Streetsblog New York City

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

Today, at Mayor Bloomberg's official announcement of the project, the ambiguities intensified. Construction is moving forward, but large segments of the protected bike path will not be built this year. For the time being, at least, the protected bikeway will extend only between Houston and 34th Street.

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.

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Harlem's Main Street is slated to receive some pedestrian safety improvements at two dangerous intersections. Where 125th Street meets Lenox and St. Nicholas Avenues, NYCDOT safety plans call for a package of enhancements to make walking less harrowing.

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. 

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

The safety data and the workshop are part of a new campaign organized by TA called the East Side Streets Coalition, which aims to dramatically improve safety from East Harlem to Chinatown. The goal is to reduce traffic collisions that injure and kill pedestrians and cyclists by 50 percent over the next ten years.

"Other areas of Manhattan have seen significant street improvements in the last few years," said TA campaign coordinator Julia Day. "A lot of the East Side's major corridors haven't benefited from these improvements." As a result, she said, the East Side has some of the most dangerous streets in the city. The densely-populated Community Board 8 district on the Upper East Side, for example, suffers from the third most crashes of any community district in the city.

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.

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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."

Across the city, mandatory parking minimums are holding New York back from true transit-oriented development. Additionally, the largest development projects in the city tend to sacrifice good planning in order to satisfy demands from developers with little interest in creating walkable places. Even as the Department of City Planning takes steps toward good urbanist principles in its rezonings, planners are sabotaging that very effort.

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.

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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."

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Elected officials gave plans for redesigning First and Second Avenues positive reviews today, tempered by the desire to improve the initial outline presented by the MTA and NYCDOT. They were faced with a complex project that defies easy categorizations. The proposal unveiled last night would constitute a historic re-purposing of New York City's streets -- but stop short of creating an urban corridor where pedestrians, cyclists, and transit take precedence over the automobile.

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."

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