're encouraged by the feedback we've received so far, and we look forward to receiving additional input as the design process moves forward," an MTA spokesman said.

"We're excited by the innovative proposal we presented last week and will take into account the feedback we received at that meeting -- where the plan was generally well-received," said a DOT spokesman. "We also look forward to getting additional community input at next month's board meetings."

State Assembly member Micah Kellner, City Council members Melissa Mark-Viverito and Dan Garodnick, Council member-elect Margaret Chin, and State Senator Bill Perkins are among 19 local electeds calling on DOT and the MTA to implement "true BRT" and "complete streets" on First and Second Avenues.

A group of 19 elected officials has urged NYC DOT and the MTA to think big as the agencies design a Bus Rapid Transit corridor for First and Second Avenues. With the right configuration, the project could improve bus speeds dramatically, relieve crowding on the jam-packed Lexington subway line, and enhance safety for cyclists and pedestrians on a corridor that's currently roiled by wide rivers of traffic.

In an email to constituents this week, Assembly member Micah Kellner shared this letter [PDF] sent to DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and CC'd to MTA Chair Jay Walder. Kellner and other electeds representing Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn are calling for a design that outdoes New York's pilot Select Bus Service route on Fordham Road. It's a significant display of political support for physically separated bus lanes and bike lanes on the East Side:

We call on DOT to take advantage of this rare opportunity to overhaul street-level transit in a progressive and innovative manner that reaches well beyond SBS. DOT should institute changes to the First and Second Avenue route that include not only prepaid off-board fare collection, signal priority, and a dedicated rush-hour bus lane (all present in the Fordham Road SBS), but also a physically separated busway, a physically separated bikeway, level boarding, safer crossings for pedestrians, and real-time arrival information. It is our understanding that buses running via a true BRT system on the current M15 route from beginning to end would be approximately thirty-three percent faster, on average, than SBS buses on the same route. 

Such a plan would elevate the City to even greater national and international prominence for
sustainable urban development initiatives that innovate and endure, and we believe there would
be substantial public support for BRT -- significantly greater support than we expect the SBS
plan to generate. With a sensible "complete street" design that keeps cyclists and pedestrians out
of harm’s way, this project would also save lives. 

The list of signatories includes City Council members, state legislators, and U.S. representatives (see the full roster after the jump). They want to see "true BRT" and "complete streets." Will DOT and the MTA deliver?

Details of the East Side configuration remain in flux, but according to a Daily News report last month, DOT is considering separated bus lanes "along some stretches" of the corridor. In public meetings so far, DOT has only shown an "off-set" bus lane as a potential design option for the East Side avenues -- a configuration that would not deliver the same benefits for bus riders as physically separated lanes. 

Streetsblog asked DOT and the MTA for updates on the status of the East Side project. "We expect to have a plan to propose in January and we are heartened by the support for BRT from these elected officials," said DOT spokesperson Seth Solomonow.

The MTA declined to comment.

Here's the full list of electeds who've signed on:

Brian Kavanagh  
Assemblymember

Liz Krueger
State Senator   

Carolyn B. Maloney
U.S. Congresswoman

Jerrold Nadler   
U.S. Representative  

Nydia M. Velazquez
U.S. Representative  

Thomas K. Duane
State Senator

Bill Perkins    
State Senator   

José M. Serrano
State Senator   

Daniel Squadron 
State Senator

Jonathan L. Bing  
Assemblymember  

Deborah J. Glick
Assemblymember  

Richard N. Gottfried 
Assemblymember

Adam Clayton Powell IV
Assemblymember

Daniel R. Garodnick
Council Member

Alan J. Gerson
Council Member  

Jessica Lappin   
Council Member  

Melissa Mark-Viverito
Council Member

Margaret Chin
Council Member-Elect 

We have been considering ways to incorporate bike facilities and expect to be reporting back to stakeholders soon.

Not a whole lot to go on there, but it's good to hear that DOT is looking into the possibilities. The recent organizing around this issue has been formidable. Community Board 8 passed a resolution last month favoring protected bike lanes for the East Side. And last week, Transportation Alternatives delivered more than a thousand letters to transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan asking for protected bike lanes on First and Second.