Impromptu bike parking on Dyckman Street after the de-installation of a bike shelter, which for a year stood on the fresh patch of concrete in the background. Photo: Brad Aaron

Anecdotal evidence suggests the shelter was popular among local and visiting cyclists -- and we referred before to the symbolic significance of the Dyckman site. But, assuming it will in fact be installed elsewhere in the neighborhood, what locations might be better?

Now you see bike infrastructure, now you don't. Photos: Brad Aaron

According to a blurb in the Manhattan Times, a spokesperson with DOT said the shelter was removed due to lack of use. Though there are three "U" racks on the same block, this doesn't make a lot of sense in light of agency efforts to encourage cycling by making bike parking more accessible -- especially considering the relatively short span of time the shelter had been in place.

One rumor swirling about the neighborhood is that a Dyckman Street restaurateur desirous of sidewalk cafe space had a hand in the shelter's banishment, as it was situated in front of his newest location, now under construction. But even if that were true -- we've seen no evidence to support such a theory -- it's hard to imagine DOT would uninstall a piece of infrastructure at the request of a single business owner.

Community Board 12 wasn't consulted on the change, transportation committee chair Mark Levine told Streetsblog.

Given Inwood's general lack of bike racks, and with livable streets advocates about to embark on the third year of their campaign for safer cycling conditions on Dyckman, we're extremely curious as to why this shelter was taken away. As of this writing, however, two queries to DOT have brought no response.

Among the items on Community Board 8's October agenda is a resolution in support of protected bike lanes on the Upper East Side. As we heard from Transportation Alternatives yesterday, neighborhood involvement has propelled this once-unlikely measure to this point, and friendly voices will be needed to bring it home. The CB 8 meeting starts at 6:30 at the Ramaz School Auditorium, 125 E. 85th Street.

Tonight in Upper Manhattan, Inwood and Washington Heights Livable Streets will hold a regular meeting to discuss, along with other topics, the proposed Dyckman Street Greenway Connector. Thanks to the consistent work of its core members, this group is starting to get attention from local electeds. A good showing tonight can only help build momentum. Meeting details and other discussions can be found on the IWHLS Livable Streets Community page.

This was the scene at Seaman Avenue and 207th Street in Inwood at around 6:15 p.m. Wednesday. It appeared that the cyclist -- a white male in his 40s or 50s -- was doored by the driver of the Toyota 4Runner. The cyclist was elevating his hand, which was bleeding pretty heavily, before medics arrived. Police on the scene were talking to the woman in the photo after the jump, so I assume she was the driver. I'm no lip reader, but she looked none too thrilled with being held up, or having her picture taken.

I never saw the cyclist emerge from the ambulance, which departed after about 20 minutes. While I was trying to get a clear shot of the SUV, the bike disappeared from the street. Once NYPD and FDNY left the scene, the woman walked south on Seaman, leaving the SUV parked.

I called the 34th Precinct this morning to verify that the cyclist was transported and to ask if the driver received a summons. The officer I spoke with first told me I would need to come down to the station if I wanted information, then said no one on duty during the day would know anything about an incident that happened in the evening. This is typical of how the 34th Precinct interacts with the public.

Seaman Avenue is a pretty busy cycling street. If anyone saw what happened, please let us know in comments. And if you're the cyclist, we'd love to hear how things turned out.

When I set out to summarize responses to the Transportation Alternatives Candidate Survey from City Council contenders in Washington Heights and Inwood, I expected it to take some time. It's a crowded field, after all, with challengers looking to knock off incumbent Robert Jackson in District 7 and a full slate of District 10 hopefuls vying to fill the spot vacated by the disgraced Miguel Martinez.

But of the 16 candidates running in both races, not one responded to TA's survey. A single candidate, Victor Bernace in District 7, submitted a bio. But no one deigned to answer TA's questions on the specific transportation needs of their respective districts, or street safety, congestion reduction, parking reform, public space reclamation, bus rapid transit, bike-share, or improving the health of city residents by making it easier to walk and bike.

"You would think that between crushing GWB congestion, sky-high asthma rates and mass transit that is literally crumbling before our eyes, transportation would be a top-tier issue in races uptown," said TA's Wiley Norvell. "It's regrettable none of the candidates took this opportunity to weigh in on some of the most pressing quality of life issues facing the constituents they aspire to represent."

Indeed. So how should Upper Manhattan voters who care about livable streets proceed? Robert Jackson voted for congestion pricing, though he was never a vocal supporter, and he isn't really known for being outspoken on transportation issues one way or the other. Three candidates -- two in District 7 and one in District 10 -- didn't make it on the ballot.

Of the remaining 12, those in District 10 are profiled in a recent Gotham Gazette piece, which reads:

If you want to get elected in Washington Heights, start by getting a car.

Paste posters of your face all over it. Blasting merengue from a large roof-mounted megaphone can't hurt either. Then hit the streets.

Welcome to Upper Manhattan.

I recognized candidate Francisco Spies' name from a van that passed me on an Inwood street a few weeks back, blasting his custom campaign theme song from the aforementioned roof-mounted megaphone. I was able to track down responses to a 504 Democratic Club survey, which touches on transportation options for the disabled, from Cleofis Sarete. Luis Facundo's platform doesn't mention transportation, though he is interested in making "the community energy efficient and green."

NYPD employee Ruben Dario Vargas, who according to Gotham Gazette doesn't live in the district but plans to move there by Election Day, says he's for "street safety" and, again from the Gazette: "wants to make sure two of the district's subway stations, one on Broadway the other on Dyckman, get elevators." Richard Realmuto is also for safer streets, but it seems both he and Vargas are referring to overall street crime.

Ydanis Rodriguez, considered a front-runner in District 10 -- mostly because he has raised the most money -- boasts of both "derailing a proposed toll on Northern Manhattan bridges with Assemblyman Espaillat" and "opposing fare increases with the Straphangers Campaign." So it looks like we can expect Council Member Rodriguez to uphold the Upper Manhattan tradition of protecting the status quo while pandering to all sides.

Another District 10 favorite, Manny Velazquez, is chair of Community Board 12. Here's his transportation plank: "Provide funding for roadway and street reconstruction projects in Northern Manhattan and for the modernization of train stations throughout the district."

To the west, in District 7, Victor Bernace -- again, the only candidate in Inwood or Washington Heights to respond to TA at all -- is an attorney who defends cab drivers in traffic court. According to his bio, however, he at least takes the subway to work, and in this video Bernace says he wants to rid Upper Manhattan of "all vehicle traffic" and make public transportation free. In 2005, Bernace made headlines by holding a fund-raiser featuring erotic dancers.

Julius Tajiddin is a member of CB 10, whose comments on residential parking from a 2007 meeting represent all the relevant info I could dig up among the remaining District 7 candidates.

Tajiddin (Freedom, Justice & Equal) and Fima Shlimel (Libertarian) are the only District 7 candidates who are not Democrats. While that race won't technically be decided until November, voters in District 10 will choose their next council rep in the September 15 Democratic primary. As Norvell said, it's too bad, for them and for Upper Manhattan, that the candidates chose not to distinguish themselves to a committed voter bloc on an issue that affects each and every one of their potential constituents.

The 215th Step-Street: still broken. Photo: Brad Aaron

It was at Espaillat's June 25 "town hall" meeting, reports neighborhood blog Inwoodette, that the Department of Design and Construction broke the news -- to a chorus of boos -- that "pre-design" work will not be complete until October 2010. Said a second local blogger, Jewyorican: DDC personnel "made it sound like we wanted the city to build the 215th street space elevator to the moon."

It isn't the first time the city has promised to fix the steps only to later renege. As we reported last year, a previous commitment was made in 2005. For whatever it's worth, Streetsblog has messages in with DDC and Community Board 12 to determine the latest project time line.

Update: From Mark Levine, chair of CB 12's transportation committee:

A lot of us are livid about this delay. Originally construction was to begin this year (and even that was two years after the project was funded!). DDC says they are now negotiating with the consultant on the pre-design scope package for OMB review. Espaillat has contacted the mayor's office and DDC commissioner in an effort to expedite matters.

We wondered a few months back why Upper Manhattan Assembly Member Adriano Espaillat, a supporter of congestion pricing, would side with the usual suspects in opposing Ravitch-backed East and Harlem River bridge tolls. At the time, Espaillat told Streetsblog readers that new tolls would place an unfair burden on his district, and blamed MTA financial woes on "contemptible bookkeeping and abject failure to control spending."

Et tu, Adriano? Photo: Brad Aaron

At a "town hall" meeting in Inwood last Thursday, Streetsblog reader Peter Brinkmann again found the assemblyman indifferent to concerns about auto-inflicted quality of life issues. Writes Peter:

In response to my question about distorted traffic patterns caused by car commuters who take the Broadway bridge [into and out of Inwood] in order to avoid paying the toll for Henry Hudson Bridge, he launched into his usual routine about how East River bridge tolls would be a regressive tax on families; he didn't address the issue of a residential neighborhood serving as a bypass for a major artery. When asked about possibly repaving 218th Street, he seemed to be in favor, in part because 218th Street draws a lot of traffic from drivers who want to avoid Henry Hudson Bridge. In other words, he's aware of distorted traffic patterns and doesn't seem to have a problem with them.

Peter says Espaillat "dismissed the upcoming MTA fare hike as nothing more than a regular increase and didn't address the bigger problem of service cuts." If you're confused as to how a representative from a district where 80 percent of the population relies on transit could be so disconnected, here is Espaillat on the subject of planned improvements to two Inwood 1 train elevated platforms:

When talking about the upcoming renovation of the Dyckman and 207th St stations, he kept talking about the "1 and 9" trains. That might just be some NY verbal tic, like having to say "Z" after saying "J," but I suspect that he doesn't take the subway and hasn't noticed that the 9 train has gone the way of the dodo.

Based on Espaillat's performance during and since the doomsday debacle, we wouldn't be surprised.

Motorcycles confiscated by the 34th Precinct in Upper Manhattan. Photo: Manhattan Times

This year has been especially bad already, and with the dangerous and noisy recreational traffic has come an uptick in criminal activity. Crime levels remain relatively low in the 34th Precinct, but robberies are up. Inwood in particular has seen a spate of alarmingly violent muggings lately. Not to say that the two are necessarily related, but to harried residents they are part and parcel of the same problem: lawless and increasingly unsafe streets.

In response, the 34th Precinct says it has ticketed drivers and even confiscated vehicles, and has promised to step up patrols and take a zero tolerance approach to noise. Last weekend was a bit calmer than usual on my Inwood block, but Upper Manhattanites are accustomed to selective enforcement, and have learned that complacency is never an option.

CB 12 has asked the city to install speed bumps in trouble spots, but DOT says daytime speed tests conducted last November (a month when motorcycle racing isn't normally an issue) didn't meet required criteria. The board has requested that tests be performed again on a weekend as late at night as possible, since DOT told transportation committee members that the agency doesn't gather such data overnight.

Tomorrow's meeting, which is co-sponsored by Council Members Robert Jackson and Miguel Martinez, will be held at CB 12 headquarters, 711 W. 168th Street in Washington Heights, at 7 p.m. As always, the more locals in attendance the better.

For the latest on this and other relevant issues in Upper Manhattan, keep an eye on the Inwood and Washington Heights Livable Streets group.

Doomsday damage to Inwood (10034) as seen on RPA's live map of planned MTA service cuts

It was a little surprising to see Upper Manhattan Assembly Member Adriano Espaillat, one of the few state electeds to support congestion pricing without reservation, come out so strongly against the Ravitch MTA rescue plan, and the tolling of East and Harlem River bridges in particular. Now we have this recent post from an e-mail list for Inwood parents:

I spoke to Espaillat's office. They insisted that people in the area would rather have higher subway fares and reduced service than tolled bridges. They said the merchants in the area and the car services oppose the bridge tolls.

When MTA doomsday service cuts go into effect, residents of Espaillat's district [PDF] will lose the Bx20 and M18 buses, will see reduced service on the M100 and M2, and will face longer wait times on the A and 1 trains. As an Upper Manhattanite myself, I find it very hard to believe that most of my neighbors -- roughly 80 percent of whom don't own cars -- are willing to accept more crowded buses and trains, which will be fewer in number and cost more to board, so drivers from Westchester can continue to drive through Inwood and Washington Heights for free.

It seems that either Espaillat really has his finger on the pulse of the public, or the merchants and car services have Espaillat's ear. We have a message in with his office in hopes of confirming which is true.

Adriano Espaillat doesn't believe in bridge tolls or parking laws.

Meanwhile, Espaillat's Upper Manhattan colleague Herman "Denny" Farrell, the outspoken (and uninformed) congestion pricing foe, recently made news as the lone Assembly member to report zero personal use of his state-provided vehicle. Has he eschewed his car keys for a MetroCard? Not exactly, as NY Politics reports:

Farrell’s office said the lawmaker never drives his state car for personal use, preferring to tool around in his own convertibles. 

Good to know.

Espaillat and Sander in March 2008. Photo: Brad Aaron.

Nearly a year later, Espaillat stands with Rory Lancman and David Weprin in opposing East and Harlem River bridge tolls. Espaillat, one of 20 state lawmakers to sign an anti-toll letter delivered to Sheldon Silver this week, says he favors a proposal by comptroller and mayoral candidate William Thompson to increase vehicle registration fees -- a plan that has no traction in Albany and would do nothing to cut congestion in Northern Manhattan.

Though just 20 percent of households in Espaillat's district own vehicles, the area is burdened with heavy auto traffic -- a "very serious problem," as Espaillat used to say -- much of it on its way to and from free bridges. Yet rather than get behind a viable, long-overdue plan that would both reduce cut-through driving and spare the majority of his constituents from crushing transit fare hikes and massive service cuts, Espaillat has joined the crowd that wants to keep the floodgates open to Westchester County.

More traffic, more asthma, and a transit system in collapse. What's rational and practical about that?

The bill got its first hearing from Community Board 12 in Washington Heights last night, where it was overwhelmingly rejected by the board's transportation committee.

"Most members of the committee did not want to bring even more cars into the neighborhood," Chair Mark Levine told Streetsblog.

If the Baez bill isn't going over in car-friendly Upper Manhattan, that may not bode well for its success elsewhere. But given that Alan Gerson, who presides over one of the most congested districts of the city, has signed on as an early co-sponsor, we'd be foolish to write it off.

The red lines show southbound routes through the South Bronx via the "free" Third Ave. Bridge and the tolled Triborough. The blue line charts the toll-free northbound route from the FDR across the Willis Avenue Bridge.

All the gnashing of teeth over East River bridge tolls has for the most part drowned out discussion of the Ravitch Commission's proposal to charge motorists for Harlem River crossings as well. Though the tolls would be substantially lower -- matching the (currently) $2 transit base fare -- it's still too much for two officials from the Bronx and Upper Manhattan.

From Thursday's Daily News, reporting on Richard Ravitch's testimony to state Assembly members:

At Wednesday's hearing, Assemblymen Adriano Espaillat (D-Manhattan) and Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) worried about the impact tolls would have on constituents already struggling to make ends meet.

"As a legislator from the Bronx, you have to understand that the tolling of the bridges is a tough one," Heastie said.

Ravitch agreed, but said drivers would see significant improvements, including expanded bus service so they could consider ditching their cars, less traffic as drivers switch to mass transit and less pollution.

The commission also recommended discounts for drivers not crossing during rush hours, he said.

Not exactly fire-and-brimstone oratory from the Assemblymen, to be sure. Still, Espaillat and Heastie, both of whom backed congestion pricing, know that hundreds of thousands of their constituents are "already struggling to make ends meet" while paying up to $4 each workday for round-trip transit service -- service that will suffer without new MTA revenue streams. Bronx Democratic boss Heastie must also know that "free" Harlem River bridges are an invitation to suburban drivers to trek through his borough.

After the jump, thoughts from a South Bronxite tipster on the plague of the toll-shoppers.

If you live in Connecticut or eastern Westchester County, and you want to get to Manhattan, you would have to be an idiot to pay the $4.15 or $5 Triborough toll. Every Fairfield County resident knows that it is just as easy to take the free Third Avenue Bridge into town and the free Willis Avenue Bridge back home.

The only cost of their free ride is borne by the low-income, minority communities of the South Bronx. East 135th Street might as well be an interstate highway with traffic lights. If you stood for a while in the playground of P.S. 154, between Alexander and Willis, or at the soot-stained ramp to the Third Avenue Bridge, you'd see more than a few toll-shopping Connecticut-plated vehicles.

Why would Bronx politicians allow their borough to be the doormat for wealthy Connecticut drivers?  Not to mention, of course, that over-reliance on the automobile was a major contributor to the 1970s and 80s depopulation of the Bronx, and the arson, crime and mayhem that gave the borough a frightening reputation, spurring further suburbanization and asthma-causing through traffic.

Nine months after Inwood residents first proposed a physically separated bike lane for Dyckman/200th Street, connecting the east- and west-side Greenways, this week the Community Board 12 Traffic and Transportation Committee approved a resolution calling for DOT to "test the feasibility" of such a project. CB12 action was considered necessary to gain the involvement of Borough President Scott Stringer's office, which, it is hoped, will also carry weight with DOT. Streetsblog reader and Inwood and Washington Heights Livable Streets member Daniel O’Neil attended the committee meeting and files this report. 

A traffic-calmed Dyckman Street, including pedestrian amenities and a protected bike lane, moved one step closer to reality Monday when the Community Board 12 Traffic and Transportation Committee voted unanimously to request DOT carry out a feasibility study.

The adopted resolution acknowledged several key points that members of Inwood and Washington Heights Livable Streets have raised in previous presentations to the committee, including:

• Greater numbers of New Yorkers cycling and walking through the city reduce automobile congestion and help the environment through improved air quality.
• A segregated bike lane along Dyckman Street, separated from traffic by a planted median, would improve safety for both bicyclists and drivers.
• A safe route connecting Hudson and Harlem River Greenways would encourage bicyclists from around the region to visit Inwood and patronize local businesses.
• The plan is being championed by a grassroots group of Inwood residents.

The resolution stopped short, however, of fully endorsing a livable streets makeover for Dyckman Street. Rather, it limited itself to requesting a feasibility study by DOT and did not state a position for or against the proposal. Committee member Jim Berlin took pains to point out that even if DOT determines such a project is feasible, the community board may still reject it. Member Anita Barberis wanted a demonstration of support from business owners along Dyckman Street before approving the project.

Not all members were negative. Edith Prentiss, a committee member who uses a wheelchair, voiced her support for segregated bike lanes, stating that she used them regularly and that the city needed more of them, since unprotected lanes often become auxiliary parking spaces. Rita McKee, a new committee member and member of Inwood and Washington Heights Livable Streets, attempted to insert an amendment stating CB12’s support for a Greenway connector. However, committee chair Mark Levine, who authored the resolution (and is himself an Inwood and Washington Heights Livable Streets member), encouraged members to vote on the resolution as is. “There is no downside,” he said to McKee, to not including more supportive language at this stage since DOT simply needed a request from the board to move ahead with the study. It was also clear that an amended resolution might not pass.

All seven members of the committee voted in favor of the resolution. CB12 member Martin Collins, also in attendance, voted in favor. Five community residents voted in favor, and one abstained. No voices were raised in opposition.

Last night was the fourth time this year that community residents and activists had brought forward the idea of a protected bicycle lane on Dyckman Street to CB12. This vote demonstrated the importance of attending community board meetings, the usefulness of Livable Streets Groups as a community organizing tool, and the value of having community board members involved in your group.

Photo: Brad Aaron

Tonight will mark the fourth time the Dyckman Greenway Connector has come before the committee since members of Inwood and Washington Heights Livable Streets, who originated the proposal, made their first presentation in February. The project has the support of committee chair Mark Levine, who drafted the reso, but other committee members, while never rejecting the idea altogether, have suggested delaying any action by CB12 until next spring. A recent resolution to add parking on Dyckman, meanwhile, sailed through the committee and on to the full board, where it was approved unanimously with no discussion, all in a matter of weeks.

Whether or not you ride a bike, if you live in Northern Manhattan and are interested in a livable, traffic-calmed Dyckman Street, the connector proposal could use your support. These meetings tend to be informal affairs, with committee members often seeking input from attendees. If nothing else, members of the public are asked to vote on resolutions, and those votes are noted on record.

Tonight's meeting will be held at CB12 HQ, 711 W. 168th Street (enter from Haven Avenue), at 7:00 p.m.

Inwood recently got its first city bike shelter, by the A train station at the corner of Broadway and Dyckman/200th Street. It wasn't getting a lot of use when I snapped this shot, probably because it was Sunday morning. Still, in the couple of minutes I was there quite a few cyclists passed by, most of them on the sidewalk -- as many, it seems, don't consider Dyckman a safe place to ride.

This is a shame. Now that the Hudson River Greenway is done (pending interruption notwithstanding), Dyckman, along with a segment of Riverside Drive, is the only obstacle to a river-to-river bike-ped link.

Well, maybe not the only obstacle.

For months, graffiti-laden MTA Capital Construction trailers have been parked curbside on Broadway north of Isham Street, in Inwood, presumably due to ongoing work on the A line. Yesterday we snapped this shot of one trailer's new position, on the sidewalk alongside Isham Park.

Not to jump to conclusions, but given the lust for parking in Upper Manhattan, we wouldn't be surprised if Capital Construction had received complaints about its trailers taking up precious on-street spots. Though we can think of no other reasonable explanation as to why the trailers would now be junking up a busy neighborhood sidewalk, we have a call in to the MTA press office just in case. (The "emergency" number on the trailer itself yielded no answer or voice mail box.)

More photos after the jump.

Broadway looking north. Isham Park is to the left.

The trailers' former home ...

... which also served as an impromptu dump site.

Photos: Brad Aaron

For the third time this year, residents of Inwood and Washington Heights Monday night presented the Community Board 12 Traffic and Transportation Committee with a vision for a traffic-calmed Dyckman Street. One with a separated bike lane connecting the Henry Hudson and Harlem River bike paths, sidewalk bulbouts, leading pedestrian intervals, and street trees. A destination corridor where people can shop, stroll and mingle without constantly feeling under siege by untamed auto traffic.

And for the third time this year, the committee asked these residents to come back when they have a better idea of what they want.

Members of Inwood and Washington Heights Livable Streets were hopeful that an audience with Paimaan Lodhi, urban planner with Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer's office, would help the case for the Dyckman Greenway Connector. But after distributing copies of "Sustainable Streets" guidelines to committee members (it was hard to tell if any of them had heard of the DOT program), Lodhi deflated those hopes. Any action by Stringer's office, he said, would require consensus from CB12.

Just how likely is consensus to emerge that an innovative, people-friendly design for Dyckman, similar to the Ninth Avenue bike path, would be a boon to Upper Manhattan, where just 20 percent of households own a car? To get an idea one only has to tune in to Jim Berlin, the most outspoken member of the transpo committee, if not the whole of CB12. Last night a neighborhood mom told the committee that she feared a pedestrian bridge over Dyckman at Tenth Avenue, used by students at her child's elementary school, was unstable. Berlin, minutes after declaring that any plan to alter Dyckman should not impede auto traffic, agreed that the condition of the bridge is a concern, as it "keeps kids away from a ridiculously dangerous intersection where a school should never have been built in the first place."

In other words, to Berlin and other CB12 members, Dyckman Street is already a connector -- between the West Side Highway and the FDR. Its function as a neighborhood street, used by school children and hundreds of thousands of other non-driving Upper Manhattanites, is purely incidental.

But uptown livable streets advocates have two things working in their favor. One is that Dyckman Street is already slated for new bike lanes, which will presumably connect existing lanes on its east and west ends. Another is that, according to DOT's Josh Orzeck, an unrelated study of Dyckman intersections is currently underway, which Orzeck said would "greatly affect" any redesign plans. Committee members lit up at the mention of the study (which, oddly, Orzeck had apparently not referenced before), for it gave them the perfect opportunity to put off the Greenway connector plan until at least next spring.

Which brings us to another CB12 transpo committee trait. To be fair, chairman Mark Levine -- who is far and away the most enlightened member when it comes to livable streets issues -- had to leave the meeting early, but there was barely a single issue discussed Monday night on which the committee did not delay, defer or deflect. ("Have you spoken with the precinct?" "Isn't that up to DOT?" "Shouldn't the parks/safety/some other committee be involved in this?" "Asking the MTA/NYPD for anything is useless.") Granted, I have only covered CB12 for a short time. But I've attended enough board, commission and committee meetings to recognize a do-nothing body when I see one, and I have to say the CB12 Traffic and Transportation Committee bears a striking resemblance to a do-nothing body.

If the Dyckman Greenway Connector and September's Greenmarket fiasco, which originated with the transpo committee, weren't enough evidence, consider last night's deliberations concerning Bennett Avenue. A handout circulated by Inwood and Washington Heights Livable Streets highlighted seven issues that contribute to dangerous conditions on Bennett, which runs parallel to Broadway for approximately a dozen blocks north of 181st Street in Washington Heights. Among those issues was poor visibility at intersections, where drivers park close enough, sometimes illegally, that other drivers and pedestrians have trouble seeing oncoming traffic.

Berlin, having already given a confounding speech about how infrastructure should not be used to accomplish what the police should be (but, conveniently, are not) doing, allowed that DOT may want to "daylight" intersections on Bennett to improve safety, rather than installing what the committee deemed to be prohibitively expensive bulbouts. However, he said, daylighting would be a "problem" -- particularly at night -- as it would eliminate on-street parking spots. After a modicum of back and forth, mostly regarding the hopelessness of accomplishing much of anything, the committee handed Bennett Avenue off to Orzeck with no clear direction or recommendations.

And thus, the circuit of inaction was again completed.

Bennett Avenue, which runs parallel to Broadway for roughly ten blocks from 184th 181st Street north to Hillside Avenue, is currently the subject of an online petition calling for a number of safety improvements, including improved visibility at intersections and slower speeds for both cars and bikes.

Tonight will mark the third time the Dyckman Greenway Connector has come before the committee. Advocates are hoping to get Mr. Lodhi interested in the plan to link the east- and west-side Greenways with a bike-ped friendly Dyckman, featuring a separated bike path.

Some members of CB12 have demonstrated a willingness to consider traffic-calming measures, though not at the expense of perceived motorist convenience or on-street parking. Petitions can be an important tool to gauge interest, but it will likely take warm bodies showing up at meetings to get the full committee, much less the full board, to come around. As always, Streetsbloggers who live in District 12 are encouraged to attend.

Tonight's meeting is at 7:00 at CB12 headquarters, 711 W. 168th Street, in Washington Heights.

Citing fears that it would disrupt the neighborhood and rouse illegally parked motorists from their beds on Sunday mornings, Community Board 12 Tuesday night tabled a recommendation for a new Greenmarket in Washington Heights. Minutes later, without discussion, the board unanimously approved a feasibility study for additional parking on Dyckman Street in Inwood.

About a dozen residents turned out in support of the 185th Street Greenmarket resolution, which was the product of a citizen-generated petition with 1,000 signatures. But since the petition was circulated at a time when Bennett Park was thought to be the top choice for the market location, rather than adjacent 185th Street, CB12's Traffic and Transportation Committee dismissed it, and declined to issue a recommendation earlier this month. Still, the chair of the board's parks committee, Elizabeth Lorris Ritter, said a new petition had 42 signatures from those in favor of a 185th Street market, in addition to 32 e-mails indicating support.

But the three residents who spoke against the market carried the night, conjuring visions of 6 a.m. tow truck sweeps, vendor vehicles snapping tree limbs, and rats descending on 185th to feed on discarded produce. The market would hurt nearby businesses, they said, disturb nearby apartment-dwellers, and force motorists who chose not to obey "No Parking" fliers to get up early to move their cars from 185th Street's 19 parking spots. One was "offended" that the market would operate on the Christian sabbath, while another said that, though "chic and trendy," the market would, in reality, "not serve anybody."

Though Ritter and Greenmarket staffer Cathy Chambers had an answer for each of those claims (the market could start at 9 a.m., the day could be switched from Sunday to Friday, vendors don't use street trash bins, shops near Greenmarkets normally see an increase in business, etc.), board members would have none of it. Jim Berlin, the most outspoken critic on the CB12 transportation committee, characterized Ritter's rebuttals as "inexcusable," and accused Chambers of trying to deceive the board. Other locations -- involving the sacrifice of fewer, or no, parking spaces -- were suggested, but the board ultimately tabled the resolution on the grounds that more time should be devoted to fleshing out the proposal. The parks committee has been working on the Greenmarket issue since February.

In contrast, a resolution calling for a DOT study on adding angled parking to the west end of Dyckman Street passed unanimously. Dyckman Street, particularly west of Broadway, has been a primary source of "tons" of recent noise complaints, according to CB12 District Manager Ebenezer Smith. In addition, plans to revive the now-shuttered Dyckman Marina, including three food venues with combined seating for 300, have not taken into account the potential subsequent increase in car traffic. At a recent hearing, according to neighborhood newspaper Manhattan Times, would-be marina developers said it is up to the police and DOT to handle congestion caused by their project. For their part, they plan to use car services to ferry customers to and from area garages. 

CB12 members asked no questions before approving the Dyckman Street parking resolution.

Photo: Brad Aaron