Streetsblog New York City

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:

The re-design of First and Second Avenues has been a complex project to judge since the initial plans were unveiled earlier this year. From the beginning, it's been the most ambitious re-envisioning of a major corridor we've seen in New York City to date: 250 blocks of faster bus service and safer traveling for cyclists and pedestrians. But it has not met the high expectations of New Yorkers who held out hope for a truly high-performance busway and a continuous, protected bicycle corridor.

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.

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. 

"You can't control what you can't measure," the saying goes. So to get a better grip on street safety on Manhattan's East Side, Transportation Alternatives started by collecting better data about local traffic collisions and injuries. Last night, a group of Upper East Siders used that information to begin imagining what a safer neighborhood might look like.

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.

Yesterday we reported that police have shut down the Busy Bee bike shop in the East Village for criminal possession of stolen property. In a phone call with Streetsblog last night, store manager Joe Malewich said he's not sure what his staff could have done to prevent the three arrests which resulted in the store's closure.

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.

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.

From left to right: State Senator José Serrano, Assembly Member Micah Kellner, Assembly Member Jonathan Bing, Borough President Scott Stringer, and Council Member Jessica Lappin.

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."

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?

A quick update on the status of bike infrastructure in the city's plans for the East Side. We asked DOT whether the agency is considering protected bike facilities as part of the Bus Rapid Transit corridor planned for First and Second avenues. The press office says:

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.