One of these bike-share workshop participants is the star of this classic Streetfilm.

It was another evening of hands-on bike-share station planning at Manhattan Community Board 2 last night, as New Yorkers hunched over maps of SoHo and Greenwich Village, marking the best places to site bike-share kiosks.

If you live or work in the bike-share service area, you really ought to mark your calendar for the station planning meeting in your neck of the woods. There’s something very gratifying about the process that NYC DOT and Alta Bikeshare have put together for people to rate different sites. Each time you put a sticker on the map, you’re shaping the bike-share system in a small but tangible way.

The other thing is that you never know who else will show up. Last night, former Talking Heads frontman and one-time Summer Streets spokesperson David Byrne was in the house, marking up a map. If the pattern holds, it looks like Jay-Z will be on hand for the Manhattan CB 6 workshop later this month, and John Franco and John Starks might turn up at Brooklyn CB 2.

A rendering of the Rudin family plans for new condos at the site of St. Vincent's Hospital. Rudin wants to include 152 parking spaces, while the community board wants zero. Image: Rudin via WSJ.

The City Planning Commission approved a Rudin family request to build 50 percent more parking than allowed at the site of the former St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village. The commission’s unanimous approval came last Monday despite opposition to the parking garage from the local community board and evidence that Rudin hadn’t met the city’s own requirements for granting exemptions to parking maximums.

The advisory recommendations supposedly guiding the commission had been split over the garage. Community Board 2 urged that no garage be allowed at all, as the entrance would be the fourth on a single residential block of West 12th Street. Borough President Scott Stringer, however, approved of the Rudin request to build 152 parking spaces, rather than the 98 the developers would be allowed under the city’s parking maximums.

Additionally, the commission’s report suggests that all community members who testified on the issue of the parking garage at its public hearing opposed the extra parking spaces. “A number of speakers in opposition stated a concern for the proposed garage on 12th Street,” reads the report [PDF]. “These speakers said that the requested special permit to increase the size of the garage should be denied.”

Regardless of those recommendations, it’s debatable whether Rudin was even eligible for a special permit to exceed the parking maximums. To get such a permit, developers need to show that there isn’t enough available parking in the area to meet the projected demand from project residents.

Calculations performed by both Streetsblog and the Municipal Art Society show that wasn’t the case in the Village. “When the residential units are expected to be built there will be 740 available overnight spaces and 154 available weekday midday spaces within a quarter mile radius of the site,” wrote MAS in testimony submitted to the City Planning Commission [PDF]. “This is more than enough spaces to accommodate the 137 cars that the applicant is estimating will result from the addition of 450 new housing units.”

The commission, like Rudin, argues that many of the nearby spaces shouldn’t count, since they are “accessory” parking spaces not necessarily available to residents of the Rudin development. Surveys of the lots by both Streetsblog and MAS, however, both showed that those lots are overwhelmingly being rented to the general public.

The Rudin proposal now goes to the City Council. Christine Quinn, as both the local council member and the speaker, should have significant influence over the council’s decision.

As part of its plan to revise the parking regulations for the Manhattan core, which includes the Village, the Department of City Planning proposes tightening up the loopholes that allow so many special permits to exceed parking maximums. The granting of a special permit for the St. Vincent’s project shows how broken the current system is.

A rendering of the Rudin family plans for new condos at the site of St. Vincent's Hospital. Rudin wants to include 152 parking spaces, far more than allowed under zoning. The community board, meanwhile, asked for no parking to be built. Image: Rudin via WSJ

The sides are lining up for and against the oversized parking garage that the Rudin family wants to build for its luxury apartments at the former St. Vincent’s Hospital site in Greenwich Village. Supporting the request to exceed Manhattan’s parking maximums is Borough President Scott Stringer. Opposing it are the community board and the urban planning advocates at the Municipal Art Society. Next month, the City Planning Commission will decide whether to ignore its own guidelines and grant a special permit raising the maximums for the Rudins.

The Rudins want to build 152 parking spaces for a 450 unit development. They are only allowed 98 by law. To get more, they need a special permit from the City Planning Commission.

Community Board 2 took a particularly strong anti-parking position, requesting that no parking at all be allowed in the development. The board’s official resolution [PDF] lists a number of reasons for opposing the garage, from the creation of a fourth curb cut on a single block, to the safety of the many pedestrians walking through the neighborhood and the desire not to induce more traffic on downtown’s congested streets. “Fewer people are driving in New York City,” states the resolution. “There’s an increase in use of alternative transportation modes and the encouragement of this approach (e.g. through bike share), which CB 2 supports.” New parking lots aren’t part of the community board’s vision for the neighborhood.

The Municipal Art Society, meanwhile, has called attention to Rudin’s funny math. As Streetsblog previously reported, to get a special permit, the developers need to show that there isn’t enough parking in the area to meet the demand generated by the project. In the Village, that’s just not the case. “When the residential units are expected to be built there will be 740 available overnight spaces and 154 available weekday midday spaces within a quarter mile radius of the site,” wrote MAS in testimony submitted to the City Planning Commission [PDF]. “This is more than enough spaces to accommodate the 137 cars that the applicant is estimating will result from the addition of 450 new housing units.”

Rudin attempted to claim that many of those available spaces shouldn’t count, since they’re meant to be used only by the residents of the buildings they’re attached to, but Streetsblog and MAS each scouted the area and found that almost all of the nearby garages allow non-residents to park.

“In order to reduce the amount of traffic on West 12th Street, which is primarily a residential street; the number of proposed parking spaces should be reduced,” recommended MAS.

However, Stringer, who can be strong on parking issues at times, relied heavily on the formal — and generally problematic — analyses put forward in Rudin’s environmental impact statement [PDF]. He further admitted that there is enough empty garage space nearby to fit every new car predicted by Rudin’s projections, but said that would lead to garages between 91 percent and 98 percent full, which he said was too much. Stringer did acknowledge the community’s safety concerns and urged Rudin to install mirrors and audio-visual signals to alert pedestrians of crossing traffic.

The question now is whether the City Planning Commission, like Stringer, will defer to Rudin or look a little more closely at the numbers. The City Planning Commission is on the record stating that limiting the amount of off-street parking is “consistent with the objective of creating an area with a transit- and pedestrian-oriented character.” What’s more, the commission is only supposed to issue a special permit when necessary, which, as MAS showed, is not the case in this instance. Will City Planning stand up for preserving a quality walking environment?

Double parking and worn out markings plague the Hudson Street bike lane.

The full board of Manhattan Community Board 2 voted unanimously last Thursday night to endorse a community-generated plan to convert the buffered bike lane on Hudson Street to a parking-protected lane.

The new protected lane would extend the protected Eighth Avenue bike lane down to Canal Street and the Ninth Avenue bike lane to Bleecker Street.

The Hudson Street bike lane is one of the oldest buffered bike lanes in the city, and its faded stripes are often blocked by double-parked vehicles. The lane is wide enough that it could be upgraded to a protected bikeway without removing a travel lane. Parking would only need to be eliminated to install pedestrian refuge islands, popular among local residents, and mixing zones at intersections.

The resolution asks DOT to return to the community board with a plan to upgrade the lane.

“This is a common-sense conversion — it’s low-hanging fruit for DOT,” said Ian Dutton, one of two community board members who developed the proposal. “Because the buffered lane is already there, though it’s worn-away to the point of being almost invisible, there will be hardly any consequences for drivers — only shorter crossings for pedestrians, a greener and narrower-appearing street to calm traffic, and a far safer and comfortable cycling experience, maximizing the west-side bicycle corridors on Eighth and Ninth Avenues.”

A rendering of the Rudin family plans for new condos at the site of St. Vincent's Hospital. Rudin wants to include 152 parking spaces, far more than allowed under the zoning or wanted by the community. Image: Rudin via WSJ.

Last year, due to protracted financial difficulties, St. Vincent’s in Greenwich Village closed its doors after 150 years, one-and-a-half centuries that saw the hospital play a major role treating victims of the AIDS crisis and the 9/11 attacks. Though many in the neighborhood hoped to see a full-service hospital remain in the Village, a plan eventually emerged to turn the landmark O’Toole building west of Seventh Avenue into an emergency room and outpatient surgery center, while the hospital buildings east of Seventh would be sold to the Rudin family and redeveloped as luxury apartments.

Though the basic shape of the site appears to have taken shape, the details remain hotly contested. In particular, the Rudin request to build a 152-space underground garage.

The garage would be the fourth to front the block of W. 12th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. “This would just add another garage, which would mean more traffic,” explained Community Board 2 transportation committee chair Shirley Secunda. ”It would also mean another encumbrance on pedestrian access, because you’d have another curb cut.”

That would be completely out of step with the pedestrian-oriented design and character of downtown, said former transportation committee vice-chair Ian Dutton. “As far as we know, there aren’t any blocks that have four parking garages anywhere below 14th Street,” said Dutton. “This is completely unprecedented.”

Neither the community nor Rudin wants to put the garage entrance on 11th Street, where drivers would exit next to an elementary school.

The project’s environmental impact statement [PDF] shows that, to access the new garage, 33 vehicles would cross the sidewalk in the peak hour of both morning and evening travel. The EIS claims that level of traffic won’t adversely affect pedestrian flow, despite an extra car crossing the busy Village sidewalk every other minute for two hours a day.

Fewer cars would need to cross the sidewalk if Rudin were willing to abide by the city’s zoning code. Under current regulations, residential developments in Manhattan are only permitted to build one parking space for every five apartments. Rudin wants to build up to 450 units, according to Rudin Executive Vice President John Gilbert, as well as a small amount of commercial space. But under the parking maximums in place, the developer would only be allowed to build 98 parking spaces. If Rudin builds fewer apartments, as may still happen, that would only reduce the number of spaces allowed.

Rudin came up with the 152 space proposal by using the company’s other properties to estimate how many St. Vincent’s site residents would own cars, said Gilbert. “They say that these people will be wealthier than the people in the neighborhood in general, so they will be more likely to own vehicles,” explained Dutton. Thus, though the neighborhood as a whole has one of the lowest car-ownership rates of anywhere in the country, Rudin wants to exceed the parking maximums.

Secunda said that the community board was unlikely to endorse the plan to build extra parking. “The Department of City Planning put in these parking regulations, which are maximums, to reduce the intensity of motor vehicles,” she said. “Here they’re trying to increase it.” A recommendation to scrap the garage entirely is still on the table, said Secunda, though no decisions have been finalized.

In order to receive a special permit from the City Planning Commission to build extra parking, developers must meet five criteria (standards are rife with loopholes). One requirement is that that there be insufficient parking in the vicinity to accommodate demand generated by the project. By Rudin’s own application, however, this lot doesn’t meet this criteria.

In its land use application [PDF], Rudin points to the general difficulty of parking in the area and developments built since 2009 that replaced nearby surface parking lots, though without citing specific numbers to show a shortfall. But the more technical EIS shows that depending on the time of day, between 263 and 821 parking spaces available within a quarter of a mile from the site. That’s well above the 167 spaces Rudin estimates it needs. (Some of the available spaces are in accessory lots attached to residential buildings, where extra spaces are rented out.) “Which is it?” asked Secunda. “Is there not enough parking, or is there a lot of parking?”

If Rudin insists on building a parking garage exiting onto 12th, locals have drawn a line in the sand over the provision of a special permit for extra spaces. “We’re taking the position that this shouldn’t be a garage and that no matter what there shouldn’t be any more than the zoning would allow,” said Dutton. “I’m not sure if they’re designing for 1975 or designing for Westchester County, but that’s not where the community board wants this community to go.”

The pop-up café on Pearl Street has boosted foot traffic and improved business for nearby restaurants. DOT's plans to expand the program face an important community board vote tonight. Image: NYCDOT

When DOT installed its first “pop-up café” over a few parking spaces on Lower Manhattan’s Pearl Street last summer, the 14-table public seating area helped increase business by 14 percent at its two sponsoring restaurants. With New York City still recovering from recession and much of the city starved for public space, DOT has moved to expand the program. Restaurants were given the option of requesting a café and DOT selected twelve locations from that pool of applicants. The selected locations are concentrated in the Village and SoHo, making tonight’s Community Board 2 vote a critical moment for the program.

The pop-up café program is an import from San Francisco, where what they call “parklets” have replaced parking spaces with seating across the city. In New York’s program, the cafés are paid for by nearby restaurants looking for more nearby seating and greater visibility, though the seating is open to all and restaurants aren’t allowed to provide table service to the café. The cafés are only allowed in neighborhoods where there isn’t space for regular sidewalk cafés.

The basic premise is that in these neighborhoods, the balance between space for people and space for storing cars is out of whack; businesses will do better with more seating than with more parking.

DOT has decided to give community boards the total power to veto any pop-up café, according to the Downtown Express, which has editorialized in support of the program. Since more than half of the proposed locations are in the Village or SoHo, tonight’s vote by Community Board 2 will largely determine the shape of the project citywide.

Though CB 2′s transportation committee approved six out of the seven proposed applications in the area, tonight’s full board vote is expected to be more contentious. Sean Sweeney, co-chair of the board’s landmarks committee, strongly opposes the pop-up café concept, telling the Express, “It’s a commercial use incompatible with residential use.” Sweeney has a habit of using his organization, the Soho Alliance, to oppose any change in the neighborhood, including bike lanes and car-free streets.

The full board will vote tonight after allowing public testimony on this and other issues. Show up at 6:00 p.m. tonight at SEIU Local 32BJ’s offices, 101 Avenue of the Americas, 22nd Floor, to let the board know that you think supporting local businesses and creating public space is more important than a few parking spaces in this largely car-free neighborhood.

Greenwich Avenue: Plenty of commerce-loving cyclists, no bike lane.

Shop owners also protested that bicycle lanes have made deliveries difficult if not impossible. A pizzeria on Greenwich Ave. that used to depend on cabbies stopping at the curb to get a quick slice has lost the trade and is closing shop, someone reported. Thompson agreed that bike lanes have been a nightmare in places like Astoria and in Manhattan, especially on Grand St. in Little Italy.

So Bill Thompson, opponent of East River bridge tolls and pedestrian safety improvements in Chinatown, apparently also thinks bike lanes are a "nightmare." If Thompson is out to establish himself as not-Mike Bloomberg, he's making a lot of headway when it comes to livable streets.

One thing, though: Thompson may want to tour Greenwich Avenue himself. It doesn't have a bike lane.

It could be that the "someone" in the crowd meant Greenwich Street, which does have a lane. Or maybe it was a typo. The larger issue, regardless, is whether current comptroller and mayoral aspirant Thompson really believes that business communities in cyclist- and pedestrian-rich places like Greenwich Village rely on auto traffic for their survival.

We asked Community Board 2's Ian Dutton (his letter to The Villager was already on its way) about the impact of actual bike lanes on business in his home district. Here's what he had to say:

It's no news story that businesses are having a tough time with the current economic state in our neighborhood and around the country, on streets with bike lanes and on streets choked with traffic. I find it hard to believe that the presence of a bike lane scares off customers in cars, upon which Village businesses rarely depend, but embracing a street design that leads to a more pleasant experience for pedestrians and bike riders might just be a jackpot for a business.

Tourists and local residents make up the lion's share of shoppers and diners in our neighborhood and you'd have to work hard to convince me that they'd stop patronizing a business that had a safer, quieter, neighborhood-oriented streetscape. Attributing an individual business' failure on a bike lane, particularly in an economy with shuttered storefronts on every block, is simply passing blame while ignoring reality.

Two Manhattan community boards are meeting Tuesday evening to discuss new bike routes planned by DOT. If you'd like to support the proposals, and perhaps nudge DOT to beef up some of the provisions for cyclists, here are the details.

At 6:15, CB2's Transportation Committee will consider two routes: one linking the south end of the Fifth Avenue bike lane to the Grand Street lane, creating a route from Midtown to the Manhattan Bridge, and another linking the Hudson River Greenway with the crosstown routes on 9th and 10th Streets. A source informs us that parts of the proposals rely heavily on sharrows instead of dedicated space, so you may want to encourage alternatives that afford cyclists greater safety. This one is happening at NYU's Silver Building (32 Waverly Place, Room 411).

At 6:30, DOT will present plans for a buffered bike route on Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard [PDF] to CB10's Transportation and Parks and Recreation committees. Head to the Oberia Dempsey Center (127 W. 127th Street) to learn more and give your feedback.

Also tomorrow night, DOT will present its Broadway pedestrian plan -- officially called "Green Light for Midtown" -- to CB7. The meeting starts at 7:00 at 250 W. 87th St. (at Broadway), on the second floor.

More than two dozen students braved 32-degree cold this Sunday for the launch of NYU's bike-share program. The ride took them down Second Avenue and over the Manhattan Bridge to see some of Brooklyn's new bike lanes.

The NYU system consists of 30 bikes and two stations -- a dorm at 7th street and a bike parking lot behind Tisch Hall. Lindsi Seegmiller, the student who coordinated much of the program, says she got the bikes almost-new from Hub Station, which used them for free rentals during Summer Streets. To borrow one, students or faculty make a reservation online. Then, at the station, they swipe their NYU ID, opening a cabinet that holds the key to a chain lock attached to the bike they reserved.

In May, Seegmiller told Streetsblog that she hopes the program will expand and get the University, which runs its own bus service, to think more about biking.

Count up-and-coming livable streets advocates like Seegmiller as one reason to be thankful this year. What's on your "I'm thankful for/I'd be more thankful if" list? Enjoy the holiday, we'll see you Monday.

In separate letters issued this month to the Department of Environmental Protection, Thompson and Stringer present lists of unanswered questions pertaining to Local Law 41, adopted by the City Council in May 2005. The law required that all tour buses with engines that are at least three years old be retrofitted with best available technologies to reduce diesel particulate levels, and gave companies until January 2007 to either do the retrofits or apply for waivers.

Over three years later, only one company, Gray Line, has brought any of its buses into compliance. According to a DEP report, as of last August just 61 of the 204 tour buses on New York streets meet the law's requirements. The report, Thompson wrote, "shows a very disturbing lack of progress and, in fact, a widespread non-compliance with the law."

According to a 1999 study referenced in a recent New York Post article, a typical Gray Line bus "emit[s] about 25 times more diesel particles than the average bus."

Thompson takes the DEP to task for its tardiness in issuing the first of its required annual reports pertaining to Local Law 41. It was eight months late and, judging by the follow-up questions submitted by Thompson and Stringer, left many issues unaddressed, such as whether DEP is recommending license revocation for companies that aren't obeying the law.

"Tour Buses No -- Tourists Yes" is not only concerned with air pollution, but also noise pollution and physical safety. In September, sight-impaired West Village resident Lloyd Burlingame told NY1:

"I have to depend on my hearing to know when to cross the street and these tour buses, between the racket they make and these guys blathering, I put myself in danger every time they're here and I try to cross the street. So it's a particular problem for people like me."

Also in the NY1 report, City Council Member Alan Gerson said he wants legislation that would regulate tour bus times of operation, routes and frequency. (Enforcement, apparently, is another matter.) And said Villager Milton Polsky: "We have nothing against the tourists, but we'd like to see them walk and enjoy our wonderful sights here."

Photo: Richard Hsu/Flickr

If yesterday's DOT announcement has whetted your appetite for public bikes, the New York Bike-Share Project has just the thing. From today until Monday, free bikes will be available at four locations in the general vicinity of Greenwich Village. To take one for a spin, participants sign a waiver and give their credit card information. There is no charge for the first 30 minutes.

Rather than duplicate the services of a bike rental shop, the goal is to encourage short, commuter-type trips, according to Lisa Chamberlain of the Forum for Urban Design, one of the organizers behind the project. This is the second year the Forum has helped put together a bike-share experiment. "When we did this last year, the idea was to get the attention of the city," says Chamberlain. "This year it's to reinforce the idea and to raise the awareness of the public."

The locations open at 7:30 a.m. and close around 6 p.m., except for the Seventh Avenue South station, which will remain open until 8 p.m. The sites are each stocked with between five and eight bikes that will be re-distributed as needed.

The five-day demonstration will wrap up Monday evening with a reception at City Bakery featuring DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. 

Map of bike stations: New York Bike-Share Project

"All attendees agree that the pilot is worth going ahead with," Dutton said in an email. "We worked through the area that we're going to recommend for the pilot and discussed issues like the meters' effective hours and time limits."

DOT had distributed flyers throughout the neighborhood explaining that the pilot program was contingent on a positive verdict at the meeting. Few people attended despite the outreach, which Dutton interpreted as a sign that opposition to the idea is not strong. "My feeling is that this indicates that residents are not particularly concerned about 'protecting' unreasonably low meter rates and that businesses don't fear changes to the way things are done," he said.

A resolution on the peak parking proposal will be finalized at a CB2 transportation committee meeting on July 8, and will go to the full board on July 24 for a final vote. If implemented, the pilot program is expected to begin in September.

Photo: misplacedparadox/Flickr

New York University may be the enemy of many East and West Villagers over its plans to expand, but its students are finding other ways to cut the school's environmental impacts: A group of undergrads and grads are gearing up for a bike-share program in the fall.

Their plan, which is still being tweaked, aims for a fleet of 30 bikes available at two dorms. One residence, at 40 East 7th Street, was selected because it's slated to become a "green house" with composting and other environmentally friendly features, explained junior Lindsi Seegmiller. They selected the other dorm, on Broome Street near Lafayette, because it has a floor devoted to green living, known as the "eco-Broome."

The team of six undergrads and grad students expects to be awarded $13,000 from Green Grants, a two-year-old program run by NYU's sustainability task force. Their project is one of several Green Grant winners the school plans to announce this week.

The grant will cover a swipe card system that two graduate students from Tisch's Interactive Telecommunications Program are developing. Also provided for: a maintenance program and the actual bikes, which will be rehabbed from abandoned bikes found on campus. The fix-up effort will be coordinated in tandem with a bike maintenance program started last year by NYU student Emily Allen.

"It will get NYU to start thinking more about biking," said Seegmiller, an environmental studies major working on the project. "We're not a campus where you can walk to everything. Yes, we have the buses, but I know the Transportation Committee for Sustainability doesn't like those buses."

To use the bike-share system, students or faculty will first reserve a bike online. Then, at the dorm, they swipe a card, opening a cubby that holds the key for a U-lock attached to the bike they reserved. (Bike-share planners originally wanted a system where the swipe card could automatically unlock the bike, but that was beyond their budget.)

The bike-share will also depend on volunteers who complete Allen's bike maintenance workshop. The student mechanics will be responsible for monthly inspections of the project's bikes. "People who live in Broome have a community service requirement, so we hope they'll volunteer," Seegmiller said. "It's a lofty goal, but it's good to know how to fix a bike and it's a community-building experience."

Riders will be required to take a bike safety workshop before participating. Plus, Seegmiller believes students will feel safe because, "A lot of it, I think, will be friends riding together." Helmets will be included with each bike, along with a waiver about personal responsibility for wearing them.

Though Seegmiller has heard other campus bike-shares have had problems with stolen bicycles, she is hoping to prevent that by having the students sign a waiver and swipe a card -- "kind of like a library card" or one used for "campus cash" -- to unlock the bikes, which will be charged if the students go over the allotted free time. (The share time is to be determined.)

Seegmiller was heartened by the popularity of a weekend bike-share at the Storefront for Art & Architecture last summer. She's hoping NYU's bike-share will eventually expand to other dorms: "It would be amazing to see something similar to Vélib."

Photo: krzysztof.poluchowicz / Flickr

Tonight, Community Board 2's Transportation and Institutions Committees will hold a joint meeting to hear proposals from NYU to reclaim road space for pedestrians in the campus core area.

Details have not been announced, but a tipster tells Streetsblog that possible proposals range from removal of parking spaces to allow for wider sidewalks and other pedestrian amenities to the complete pedestrianization of Washington Place between Broadway and Washington Square Park.

Reviving memories of last year's protest of a Village crosstown bike route, we're told that opposition to whatever emerges is already mounting.

"He made a claim that he passed out, that he suffered a stroke," Thompson says. Smiley missed his initial court appearance because, according to his attorney, he was in the hospital.

As Smiley provides medical records to the authorities, Miller's parents, Ivan and Patricia, continue to wait it out from their home in Appleton, Wisconsin.

"To me it's a little, 'disconcerting' I think would be the term, that it takes so long," says Mr. Miller, speaking with Streetsblog before Thanksgiving. Some six weeks after Hope was killed, the Millers had yet to receive a report from the NYPD, for which they had to mail in $10. Miller says it took almost a month before they learned the results of Smiley's blood test -- negative for drugs and alcohol, according to police. Himself a science teacher, Miller doesn't understand how a relatively simple procedure could take so much time.

But Mr. Miller isn't angry. To the contrary, he goes out of his way to compliment the city agencies working Hope's case. The medical examiner, he says, was quick to inform them of Hope's autopsy results. And Miller clearly doesn't envy the job of New York police detectives, who he says have been very attentive.

"They're busy folks, I know," Miller says. "It wasn't that they weren't trying to help. It's just that whatever the channels are, they're just slow."

As of now, little else is known -- at least publicly -- about where the case is headed.

"What's happening," says Thompson, "is there is an investigation into what was actually happening when this woman was killed."

Once the Police Department concludes its work, the DA's office will decide what charges, if any, to pursue against Smiley.

"Initially it was aggravating," says Mr. Miller. "You wish it was faster, but I'm not in control of that. So that's the way it is.

"For me, it's hard," he adds, his voice breaking, "because I'd like to know."

Streetsblog reader Dave Goldberg sends along a camera phone photo of the freshly striped Bleecker Street bike lane, shot between LaGuardia Place and Mercer Street. Goldberg notes:

I can't say that the striping was universally respected. You can see from the background of the photo that there's a car in the lane. Also, between Mercer and Broadway, there were two vehicles double parked in it. I guess we'll see how well area drivers can adapt.

I guess. Based on the photo, this looks like it could have been a fine spot for a Copenhagen-style physically-protected bike lane. It's a lot harder to double-park in one of those.

Opponents of the Department of Transportation's plan for a new Lower Manhattan crosstown bike route are expected to make a show of force at tonight's Community Board 2 Transportation Committee meeting in an effort to preserve a few dozen on-street parking spaces along Carmine and Bleecker Streets. Bicycling advocates are urging their supporters to show up as well.

Opponents began mobilizing two weeks ago after DOT removed all of the parking meters on Carmine Street and erected "No Standing" signs in preparation for the new bike lane. The loss of parking space angered a small but vocal group of local residents and merchants who managed to put the issue back on tonight's Transportation Committee agenda despite an 8 to 1 commitee vote in favor of DOT's plan and full Community Board approval last April.

Item number six on the agenda for this evening's Community Board meeting is, "Request to keep parking along Carmine St. bet. 7th Ave. and Bleecker St. intact and to put the new bicycle lane to the left of the parked cars." A local activist says to expect "fierce opposition from resident car owners and merchants" at tonight's meeting.

While it seems unlikely that opponents will be successful in overturning last spring's Community Board vote, which took place after many hours of deliberation, Transportation Alternatives is urging local bike lane supporters to show up tonight to support the critical east-west bike network link:

The Carmine Street bike lane will connect the Hudson River Greenway to the eastbound Bleecker Street bike lane. This is the DOT's first attempt to make sure that bike lanes don't simply dead-end, but connect with one another in a neighborhood bike network. This network represents the diligent efforts of Manhattan Community Board 2, and it is essential that the work proceed as originally planned.

Tonight's meeting is at 6:30pm in the NYU Silver Building, 32 Waverly Place, Room 710. ID is required. 

The city's proposal for lanes on Prince and Bleecker -- streets parallel to Houston, rather than Houston itself -- met resistance earlier this year from those who saw the plan as a flawed compromise for a dangerous, auto-centric Houston Street, as well as those who do not want street parking supplanted by "reckless cyclists."

A number of people had left flowers and notes...

Despite the fact that this section of Hudson Street is now, essentially, a three-lane highway, I'm sure Jane would have been pleased with the little bench, the tree, and all of the bikes parked in front of her building. Greenwich Village is still one of the world's great urban neighborhoods thanks to her work...