Streetsblog New York City

Big ideas were in short supply at a workshop held Wednesday night to develop a badly-needed safety plan for Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard. This year alone, three pedestrians have been killed in traffic crashes along the 100-foot wide avenue, but many of the workshop participants seemed focused on making it easier to drive through Central Harlem, not on saving lives. In an area where fewer than a quarter of households even own a car, more voices need to be brought into this discussion.

Between 2005 and 2009, 830 people were injured in traffic crashes on Adam Clayton Powell. That puts the street in the most dangerous 10 percent of streets in Manhattan, according to DOT. Crashes have claimed the lives of nine pedestrians since 2006; their average age was 62.

The avenue is dangerous in large part because it is a speedway. Its 12-foot wide lanes — three in each direction, separated by a planted median — are as wide as standard highway lanes. Between 20 and 66 percent of drivers on the street are speeding, depending on the time of day, according to DOT.

Wednesday’s workshop was the beginning of a community process jointly sponsored by the Department of Transportation, Community Board 10 and the Manhattan Borough President’s office to develop safety improvements for Adam Clayton Powell. Roughly a dozen DOT officials were in attendance, including Manhattan Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione, Bicycle Program Director Hayes Lord and Assistant Commissioner for Education and Outreach Kim Wiley-Schwartz.

DOT officials briefly presented statistics showing the need for safety on Adam Clayton Powell and laid out the toolkit of safety devices that could be employed. Participants then broke into four groups to discuss particularly dangerous locations and what could be done to fix them. Pedestrian countdown clocks are already slated to be installed on the street this year, but the department was looking for additional suggestions from the community.

In those groups, however, the appetite for effective interventions to improve pedestrian safety was weak.

“I’ve never had a problem crossing Adam Clayton Powell,” claimed Richard Toussaint, a former chair of the Riverton Tenants Association, in defiance of the demonstrably unsafe conditions. Toussaint admitted that he mostly drives to get around. His major proposals were to make Third Avenue two-way so that it’s easier to drive south off the Third Avenue Bridge, and to cut more streets through Harlem’s superblocks.

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Manhattan Community Board 9 became the latest to endorse a car-free Central Park trial last night. By a vote of 32-9 with five abstentions, the board overwhelmingly overturned the 2-1 vote of its transportation committee, which had been the only committee in the borough not to endorse the plan thus far.

CB 9 is the fourth full board to vote in favor of taking automobiles off the Central Park loop drive for a trial period starting this summer, joining CBs 5, 7 and 8. In addition, committees from CBs 1, 10 and 11 have also endorsed the plan.

Before the meeting started, City Council Member Robert Jackson announced that he was in support of the trial, though not ready to take cars off the loop drive permanently. “I’m willing to try anything,” Jackson said.

Brad Taylor, a board member, explained the importance of taking cars off the loop to the West Harlem community. If the drive isn’t closed, he said, “traffic that wants to cut across to Midtown will be coming through our community. If they don’t have that option, they’ll stay where they are on the East Side or the West Side.”

Car-free park advocate Ken Coughlin cited a 2007 survey that found one third of the drivers on the Central Park loop came from the Bronx, ten percent from New Jersey, and six percent from Westchester. That adds up to 1,200 to 1,800 cars per day “that would not be on Harlem streets if it were not for the availability of the Park Drive,” he said. “Harlem has the most to gain from this trial.”

Said Lenna Nepomnyaschy, a long-time resident of the community district, in support of the proposal: “Having cars in the park is unbelievably horrible to see. All of a sudden the cars come in, there’s honking, there’s exhaust, there’s anger. There’s just not enough space for everyone.”

In order to ensure that the trial provides information that is as accurate as possible, the board amended the resolution to request that the car-free period extend sixty days after Labor Day, in order to be able to measure the effect of the closure on heavier traffic days.

Crashes in Manhattan and Brooklyn have left two pedestrians in critical condition this week.

According to NYPD, around 8:23 p.m. Tuesday a 41-year-old woman walking at 330 W. 145th St. in Harlem was struck by a driver who jumped the curb. Police said a 63-year-old male was attempting to parallel park his Ford Explorer when his foot slipped off the brake and hit the accelerator, pinning the victim to a wall. As usual when the driver is not intoxicated and does not flee, “No criminality is suspected.” The investigation is ongoing.

Tuesday’s incident is the latest in a spate of Harlem crashes. On June 2, an 89-year-old pedestrian was killed and five others were hospitalized when two vehicles collided at W. 145th and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard. The next day a motorcyclist was hurt when he was hit by the driver of a van one block away.

On Monday, a pedestrian was critically injured by a hit-and-run driver at Surf Ave. and W. 29th St. in Coney Island. A 21-year-old male later turned himself in to police and was charged with leaving the scene. NYPD had no further details.

As of this writing Streetsblog could find no media coverage of either incident.

Another day, another unanimous show of support for a summertime trial of a car-free Central Park. Last night, the transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 10, representing central Harlem, voted seven to zero in favor of the car-free trial, with one abstention.

The list of Manhattan community board votes supporting the trial period has grown to be pretty hefty at this point. Transportation, parks, or planning committees from boards 1, 5, 7, 8, 10, and 11 have all overwhelmingly supported the trial, as has the full body of Community Board 7. Only the transportation committee of Community Board 9 has opposed the plan, and then only by a vote of two to one; their full board is expected to readdress the issue when it meets with a larger and more representative set of people.

In all of those votes, only four people have voted against the car-free park trial, compared to nearly one hundred voting for it. As anyone who attends community board meetings knows, achieving that level of unanimity on any topic at all is practically unheard of. Even free ice cream cones would raise the hackles of more than four people distraught over the sidewalk-blocking lines or the excess litter.

As the district bordering the entire northern face of Central Park, CB 10′s vote is significant. “The argument for a trial closing that the committee members appeared to find particularly compelling,” reported car-free park advocate Ken Coughlin, “was that their neighborhood likely has the most to gain based on the overwhelming evidence that the loop is drawing traffic into their district that otherwise would stay on peripheral highways.”

This is what a grassroots groundswell of support looks like. Is Michael Bloomberg watching?

One person is dead and at least five others have been hurt after a pick-up truck and livery cab collided at 145th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard in Harlem this afternoon. After impact, the truck driver jumped a curb and careened into an elderly woman and the man she was pushing in a wheelchair, according to a report on DNAinfo. The woman did not survive:

The 89-year-old woman, whose name was not immediately released, was rushed to Harlem Hospital where she was pronounced dead. The other victims were taken to St. Luke’s Hospital with injuries that were not considered life threatening.

The accident unfolded as a silver Lincoln Town Car headed north on Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. tried to make a left turn onto W. 145th Street. The Toyota pickup going south on Adam Clayton Powell struck the sedan and spun out of control, cops said.

One witness told DNAinfo that the two pedestrians were “knocked right out of their shoes,” and another said the intersection is a constant source of anxiety: “It makes me nervous. Every day there’s an accident here. The mayor has to do something about it.”

Both streets are wide and dangerous: 145th has four travel lanes and ACP Boulevard has six, so the livery driver was apparently trying to find a gap to turn left across three lanes of moving traffic. Between 1995 and 2005, 65 pedestrians were injured and one killed at this intersection, according to CrashStat. A buffered bike lane was proposed for ACP Boulevard in 2009, but the proposal went nowhere after Manhattan Community Board 10 overturned its own transportation committee and voted against it.

“This horrifying crash underscores the deadly conditions prevailing on New York’s streets,” said Transportation Alternatives director Paul Steely White. “Over 70,000 New Yorkers are injured by cars every year and hundreds more are killed. More people are actually killed by traffic in this city than are murdered by guns. It’s time to put pedestrians first and bring those numbers down to zero.”

Manhattan Community Board 11′s transportation committee voted in favor of a slate of safety improvements along the Harlem River waterfront last night, a project that will give New Yorkers better access to the underutilized Harlem River Park. Changes like pedestrian refuge islands, sidewalk extensions, and leading pedestrian intervals got a thumbs up from committee members, but they put on hold a plan to reverse the direction of a service road along 135th Street. DOT’s full plan is available for download in this PDF.

This edge of Manhattan is dominated by automobiles speeding on or off the Harlem River Drive or the untolled Madison Avenue Bridge. It’s a danger zone for both pedestrians and drivers, with both groups suffering high rates of injuries in traffic collisions, according to NYC DOT stats. Meanwhile, the beautiful Harlem River Park sits unused, separated from residents by unsafe streets and the hard-to-cross highway. Last month, a man was killed as he tried to sprint across the highway at 135th Street.

For years, residents and the Harlem Community Development Corporation have been calling for a solution, and Transportation Alternatives has advocated for safety fixes here since 2007. The state-run Harlem River Drive and the traffic-inducing free bridge crossing are beyond the city’s control, but a set of DOT-proposed improvements have the potential to calm traffic and begin to reconnect the neighborhood to its waterfront.

For example, at 142nd and Fifth Avenue, DOT plans to extend the sidewalk, expand an existing pedestrian island, and paint a new crosswalk for people walking to the intersection from the south. Parking will be removed from the area in front of the pedestrian bridge across the highway, increasing visibility. “That’s really going to calm traffic coming off of the Harlem River Drive, and really highlights the entrance to the park,” explained Transportation Alternatives’ Julia De Martini Day, who’s worked closely on the project.

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If you get around on a bicycle in Upper Manhattan, the St. Nicholas Avenue bike lanes are essential. They’re the only on-street lanes in the borough between 120th Street and 160th Street. Many cyclists don’t even bother with the lanes, though, because they’re routinely filled with parked cars.

Normally one might ask the NYPD to enforce the rules of the road on St. Nicholas, but at least in the 28th Precinct, such a request seems futile. At precinct HQ between 122nd and 123rd, a line of police vehicles stick their noses out into the bike lane day after day, completely obstructing it. Pedestrians aren’t spared; some cars are parked halfway or entirely on the sidewalk. And these aren’t just squad cars positioned for a speedy exit in case of emergency. Many of the cars appear to be personal vehicles bearing police union bumper stickers or other markers that the owner carries some official authority.

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One of the biggest planning stories of the last decade is undoubtedly the opening of the New York City waterfront to the public. Across much of the city, however, the automobile still occupies the prime waterfront spaces. 

The fate of Harlem River Park exemplifies the challenges of bringing recreation to a riverside dominated by the Harlem River Drive. The park is new and beautiful, but underused. It's no surprise. To get into the park, pedestrians and cyclists have to walk by a series of ramps and access roads funneling huge volumes of traffic between the highway and the many nearby bridges, most of which are free. Local residents and the Harlem Community Development Corporation have been raising the issue for years and since 2007, Transportation Alternatives has worked with them to develop a set of recommendations for improvements [PDF]. 

To try and knit the community together with its park, DOT is developing a set of safety improvements for the intersections near park entrances, particularly 135th and Madison, 139th and Fifth, and 142nd and Fifth. Interestingly, Transportation Alternatives' CrashStat map shows that these intersections aren't the locations in the neighborhood with the most crashes, by a long-shot. It seems that pedestrians and cyclists are so deterred by the unsafe conditions there that many don't even venture over.

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In a surprise to few, the wannabe-suburban East River Plaza big box mall can't fill its 1,428 space parking lot.

As the Wall Street Journal reported this week, Manhattan residents, with their 22.5 percent household car-ownership rate [PDF], are walking or taking transit to East Harlem's Costco instead, even with the lure of subsidized parking. It's exactly the kind of anti-urban, economically wasteful and environmentally destructive mistake that City Planning should have prevented.

East River Plaza was first designed 15 years ago by the Long Island-based Blumenfeld Development Group and Atlanta architecture firm GreenbergFarrow as a way to bring suburban big box stores to an urban environment. "None of these things had ever been built in an urban market before," said David Blumenfeld, the project's lead developer. "There was no model to go off of, there was only the suburban model." 

What Blumenfeld did, to the detriment of the city, was to take his firm's suburban big box store template and just subtract what felt like the right amount of parking. That guess was way off-target. "We thought more people would drive," admitted Blumenfeld. "Typically, at a Costco, they don't come by foot or public transportation."

So has Blumenfeld changed his outlook on what type of development works for cities? Not quite. Even now, he refuses to pass final judgment until East River Plaza is full (some tenants have yet to open shop). In fact, Blumenfeld wouldn't even say he'd do anything differently knowing what he does now.

The ill-informed guesswork of the developer -- so mistaken that the mall's massive parking lot is underutilized even at the subsidized price of $4 for two hours -- poses a real problem for New York City. "It's not retrofittable," explained parking expert Rachel Weinberger, "so all you can ever do is continue to underprice the parking, because a little something is better than nothing."

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East Harlem residents are outraged by the city's backtracking on plans to bring protected bike lanes to their neighborhood. 

At a public meeting about the re-design of First and Second Avenues held by Community Board 11 last night, neighborhood residents demanded that safe cycling conditions extend uptown, but DOT representatives were unable to guarantee future improvements. Up until this week, DOT had publicly indicated its intention to construct protected bike lanes on the corridor in East Harlem, in conjunction with the rollout of Select Bus Service. But three days ago, Mayor Bloomberg announced a re-design for the avenues that specifically called for protected bike lanes only between Houston and 34th Streets -- a stretch that will itself be compromised on nine blocks of Second Avenue (more on that later).

From the beginning, East Harlem residents expressed anger about the Bloomberg administration's neglect of their neighborhood. James Garcia, a local bike commuter, testified first and denounced the lack of protected lanes north of 34th Street. "I pay my taxes like everyone else, and we deserve the same treatment north of 96th Street," he said. "We deserve the same development that Lower Manhattan gets." 

DOT bike coordinator Josh Benson first explained the scaled-back plans by telling the group that there's only so much construction that can be completed in a year, and that completing the full corridor this summer would be impossible. 

But that answer didn't satisfy those in attendance. "Why don't we start in East Harlem?" asked one community board member. 

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