Streetsblog New York City

Community Board 10 has yet to get behind the DOT plan to save lives on Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard.

Safety improvements on deadly Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard could be in place by September, the New York Times reported yesterday, despite continued resistance to the redesign from the local community board.

Three people have been killed while walking on Adam Clayton Powell this year; 12 were killed by drivers since 2006. The road’s wide, straight lanes lead motorists to approach highway speeds: the average speed after 8:00 p.m. is 50 miles per hour, according to the Department of Transportation.

Though Community Board 10 has repeatedly stated that it understands the seriousness of the safety problem along the corridor, it has for years opposed the most comprehensive proposals to fix Adam Clayton Powell. In 2009, CB 10 voted against a plan to add a buffered bike lane to the street. CB 10 opposition forced the road diet proposed for the street this time around to be shrunk to cover only half the distance initially proposed, and the board still hasn’t signed on to the plan.

Breaking from its usual procedure, DOT is ready to move ahead with or without the community board’s firm approval. Construction is set to begin in August, according to the Times, and last a month.

“We just don’t understand it yet,” transportation committee chair Deborah Gilliard said of the plan to extend medians and narrow traffic lanes. Instead, the Times reported that her committee wants to see “more left-turn traffic signals, 30-miles-per-hour speed-limit signs, and pedestrian crossing signals that give those on foot a head start.”

Correction: This post originally ran under the headline “DOT Rejects CB 10 Suggestion for Incorrect Speed Limit Signs on ACP Blvd.,” based on the New York Times report that the transportation committee wanted “35-miles-per-hour speed-limit signs.” The Times has since corrected their piece to reflect that the paper mistakenly reported the speed limit, and the committee did not ask for 35 mph speed limit signs. Streetsblog has in turn corrected this post.

Converting the left lanes of Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard into turn lanes would allow for the installation of median extensions at intersections, shortening crossings for pedestrians. Image: NYC DOT

Responding to the local community board, NYC DOT has shrunk its proposal for safety improvements on Harlem’s deadly Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard. The revised plan only covers half the distance initially proposed. And even with that concession, the board has yet to approve the plan to expand the road’s medians and slow speeding traffic.

In a presentation to Community Board 10 last week [PDF], DOT said the badly needed safety improvements will now only cover the area from 134th Street to 153rd Street, instead of extending south to 118th Street as originally planned. According to the presentation, the request to scale back the project came from the community board. Update: According to a department source, the full project could not be constructed in 2012 given the delay in community board approval, and the whole corridor could see improvements by next year if the CB assents.

All of Adam Clayton Powell is dangerous — speeds on the avenue average 50 miles per hour after 8:00 p.m. — but the northern section is particularly so. Since 2006, 12 pedestrians have been killed by drivers on Adam Clayton Powell, nine of them above 134th Street. Just weeks ago, Juanita Rosario, a 59 year old legal secretary, was killed as she crossed Adam Clayton Powell at 145th Street.

Community Board 10 is reserving judgment on the scaled-back plan until it hears from local elected officials, including Council Member Inez Dickens. Will she push them to make the plan safer or to maintain the deadly status quo? Image: City Council

Community Board 10 District Manager Paimaan Lodhi said the board is waiting to discuss the revised plan with local elected officials, which it will do in coming weeks, before it takes a position. The board did convey to DOT the seriousness with which it takes the issue of safety, Lodhi said.

City Council Member Inez Dickens, who represents most of Adam Clayton Powell, did not return Streetsblog’s inquiries about the plan, nor did Council Member Robert Jackson, who represents one side of the avenue between 141st Street and 149th Street.

Other, smaller changes were also made to the safety plan at the request of the community board. The board was interested in retiming the traffic signals to slow traffic in addition to using physical infrastructure. DOT agreed to make minor signal adjustments during off-peak hours to deter speeding. Instead of using planters to mark off safe pedestrian space in the median — the board had worried about maintaining them — DOT will use plastic posts.

Finally, DOT will add metered parking, which the board requested, to four blocks of the road which currently are designated for commercial loading or do not allow parking at rush hour.

The scaled-back safety plan came despite strong support for traffic calming on Adam Clayton Powell from some of the neighborhood’s most prominent institutions, such as the Harlem Children’s Zone and the Abyssinian Development Corporation. A 2009 proposal to calm traffic on the road using a buffered bike lane was voted down by Community Board 10 after winning approval from the board’s transportation committee.

A driver struck two pedestrians crossing Adam Clayton Powell at 145th Street last Sunday, killing one. Since 2006, 11 pedestrians have been killed in traffic crashes on Adam Clayton Powell. Image: Google Street View

A motorist struck two women crossing Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard in Harlem last Sunday evening, according to the NYPD. One, 35 years old, died from her injuries at Lincoln Hospital. Police did not release the names of the victims.

Adam Clayton Powell is one of the most dangerous streets in Manhattan. The victim of Sunday’s crash was the 11th pedestrian killed in traffic since 2006. Recently, DOT showed the Community Board 10 transportation committee a proposal to expand medians on the street, which could prevent deadly crashes in the future. After a positive initial reception from the committee, however, it remains unclear whether the board will grant its support.

Despite the terrible safety record of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard, City Council Member Inez Dickens has remained silent on a DOT proposal to improve conditions for pedestrians. Photo: City Council

On Sunday, the two women were crossing the 100-foot wide avenue at 4:45 p.m., walking east along 145th Street. They were in the crosswalk, walking with the signal, according to NYPD. A motorist driving west on 145th turned left onto Adam Clayton Powell, where he struck the victims.

The driver was issued two summonses, for failure to exercise due care and for failure to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk.

In response to the high fatality rates and rampant speeding on Adam Clayton Powell, DOT has proposed widening the medians and narrowing lanes to calm traffic, a concept which Manhattan Community Board 10′s transportation committee expressed support for at a public meeting earlier this month. The expanded medians would help protect pedestrians crossing the street and compel motorists to take turns more carefully.

The proposal was applauded by neighborhood organizations, including the Harlem Children’s Zone and the Abyssinian Development Corporation. William Hamer, director of senior services with the Abyssinian Development Corporation, told the committee, “Our seniors were highly concerned about the issues on Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard.”

While committee members voiced tentative support for the proposal, they did not draft an official resolution at the time. The community board has since sent a letter to DOT saying the board wants to see something done to improve safety but urging more public discussion and ultimately revisions to the plan, according to a CB 10 official.

A 2009 proposal to calm traffic on Adam Clayton Powell by adding a buffered bike lane fizzled out after the transportation committee voted in favor but the full board declined to approve it.

Council Member Inez Dickens, who represents the overwhelmingly car-free district, has been silent on the issue. Dickens’ office has not returned Streetsblog’s request for comment on the fatal crash and the city’s proposal to improve safety on Adam Clayton Powell.

TRAC members participate in a May Day rally. One of the transit rider coalition's top demands is for Select Bus Service on 125th Street. Image via Facebook

Select Bus Service is a big success on First and Second Avenues and 34th Street. Speeds are up, ridership is up, and the MTA is using the time savings to run even more buses along the busy corridors. So where in Manhattan is next for the popular package of bus improvements? One group of uptown transit riders hopes the answer is 125th Street.

The Transit Riders Action Committee is a new project of WE ACT, the northern Manhattan environmental justice organization, founded last year in response to the most recent round of fare hikes. After reaching out to neighborhood riders at bus stops and subway platforms, TRAC asked new members for their priorities in the neighborhood. After generating a long list of options, the new committee voted to focus on three priorities: keeping the fare affordable, improving the condition of Upper Manhattan’s poorly-maintained subway stations, and improving bus trips on 125th Street.

“The buses are incredibly slow,” said Jake Carlson, WE ACT’s transportation equity coordinator. “They are constantly battling for their own piece of the road. It’s an issue that really hinders people’s mobility.” He noted that he often ends up walking crosstown on 125th rather than taking the bus.

Despite slow speeds, bus ridership on 125th Street is sky-high. Four routes travel on 125th Street: the M60, M100, M101 and Bx15. Between them, around 32,500 passengers board on 125th Street on an average weekday, said Carlson, and around 31,000 get off.

TRAC organizers and members have already started to meet with community board members and feel there’s room for persuasion. “When you start talking about the problem, most people get it right away,” said Carlson. “They know what it means to get across 125th Street.”

Read more…

The city plans to redevelop this 125th Street site, currently an underutilized 450-space garage with some small retail on the ground floor, while replacing each and every parking space. Image: Google Street View

The New York City Economic Development Corporation’s commitment to replacing any parking spaces the agency builds on top of is a one-way ratchet toward ever-increasing amounts of automobile infrastructure. For projects at Flushing Commons and the Lower East Side’s SPURA site, slated to be built over surface parking lots, EDC has pushed for the new developments to include hundreds of parking spaces in addition to replacing the old parking.

In an RFP released Tuesday, EDC went a step further and asked for developers to try and replace every space included in a four-level garage located in the heart of Harlem at 125th Street. The request for so much parking seems to be based not on any transportation needs in the largely transit-dependent neighborhood, but rather on political negotiations with the local City Council member, Inez Dickens.

The low-slung garage, located between Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard and Lenox Avenue, currently houses 450 parking spaces, with a few small retail shops fronting Harlem’s main commercial street. The site is owned by the city and the state, and by all accounts it’s underutilized. Under current zoning, it could become a 363,000-square foot commercial building, assuming it takes advantage of bonuses for providing space for the arts.

City Council Member Inez Dickens. Photo: City Council

In a section of the RFP noting the city’s development goals, EDC asks that proposals seek to “maintain as many parking spaces as possible with the objective that as many of the spaces as possible be located below grade.” Garage today, garage forever.

The impetus for that parking provision appears not to stem from EDC itself nor from any demonstrated demand for parking, but rather from Council Member Inez Dickens and negotiations over the controversial rezoning of 125th Street in 2008.

In a 2008 letter to Dickens, then-Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber mentioned the garage as one of the “Points of Agreement” from the rezoning negotiations, included in the RFP. In the letter, the administration committed to maintaining the current number of parking spaces and placing them underground. The preparation of an RFP for the site, Lieber promised, would be done in consultation with Dickens.

Read more…

Converting the left lanes of Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard into turn lanes would allow for the installation of median extensions at intersections, shortening crossings for pedestrians. Image: NYC DOT

After more than three years of delay and debate, safety improvements may finally be coming to one of Harlem’s deadliest avenues. Under a plan tentatively okayed by Manhattan Community Board 10′s transportation committee last night [PDF], Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard will get wider medians, shorter crossing distances, and narrower traffic lanes in an attempt to improve safety for all users of the street.

The need to redesign Adam Clayton Powell is pressing. Since 2006, ten people have been killed in traffic crashes on the boulevard, according to DOT, compared to two on nearby Frederick Douglass Avenue and three on Lenox Avenue. The victims, all pedestrians, were mostly senior citizens close to home. Their average age was 62, and nine of ten lived within a block of Adam Clayton Powell. “Seniors are tough and resilient,” said DOT Planning and Operations Coordinator Naomi Iwasaki, “but we all know they’re our most vulnerable street users.”

The problem is rampant speeding. During the morning rush hour, the average speed on the street is 36.8 miles per hour heading southbound and 39 miles per hour northbound, according to DOT Bike Program Coordinator Hayes Lord. After 8:00 p.m., when traffic is lighter, average speeds spike to 52 and 49 miles per hour: highway speeds on a neighborhood street, far exceeding New York City’s 30 mph limit. The speeds reflect the interstate-like design of the street — three 12-foot wide moving lanes in each direction.

Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard is a deadly speedway with lanes wide enough to meet standards for interstate highways. Under a DOT proposal, the lanes would be narrowed and the medians extended to shorten the crossing distance for pedestrians.

In response, DOT proposed converting the left-most lane in each direction, where most of the deadly crashes took place, to left turn lanes. At intersections, this would free up space for pedestrian medians to be widened with paint and planters or flexible posts, reducing crossing distances. And by moving through traffic out of the left lane, the change is expected to reduce dangerous weaving and help prevent the most common kind of crash on the boulevard, rear-end collisions.

Where drivers can’t make left turns because of one-way cross-streets, pedestrian space can be extended on both sides of the median using the same materials. This would further shorten crossing distances at those intersections, a particular boon for the large number of seniors and children who live in the neighborhood.

At all intersections, the paint-and-planters treatment would be used to extend the median into the intersection, providing more protection for pedestrians in the crosswalk. Traffic lanes would be narrowed to 10 feet for left-turning traffic and 11 feet for through traffic.

Read more…

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.

Read more…

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.

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.

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?