Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard is a wide-open speedway with lanes wide enough to meet standards for interstate highways. Despite the death toll on the street -- nine pedestrians who have been killed there since 2006 -- many influential participants at a safety workshop this week said pedestrian conditions don't need major improvements.

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.

ACP Boulevard is among the most dangerous streets in New York City. Map of pedestrian and cyclist injuries and deaths: CrashStat

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.

Henrietta Lyle, the acting chair of Community Board 10, repeatedly spoke in favor of maintaining high-speed conditions. When Thomas Lunke, the director of planning for the Harlem Community Development Corporation, said that “the lights are timed to make it a speedway,” Lyle responded, “As a driver, I like that.” Lyle also claimed she found it frightening and unsafe to drive at 20 miles per hour. Lyle primarily called for the addition of turning lanes and signals on area streets.

Harlem residents discuss safety on Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, one of Manhattan's most dangerous roads. Photo: Noah Kazis

That isn’t to say that no participants were interested in improving safety. “As a city, as a borough of Manhattan, we’re supposed to be the most walkable,” said Deputy Borough President Rose Pierre-Louis. “We need to be sure that for seniors, for children, it is.”

Enmanuel Rosario, a police officer with the 28th precinct, called for a simplification of the triangle intersections created along the length of St. Nicholas Avenue, which he called confusing and dangerous for pedestrians. Most people supported extending the existing median, which currently ends just short of crosswalks, to serve as a pedestrian refuge island at intersections.

One of the four breakout groups called for neckdowns where Adam Clayton Powell intersects with major streets like 116th or 135th. That same group was also the only to endorse a DOT suggestion to narrow the traffic lanes to less than 12 feet, but even they specifically said that removing a lane would not be acceptable.

Hanging over the discussion, at times, was DOT’s last proposal for traffic calming on Adam Clayton Powell, a buffered bike lane that would have replaced a traffic lane. Though that lane earned the unanimous endorsement of CB 10′s transportation committee, the full board voted against it in 2009.

Bike lanes were not part of the toolkit presented by DOT, though they’ve been clearly shown by the department to improve pedestrian safety. When a Harlem CDC employee brought them up on her own, the DOT facilitator cut off the discussion as off-topic.

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.

A pedestrian was critically injured in a Monday hit-and-run at Surf Ave. and W. 29th St. in Coney Island. The driver later surrendered to police. Image: Google Maps

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.

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?

The intersection of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard and 145th Street. Photo: Google Street View

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.”

ACP Boulevard and 145th Street both have terrible safety records. Image: CrashStat

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.”

Improvements at 142nd and Fifth Avenue will make walking to Harlem River Park easier and safer. Image: NYC DOT

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.

DOT also plans to improve the intersections where Fifth Avenue crosses 139th and 138th, and to put Fifth Avenue between 135th and 132nd on a road diet. New medians, crosswalks and pedestrian refuge islands are all part of the plan. Overall, 3,000 square feet of space would be reclaimed from the automobile.

CB 11′s transportation committee voted last night to approve all of these improvements. There were a few abstentions and one or two no votes, according to Day. She said DOT expected to start implementing the plan this fall and to finish next summer.

One piece of DOT’s plan is on hold for now, however. The plan for 135th and Madison called for reversing the direction of a service road along 135th, in addition to creating more pedestrian space at the intersection. In the hurried meeting last night, there was only time for one public comment, said Day, and it was in opposition to this piece of the plan.

The committee responded by asking DOT to do a walk-through of the intersection with the board and the tenants association at the adjacent Riverton Houses. “They’re not completely opposed to the improvements,” said Day, “but they’re concerned that the medians and pedestrian islands are too large and will make driving to this access road difficult.”

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.

The New Jersey plate on this car suggests it's not an official police vehicle, though it was parked between NYPD vehicles on either side. Other civilian cars had police bumper stickers. Photo: Noah Kazis.

When a police car parallel parks in the bike lane, it's no surprise that car owners feel entitled to neatly line up in the bike lane on the next block. Nothing about the cars on the far block marked them as belonging to police officers. Photo: Noah Kazis.

One of many cars parked on the sidewalk. This one blocks path from the crosswalk, too. Photo: Noah Kazis

Bridge traffic and very wide streets make the intersection of 135th and Madison difficult for pedestrians to cross, impeding access to the Harlem River Park. Image: Google Street View

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.

This beautiful park can't serve the community if it's not safe to walk there. Photo: Harlem River Park.

Community members who attended the meeting weren't sold on all of DOT's suggestions, according to BicyclesOnly. Many would have preferred to add or extend leading pedestrian intervals to the crossings, giving pedestrians more of a head start into the intersection. DOT told the crowd that wasn't an option due to the volume of traffic in the area. Regardless, everyone in the audience desperately understood the need for safety improvements. 

In fact, in some ways the audience was urging DOT to go further than it could. Many residents complained that the pedestrian bridges that take you over the highway and into the park were too steep for seniors to use, limiting access to the park. They wanted the Harlem River Drive to be turned into a boulevard, like West Street, so that you could cross to the park at-grade, with traffic signals. DOT representatives replied that such a change falls under the jurisdiction of the state DOT.

Despite copious subsidized parking at East River Plaza, most customers still walk or take transit to get there. Who could have seen that coming? Image: Curbed

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."

If the price of parking gets chopped lower and lower, more and more driving will be induced, even if it's less than the developer guessed. And if the lot still stays underused, Weinberger posited, the top floor will likely get converted into monthly parking for residents, boosting car-ownership rates in the neighborhood and inducing even more driving. In any case, building all that excess parking is undermining the goals of PlaNYC even as it eats away at the project's bottom line.

How did it go wrong? Blumenfeld pointed a finger at the conservatism of the big box stores themselves. "I don't think the tenants were ever ready to build it without parking," he recalled. But just as important is the dog that didn't bark: the city. "The city wasn't really pushing" on transportation, said Blumenfeld, though it was involved in discussions. (It's worth noting that in 1999, NYC's current planning chief, Amanda Burden, voted against the project as a member of the City Planning Commission.)

What's missing is leadership from the top. "The city [administration] is more knowledgeable about the city than the developer," argued Weinberger, at least on transportation issues. "The city needs to be making planning decisions rather than having suburban developers bring in suburban parking norms." At East River Plaza, that would have helped not only the city's own transportation goals but the developer's profits as well. 

Today, big box stores trying to expand into Manhattan have more models to follow. The Home Depot on 23rd Street, for example, doesn't have any parking attached at all. Between that store's success and East River Plaza's shortcomings, some have started to reconsider their models. According to the Journal, East River Plaza's own architect now thinks future developments across the city will be oriented more to pedestrians and less to cars. When developers like Blumenfeld aren't ready to take that leap, however, the Department of City Planning needs to push them.

East Harlem will only be getting a bike lane upgrade on First Avenue this year (top). Protected lanes like those slated for downtown (bottom) have not been guaranteed.

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. 

The response from Joe Barr, DOT's director of transit development, was that the agency prioritizes the extension of bike infrastructure where it already exists, in order to build an interconnected network. "My sense is that -- and this isn't a fair answer for this community -- we have a lot of bike infrastructure leading up to First and Second Avenue" from the south, he told the crowd.

This too met with a determined call for equitable access to safe streets. "There's always some reason that the people making these decisions start in the areas that already get excess attention," said CB 11 transportation committee chair Peggy Morales, "while ours gets put on the back burner." Later, noting the high rates of obesity and asthma in her neighborhood, Morales asked Mayor Bloomberg to "stop telling us what's wrong with us and help us fix it."

Further disappointing neighborhood residents, officials were unable to make a firm commitment to eventually building protected lanes uptown. The target is 2011, said Benson, but when pressed to make guarantees, he demurred.

"It's good to keep that pressure up," Barr told the disappointed crowd. "The more we hear from the community that, 'Yes, we want this,' the more likely it is that it gets done next year." 

After the meeting, Morales said she was ready to take a resolution demanding protected bike lanes in East Harlem to an official meeting of her committee. She had no doubt that such a resolution would pass.

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." 

The proposed redesign for the intersection of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue. The project would convert left-turn bays on Lenox into wider pedestrian refuges. Image: NYCDOT

The high volume of traffic on 125th, which feeds into the Triborough Bridge, present dangers for pedestrians on the busy retail and transit corridor. The subway station at 125th and Lenox makes it a particularly busy intersection. From 2004 to 2009, 21 pedestrians were injured there.

In response, DOT plans to widen the pedestrian refuges in the middle of Lenox Avenue, reclaiming space by eliminating left-turn bays. Left turns from Lenox are already illegal from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and the plan would extend that restriction to the rest of the day. DOT also plans to introduce leading pedestrian intervals, giving walkers a head start over turning cars.

At 125th and St. Nicholas, 12 pedestrians were injured from 2004 to 2008. There, DOT is proposing neckdowns on three corners of the intersection, giving people shorter distances to cross.

DOT presented the proposal to Manhattan Community Board 10 last night. An agency spokesperson says DOT will be returning to the board at a later date in response to requests for more information on the project. 

A photo of 125th and Lenox and a rendering of the intersection with pedestrian safety improvements. Images: NYCDOT.

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. 

The Argyle, a new arrival on Brooklyn's Fourth Avenue, is close to transit but cedes the ground floor to parking rather than retail or even a stoop. Parking requirements throughout New York compromise walkable development. Image: Brownstoner.

This is the second installment in a three-part series on the reshaping of New York City and its consequences for sustainability and livable streets. Read the first part here.

Yesterday we looked at the Department of City Planning's eight-year record on rezoning and its general success at creating opportunities for development near transit. Density, however, is only one piece of the planning process. Amanda Burden's planning department has laid the foundation for transit-oriented growth, but so far failed to create conditions where walkable development can flourish.

"Everyone's trying to remake themselves into New York while New York is trying to make itself a more suburban environment."

The department's parking policy is one major impediment. By requiring most new residential developments to include a minimum number of parking spaces per unit, the department is artificially inflating the supply of parking, inducing more traffic and subsidizing car ownership.

New research from Simon McDonnell, Josiah Madar and Vicki Been at NYU's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy [PDF] shows how these policies actually concentrate parking in transit-rich areas.

Required parking per thousand square feet of land. Parking minimums actually consume the most space along transit lines.

The research reveals that although buildings near rail stations have lower parking minimums than those in more car-dependent areas, on average residential development within half a mile of rail is still required to have 46 parking spaces for every 100 housing units. Perversely, because you can build more densely near transit, parking minimums per square foot of land are actually higher where transit options are most robust. So even as the planning department tries to concentrate growth near transit lines, it is simultaneously filling that valuable real estate with unnecessary parking.

The impact of inserting so much new parking into the built environment is enormous.

New York City's parking minimums will add a billion more vehicle miles traveled per year by 2030, according to Transportation Alternatives' 2008 report, Suburbanizing the City. Parking minimums can also force new development to disengage from the street, creating unpleasant sidewalks and dead spaces for pedestrians, as seen on Brooklyn's Fourth Avenue.

"Everyone's trying to remake themselves into New York while New York is trying to make itself a more suburban environment," said Rachel Weinberger, the lead author of the TA report and a professor of urban planning at UPenn. Weinberger argues that the combination of increased density and parking minimums means that the planning department is "pushing the urban form into a more Corbusian, towers-in-the-park shape." A form that has been discredited for the better part of 50 years.

Shortsighted parking policy has been complemented by outsized redevelopment projects widely seen as antithetical to sustainable planning. "The big way that Bloomberg projects have been anything but transit-oriented is not the rezonings, but those rezonings that have been combined with major redevelopment initiatives," said Joan Byron, the Director of the Sustainability and Environmental Justice Initiative at the Pratt Center for Community Development. "These are the megaprojects: Yankee Stadium, Willets Point, or Coney Island, to name a few examples."

In these cases, Byron says, the planning department -- especially when working closely with the NYC Economic Development Corporation -- ignores good planning and instead "seeks to maximize the return on investment for a hypothetical developer." The upshot is that these megaprojects routinely sacrifice walkable streets in order to embrace the automobile, as Ron Shiffman, a co-founder of the Pratt Center and former planning commissioner, described for Streetsblog last November.

In some places, the planning department's transit-oriented rezonings and its auto-centric redevelopments sit cheek-by-jowl. The 1,248 parking space East River Plaza, for example, hulks next to the FDR Drive in East Harlem, while just a few blocks closer to the Lexington Avenue subway, huge swaths of the neighborhood were upzoned to take advantage of the area's transit resources.

The Department of City Planning's vision for Hudson Yards.

While the Bloomberg administration invests billions of city dollars in making Hudson Yards a "dynamic, transit-oriented urban center," it has also actively fought to make it a car-friendly location. These goals are fundamentally incompatible. "You can't make a place auto-accessible," said Weinberger, "without eroding the pedestrian and therefore the transit environment."

Bloomberg and Burden have undertaken a transformative rezoning of the city, mostly along transit-oriented lines. At the same time, their policies are not filling those transit-rich areas with development that actually fosters walking and transit use. Planners instead insist on the unnecessary construction of parking spaces and allow developers to import suburban standards into New York City's urban fabric. It's as if the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. In the third post of this series, we'll look at how the Bloomberg administration can use the next four years to better align its development policies.

Select Bus Service's new low-floor buses will make it easier for seniors to get on and off the bus. Image: Second Avenue Sagas.

Last night the MTA and DOT continued their tour of East Side community boards, presenting plans for better bus service and safer streets to the Manhattan CB 11 transportation committee. Attendance was low, but the community board made clear that its chief concern was the plan's impact on senior citizens.

CB 11 represents the area east of Fifth Avenue between 96th and 142nd Streets. Because the MTA and DOT are still determining whether buses will run next to the curb or in an offset lane in this district, Joe Barr, DOT's director of transit development, noted that he's looking to hear specifically where the bus lane should run. The committee lacked both a quorum and its chair, however, so a more thorough discussion of the two designs was tabled until next month's meeting.

The few questions that surfaced from CB members mainly underscored concerns for seniors. Concerns that were, for the most part, easily resolved. After Barr mentioned that the sidewalk on bus bulbs would be raised to make boarding more level, one board member asked whether bus riders would have to step up onto the higher curb. Her worry dissipated after Barr explained that there wouldn't be a step up, only a gradual slope.

It didn't come up in the Q&A session, but older New Yorkers stand to benefit from the plan's safety improvements, with pedestrian refuge islands creating shorter, more manageable distances to cross on the East Side's wide avenues. 

Another issue that didn't surface last night but falls right in the middle of the CB 11 district is street safety near the Triborough and Willis Avenue bridges. When the East Side plans were first presented last month, Elena Conte of the Pratt Center for Community Development suggested that planners consider improvements for pedestrians and cyclists who use the Willis Avenue Bridge and encounter extremely hazardous conditions near the foot of the Triborough.

"It would be a mistake if they don’t look at the bike-pedestrian safety around the Triborough Bridge, even though it technically might be outside the scope" of the project, Conte told Streetsblog. "That area is crying out for it, it’s a horror show, and it’s important to both the South Bronx and East Harlem."

The presentation did reveal a few new details about the plan. Barr said planners are looking at creating a midday window when regulations against parking in the exclusive bus lanes would not be in effect, so businesses can receive curbside deliveries. Under current plans, he said, SBS service would run on weekdays until 11 p.m.

In addition, Benson told the crowd that some of the pedestrian refuge islands would only consist of paint at first. "We won't be able to build them all in one season," he said. "We'll be playing a bit of catch-up." Finally, while the renderings of the design still show flexible bollards between the bike lane and the floating parking lane, those bollards are no longer part of the plan. Instead, there will only be paint, as on Grand Street.

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."

Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh, Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito, and State Senator Liz Krueger want to see the MTA and DOT take their plan for First and Second Avenues further.

After two years of breaking new ground and raising expectations for sustainable street design -- with the city's first Select Bus Service route on Fordham Road, its first protected bikeways, and the complete transformation of Times Square -- DOT now faces pressure from elected officials who want to see an even better outcome for the majority of their constituents who walk, bike, and ride the bus.

Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh, who called the presentation "a good beginning," was skeptical of the agencies' claim that the package of bus improvements in the plan -- which did not include physically separated lanes -- would deliver 20 to 25 percent reductions in travel time.

"We want to see a rigorous analysis of the tradeoffs they're making between transit improvements and maintaining traffic flow," he said. "I think that 20 percent is optimistic... Even if we were to achieve 20 percent, I think that there may be opportunities to improve bus service even further."

The Assembly member took issue with the contention of the MTA's Ted Orosz, who postulated that illegally parked trucks would disrupt bus service in separated lanes. "Other cities, and certainly New York, can figure out how to prevent a Snapple truck from parking in a bus lane," he said. "There are certainly ways to configure this that would reduce the chance that traffic's going to block it."

City Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito, who represents East Harlem and parts of the Bronx, called the plan "a great start" in an email to Streetsblog, while also calling on the MTA and NYCDOT to "move forward with an even better plan."

"I am particularly encouraged by the proposed creation of protected bike lanes, which will go a long way to promote the use of bicycles," she said. "However, I urge the MTA and NYCDOT to consider including separated bus lanes into their plan for the East Side. Many of my constituents depend on the First and Second Avenue buses to get around, and separated bus lanes will make their everyday trips both quicker and safer."

Both Mark-Viverito and Council Member Dan Garodnick noted that East Side residents can help determine the final shape of the project. "The East Side stands to benefit from dynamic changes to bus service on a route that desperately needs it," said Garodnick.  "The way to get the best possible result is by getting all the details right -- making buses easy to board, clearly identifying shared travel lanes for bicyclists, placing bus stops in the most appropriate locations. It is not often that we have a chance to remake the way we travel and commute, so East Siders should take this opportunity to offer their input."

State Senator Liz Krueger -- like Kavanagh, Mark-Viverito, and Garodnick, an East Side representative and supporter of separated bus and bike lanes in the project -- succinctly outlined the political space that now exists for something bolder than the MTA and DOT's first draft. "While she was pleased with some aspects of the plan," said a Krueger spokesperson, "she is still very concerned that the plan does not go far enough."

The city and MTA are poised to unveil a proposal for BRT on these major north/south arteries. But the MTA, expressing concern that trucks parked illegally in bus lanes would stop traffic, vetoed the idea of physically segregated lanes. The plans do include tighter enforcement of bus-only lanes and off-board payment of fares, both of which make buses move faster. And, according to those who have seen the plans, transportation officials do envision hundreds of blocks of discreet bike lanes on First and Second avenues.

The plans are being unveiled at the Hunter College School of Social Work tonight (129 E. 79th St., 10th Floor), at a meeting that's currently in progress and scheduled to last until 8:30 p.m. We'll have more on this development tomorrow. For now, it looks like big improvements in street safety are on the table, but officials at the MTA and DOT are counting on bus lane enforcement cameras to keep riders from getting slowed by traffic. Which means the effectiveness of this project will, to a significant extent, be determined by Albany.

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