Kids are more likely to be injured while walking or biking in East Harlem and the Lower East Side than the wealthier areas between them. Click to enlarge. Image: T.A.

Children growing up in Manhattan’s low-income communities are at significantly higher risk of being seriously injured or killed in traffic than their neighbors in wealthier districts, a new study from Transportation Alternatives finds [PDF]. Intersections near public housing appear to be particularly dangerous for children trying to cross the street.

In East Harlem and on the Lower East Side, the number of children younger than 18 who are killed or seriously injured while walking or riding their bikes is significantly higher than on the Upper East Side or in Gramercy and East Midtown, even though there are more total crashes with pedestrians in those wealthier neighborhoods.

The most dangerous intersection for kids on the East Side is Lexington and 125th, where 34 children were injured and one killed between 1995 and 2009.

The disparity can’t be explained by differences in population. In fact, the Upper East Side has the greatest share of residents under the age of 18 of the four areas studied. Rather, children are more at risk of getting hit by a car than adults in the low-income neighborhoods, while they are at lower risk in the high-income areas.

Transportation Alternatives hasn’t pinned down a cause, but they theorize that the design of public housing projects could be the culprit. Nine of the ten most dangerous East Side intersections for children were near public housing. The creation of large superblocks at many public housing developments could be encouraging children to cross mid-block, for example.

Twelve-year-old Dashane Santana, a resident of the East Village’s Jacob Riis Houses, was hit and killed last Friday while crossing Delancey at Clinton Street, across from NYCHA’s Seward Park Extension at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge.

Leaders from East Harlem and the Lower East Side have decried the unsafe conditions their children face. “My district contains the greatest concentration of public housing in the city and is located in an area of Manhattan where traffic can be quite heavy. That means the children of my district are at risk,” said City Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito. “We need immediate action to address dangerous driving habits and must improve traffic patterns in high risk areas. Bike lanes in East Harlem are certainly one part of the solution, but more can be done.”

“This map shows us an injustice, pure and simple,” said Damaris Reyes, the executive director of the neighborhood organization Good Old Lower East Side. “Our kids living in public housing on the Lower East Side, including my own children, deserve safe streets just as much as any other child in the city. The NYPD needs to get its priorities straight and crack down on dangerous driving.”

While DCP is developing a solid package of reforms for parking regulations in the Manhattan core right now, it is simultaneously preparing to open the door to the evisceration of parking maximums. DCP wants to sever the connection between existing parking maximums and the federal Clean Air Act, which is the ultimate guarantee that the parking rules will remain in place and be upheld.

Sandy Hornick, a retired Department of City Planning official who now consults for the agency, said DCP would ask the state to remove parking maximums from its Clean Air Act compliance plan. Image: Screenshot via NYU Rudin Center

Right now, parking maximums in Manhattan are backed up by the force of the Clean Air Act. Parking controls are not only part of the city’s zoning code, but also part of New York’s State Implementation Plan (SIP), which documents how the state complies with federal air quality standards.

Linking parking maximums to the SIP gives them teeth. Recently, when the city wanted to scrap parking maximums on the West Side as part of plans for the Hudson Yards development, neighborhood activists were able to take the city to court under the Clean Air Act. The city was forced to settle and enact a hard cap on the amount of parking at Hudson Yards, an important first for New York City.

Had parking maximums not been part of the SIP, eliminating them at Hudson Yards would have been a routine zoning change. In fact, while attempting to push through its parking plans for the West Side, the city tried to remove parking controls from the SIP in 2007. The state Department of Environmental Conservation did not go along with the city’s plans, however.

In a meeting earlier this year with parking reform advocates, DCP staff announced that they are again going to ask for parking caps to be removed from the SIP. Sandy Hornick, a long-time DCP official now serving as a consultant for strategic planning to the department, said that the department would make that request once the proposed Manhattan parking reforms are enacted, reported Christine Berthet, the co-chair of Community Board 4′s transportation committee, who attended that meeting.

Berthet said she believes that DCP’s actions don’t add up. “If all the efforts they are doing intend to reduce parking and reduce traffic, then why do they need to touch the State Implementation Plan?” she asked. She hypothesized that DCP might be seeking to inoculate itself from lawsuits the next time the agency tries to weaken Manhattan’s parking maximums.

The Department of City Planning is preparing a set of reforms that would strengthen the parking maximums in place in much of Manhattan. Image: DCP

The passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970 changed that. A series of lawsuits brought under the new law forced the city to reckon with the fact that parking mandates were making New York’s traffic and air pollution problems worse. The city changed course. In 1982, parking maximums replaced parking minimums in Manhattan below West 110th Street and East 96th Street. Nearly 30 years later, the limits on parking in the Manhattan core — parking is capped at 20 percent of new residential units below 60th Street, and 35 percent on the Upper West Side and Upper East Side — still constitute perhaps the most important use of parking policy to limit traffic in any American city.

Their effect is diminished, however, because the rules are riddled with loopholes. Special permits allow developers to skirt parking maximums, and parking minimums still impede the construction of affordable housing. Now, the Department of City Planning is undertaking a major rewrite of the Manhattan core parking regulations that could address these and other shortcomings. A summary of the proposed changes [PDF] prepared by the law firm Kramer Levin at the end of August for clients in the real estate industry and two documents outlining DCP’s research obtained by Streetsblog [PDF 1, 2] reveal the department’s thinking. (DCP would not comment for this story other than to say it has not yet produced a final proposal.)

According to parking policy experts, DCP’s Manhattan core proposal, as it appears in these documents, would be a significant improvement over the status quo, tightening the restrictions on parking and eliminating major loopholes and incentives that lead to parking construction. Parking maximums are also in place in parts of Long Island City, but it is unclear whether the reforms will extend into Queens; none of the documents Streetsblog obtained mention Long Island City.

The enactment of these reforms is far from certain. The real estate industry is lobbying against the changes and pushing for existing parking maximums to be loosened. At the same time, a faction within DCP believes that current limits on parking have failed to reduce driving and that building more parking is necessary to attract high-income residents and families with children. The future of parking reform in the Manhattan core is still very much in question.

While market-rate housing construction in the Manhattan core is governed by parking maximums, affordable housing is not. In fact, the city still requires parking in public and publicly-assisted housing built in the area. John Rhea, the head of the New York City Housing Authority, has stated that parking minimums impede the redevelopment of public housing. In the private sector, minimums have forced developers to cut affordable units from their projects.

DCP would eliminate those parking minimums and replace them with the standard Manhattan core parking maximums, according to the Kramer Levin summary. “That should be citywide,” said David King, a planning professor at Columbia University. “The evidence is becoming overwhelming that minimum parking requirements are a hindrance to affordable housing.”

Perhaps the most sweeping DCP proposal would eliminate the current distinction between accessory parking and public parking inside the Manhattan core. Why does this matter? First, some definitions. Parking spaces designated for a particular building or tenant are called “accessory” spaces — these are what parking minimums require. Parking spaces that anyone can use are considered “public” spaces.

Parking experts cheered the prospect of getting rid of the distinction between accessory and public parking. “Single use accessory parking is hugely problematic,” said Rachel Weinberger, a planning professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “Making all the parking public use represents the epitome of shared parking, which is one of the holy grails.”

The provision of accessory parking is based on the idea that every tenant or development should have its own parking. Under this model, a motorist should be able to pull out of the garage attached to his apartment building, park at his workplace, and park again at the gym on the way home. There has to be a space for him at each destination. Shared parking, in contrast, consolidates those spaces, allowing them to be used more efficiently and encouraging people to park only once per trip. “Requiring parking on premise is the wrong way to approach parking in an urban area,” said King.

Without accessory parking, DCP will also have to reconsider how it grants exemptions from parking maximums. Currently, developers can flout parking maximums by getting a special permit from the City Planning Commission. Though there are restrictions on issuing those permits, in practice, almost every request is granted, flooding neighborhoods like Hell’s Kitchen with new garages and allowing developments like Riverside Center to build enormous garages against the wishes of the local community board and elected officials.

Under the new proposal, to grant a special permit for a residential project, the City Planning Commission must find that “there is an imbalance between existing parking supply and new housing that generates new parking needs within a 1/3 mile area,” reported Kramer Levin.

“To require a demonstration of need based on area-wide availability is also an excellent idea,” said Weinberger. “It’s absolutely impossible to determine the ‘correct’ amount of parking required on a per use or building basis.” Even so, using an area-wide focus isn’t enough to ensure that special permits are not granted too freely, Weinberger said. “The potential downside is in how DCP determines ‘need,’” she explained. “That’s the $64,000 question.” If City Planning assumes that large numbers of people will drive no matter what, the agency will grant a large number of special permits, said Weinberger. If instead they look for ways to add transit capacity instead of parking, they might find far fewer spaces are needed.

The DCP proposal also targets an incentive to build parking caused by an exemption for above-grade parking. The zoning code restricts density using a measure called floor-area density. But parking built up to 23 feet above grade doesn’t count toward the allowed density. “The floor area exemption for parking essentially acts as a modest bonus if you build parking,” explained Raju Mann, the director of planning for the Municipal Art Society. A building limited to eight stories could potentially grow to ten if the first two floors were used for parking. That “doesn’t fit with the city’s transportation or land use priorities,” said Mann.

Under DCP’s August proposal, the floor-area exemption would be limited to underground parking, which the department sees as more pedestrian-friendly than ground-floor parking. It’s also much more expensive to build. “Developers are going to be less likely to want to build below-grade parking,” said King.

Four other proposals would also augment the existing parking rules in the Manhattan core:

• In order to ensure that retail in particular be designed in a pedestrian-oriented manner, DCP suggests dropping the parking maximum for retail from one space allowed as-of-right per 4,000 square feet to zero. King called that “a no-brainer.”
• Despite the stated goal the reduce the total amount of parking by 40 percent, the 1982 zoning rules prohibit the removal of any parking space that had previously been built to satisfy parking minimums. That provision would be eliminated under DCP’s proposal, allowing for the conversion of many lots and garages to different uses.
• The creation of any new surface parking lot in the Manhattan core would require a special permit.
• Currently, curb cuts are prohibited within 50 feet of an intersection. DCP would extend that to 70 feet.

“On balance,” concluded Mann, “the changes proposed are targeted but important improvements to parking rules that have worked pretty well for the Manhattan core.”

Those promising improvements, however, are threatened on all sides. Almost all are opposed by the real estate industry. DCP’s own studies appear to be deliberately written with the intent to undermine the city’s parking maximum policy. We’ll have more on the considerable challenges facing the Manhattan core parking proposal in a follow-up post.

This weekend, Select Bus Service debuted on First and Second Avenues in Manhattan, bringing a package of improvements to speed trips on one of New York’s most-used bus routes. Buses on the M15 route were traveling at a snail-like clip of less than 6 mph before the introduction of SBS.

Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, New York City Transit’s Director of Bus Planning Ted Orosz, and MTA Bus Company President Joe Smith spoke to Streetfilms about how SBS will make traveling on the east side of Manhattan faster and easier for transit riders. The major changes include dedicated bus lanes enforced by cameras, priority for buses at traffic lights, and off-board fare collection.

Select Bus Service in the Bronx has produced a 20 percent improvement in travel times and enticed thousands more New Yorkers to ride the bus. Officials project that once people get used to the new system on First and Second Avenues, transit riders on the east side will see similar gains. Have a look and see how it works.

Image: NY1

Robert Bowen, 45, was bicycling south on Second Avenue near 59th Street last night when he was struck by a truck driver who didn't stop at the scene. He sustained severe trauma to the body, according to police, and was taken to Cornell Hospital in critical condition. NY1 reports:

Sources say 45-year-old Robert Bowens was riding in the bus lane and was hit by a flatbed truck while switching out of the lane, which was blocked by a Verizon truck working on a manhole.

The truck fled the scene.

A Verizon crew that was working in the area came to the man's aid.

NYPD's public information office said the investigation is still ongoing and that no one has been identified or arrested yet.

The crash happened near the Queensboro Bridge just after 11 p.m. In DOT's original corridor plan for re-designing First and Second Avenues, street segments near the crash location were slated to receive shared lane markings on the opposite side of the street from where Bowen was struck. Those street changes are on hold, along with other safety improvements north of 34th Street that face an uncertain future.

It ain't pretty, but it works. Certified ped managers at the corner of Vesey and Church, which sees huge volumes of pedestrian traffic. Photo: Broadsheet Daily/Teresa Loeb Kreuzer

"With traffic down there only slated to increase with more intense construction, pedestrians will be put at unacceptable risk without certified ped managers there to stop traffic and shepherd folks," said Transportation Alternatives director Paul Steely White.

Currently, pedestrian managers with Sam Schwartz Engineering handle the intersection, using yellow chains to stop people from crossing against the light. While this isn't the type of traffic control that we tend to get excited about here at Streetsblog, the fact is that the pedestrian managers have a proven safety record. Since they started in 2008, 60 million people have crossed without incident, according to Schwartz.

Certified pedestrian managers receive training in how to handle different signal phases, coordinate movements of traffic and pedestrians, and deal with pedestrian behavior, Schwartz said. When the Battery Park City Authority was looking to staff intersections with crossing guards earlier this year, Schwartz said, they chose his firm because it offered the lowest qualified bid, with crossing guards all professionally certified. The Port Authority simply went with the lowest bidder, Allied Barton.

The Port Authority has not returned requests for comment on this story.

After a lot of great advocacy from the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance and a down-to-the-wire vote at Community Board 7 this spring, DOT crews are laying down the first on-street protected bikeway above 34th 59th Street, on Columbus Avenue between 96th and 77th. Streetsblog contributor Ken Coughlin sent in these pictures of the painting and striping in progress last Friday.

Looking south from 96th Street. Photo: Ken Coughlin

More New Yorkers are riding bikes than ever, but a new report from the Department of City Planning further complicates the effort to precisely determine how much cycling has taken off. The report, which looks only at cycling in Manhattan bike lanes from 2001 to 2008, shows a significantly slower rate of growth than estimates based on other measurements.

To develop its report, DCP tracked the number of cyclists using ten on-street bike lanes and seven points along the greenway system over the course of a fall day. From 2001 to 2008, use of the on-street lanes increased by 30 percent. Along the greenways, the number of cyclists grew by 26 percent from 2002 to 2008. The report was completed in June 2009 but didn't appear online until this summer.

The observed growth in use of Manhattan bike routes is far below other estimates of cycling citywide. Commuter cycling increased 150 percent between 2001 and 2008, according to measurements by NYCDOT [PDF]. The U.S. Census, too, recorded a faster increase based on interviews through its American Community Survey. "Although the American Community Survey has been criticized for underestimating the growth in cycling in New York City," said Rutgers professor John Pucher, "its growth rate is twice as high as the rate estimated by DCP."

Of course, each of these data sets captures different information. DCP looked at older bike lanes along the length of Manhattan, many of which are not up to present-day standards. DOT's count captures cyclist volumes from April to October and is largely based on the number of cyclists crossing the East River bridges, which connect neighborhoods with some of the largest concentrations of cyclists and with well-developed bike infrastructure. ACS data covers the entire city, but only counts those who use the bike as their primary mode of commuting, erasing those who bike part-time, or for local errands.

A DCP spokesperson said that although different methodologies yield different results, the important thing is that cycling is up in New York City. Moreover, she noted, the report adds yet more evidence that installing bike facilities increases ridership, a fact which she said will inform the department's bike planning efforts.

Transportation Alternatives' Noah Budnick said the disparities between estimates of cycling growth highlight the fact that "data has never really been collected on cycling, and people are still trying to figure out how to do it." He also emphasized that the absolute number of cyclists on the greenways was significantly higher than on parallel on-street lanes. "Cyclists really love protected space," he said.

"The rising percentage of women cyclists in NYC is encouraging, but it's still a long way toward the 50/50 gender split among cyclists in Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands," said Pucher. "The DOT policy of improving cycling facilities and providing greater separation from motor vehicle traffic is definitely the right policy for encouraging more cycling by all groups."

Sidewalk riding and wrong way cycling were much more common at Adam Clayton Powell and 113th Street in 2001 than in 2008. Graphic: DCP

DCP's data also reveal the anarchy on many New York City streets. Unprotected bike lanes were repeatedly obstructed; nearly a full page of the report is dedicated to listing the variety of vehicles blocking the Broadway bike lane.

As for cyclist behavior, the frequency of riding against the flow of traffic varied from two to 11 percent on different corridors over course of the study, with salmon being more common in buffered lanes. During the study period, the overall number of cyclists observed riding on the sidewalk declined from 3.6 percent to 2.6 percent. The reduction in conflict between cyclists and pedestrians may also be attributed to better bike infrastructure. Riding on the sidewalk dropped by 84 percent on both Ninth Avenue and Grand Street after the installation of protected bike lanes, according to DOT statistics.

Top: Left-turn zone on Second Avenue. (Photo: John Del Signore/Gothamist) Bottom: The separate left-turn signals and pedestrian refuge on Ninth Avenue. (Photo: NYCDOT)

The new bike lanes on First and Second Avenues, as well as the lane coming to Columbus Avenue later this year, don't include separate turn phases or concrete pedestrian refuges at many intersections. The lack of these features may water down the safety benefits of the new lanes.

On a recent tour of the separated bikeways in the East Village, CB4 transportation committee co-chair Christine Berthet says she saw drivers routinely take left turns without using the designated "mixing zones" -- the areas where motorists are supposed to merge with bike traffic before turning. "Cars are turning from the second lane at full speed," she said. "The [bike] lane is not designated by something physical."

As with any new design, motorists may need some time to adjust their behavior, but Berthet and other street safety advocates think it's poor strategy to settle for less than the full bike-ped package. "Fundamentally, I think we do not want to encourage DOT to proceed with bike lanes that are just paint, especially at the turning corner, where it's dangerous for everyone," she said.

On Eighth Avenue, DOT has committed to installing ped refuges at every intersection except where there are left turns. Berthet says that so far, the agency has rejected the idea of separate turn signals. She wants to see the left-turn zones separated, "at a minimum," by plastic bollards.

Lanes that can be laid down with just paint do have the benefit of fast and inexpensive implementation. And we know from the results on Grand Street that a protected bikeway with no ped refuges can still make the street safer for everyone, including pedestrians and motorists.

But there's much more asphalt to walk across on Manhattan avenues than on Grand Street, and without those pedestrian refuges sticking out of the pavement, giving people on foot a space of their own, the shared interests of cyclists and pedestrians won't be quite so apparent.

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 site plan for Riverside Center includes a large ramp for motorists to access below-ground garages (bottom center). Image: Extell Development

The site is just a few blocks north of Hudson Yards, where the city recently put a hard cap on the number of parking spaces that can be built. When the City Planning Commission enacted those parking limits, they asserted that capping parking is "consistent with the objective of creating an area with a transit- and pedestrian-oriented neighborhood character." It remains to be seen whether city planning will follow through on that objective elsewhere in the city, or if the Hudson Yards parking cap was a one-off victory for residents fed up with the proliferation of off-street parking and the traffic it generates. 

The Extell project, known as Riverside Center, would construct 1,800 spaces for 2,500 residents and a mix of stores -- including a car dealership -- on a site between 59th Street and 61st Street near the Hudson River waterfront.

Cramming that much parking into such a small space will promote driving, increase congestion, and erode the walking environment. As a result, the street-level design of the Extell project, which includes several curb cuts to allow motorists to access garages, doesn't call to mind "a transit- and pedestrian-oriented neighborhood character." Any way you slice it, the proposal for 1,800 parking spaces is excessive and completely inconsistent with the sustainability goals in PlaNYC:

• The site straddles two zones where parking construction is restricted by law. Below 60th Street, parking maximums are set at a 20 percent ratio -- developers can only build one parking spot for every five residences. Above 60th Street, the maximum is 35 percent. Extell contends that 45 percent of the residences at Riverside Center will need a parking space.
• Only about 25 percent of households in this part of Manhattan own cars, according to the 2000 Census.
  
• The Extell project is the final piece in a massive development site, known as Riverside South, stretching from 59th to 72nd Street. A 1993 agreement set the number of parking spaces to be built in the entire area at 3,500. More than 2,600 spaces have already been built on the rest of the site, so erecting 1,800 more will exceed the amount in the original agreement by nearly 1,000 spaces.
  

The Planning Commission is expected to certify the Extell project at a hearing this afternoon, which is not a final verdict but will set in motion the public review process. The local community board will weigh in with recommendations, and so will Borough President Scott Stringer. The Planning Commission can then approve the project, disapprove, or approve with modifications. The final vote rests with the City Council.

Objections to the volume of parking planned for Riverside Center have come from several sources. A coalition of sustainable transportation advocates including the Straphangers Campaign, Transportation Alternatives, and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign have told Stringer that Riverside Center should not be developed using Extell's car-centric, towers-in-the-park template. Manhattan Community Board 7 has called for total parking on the site to be reduced by 30 percent [PDF]. (The board is also asking for a 20 percent reduction in the total size of the project.) Local activists who successfully fought the Hudson Yards parking bonanza have mobilized to debunk the assumptions behind the parking projections in Extell's proposal.

Council Member Gale Brewer, whose position will be critical when the project reaches the City Council, believes that there's no reason for Extell to build so much parking, said Jesse Bodine, her director of constituent services. Brewer hasn't come out with a specific target for reducing the amount of parking, but she expects the proposal to be modified to include less parking by the time the council votes on it.

The most intriguing part of the process will come before the City Council vote, when the Planning Commission reviews the project. The commissioners can let Extell's proposal move forward without any attempt to mitigate the parking disaster. Or they can render a verdict that's consistent with their rhetoric on Hudson Yards and the sustainability objectives laid out in PlaNYC.

DOT says the shared bike lane once planned for First Avenue (in red, below 57th Street) will become a buffered bike lane instead. The MTA may add another SBS station at 28th Street. Click here for a larger image.

"We are fully committed to operating by 10/10/10," said the MTA's Ted Orosz. He added that the agencies are aiming for a 20 percent improvement in bus speeds while attracting higher ridership, moving general traffic more efficiently, and "significantly" increasing cycling rates along the corridor. The question of how bus speed targets would be met if Albany doesn't approve the use of camera enforcement didn't come up, but DOT bike coordinator Josh Benson said the project does have money set aside for conventional enforcement.

The other significant development is that NYCDOT has adjusted its plan for bike improvements in Midtown, adding some stronger striping treatments but not extending the physically protected lanes. On First Avenue, instead of switching from a protected bike lane to a shared traffic lane between 49th Street and 57th Street, the plan now calls for a buffered bike lane. "We can totally seal up First Avenue," said Benson. Doing so will eliminate 71 parking spaces and relocate loading onto side streets.

On Second Avenue, the plan still calls for sharrows. Because the Midtown shared lane is immediately south of the long Second Avenue Subway construction zone, which will receive no improvements, DOT chose not to replace it with a buffered lane, Benson said, because there would be no continuity on the Upper East Side. (A Midtown protected lane would indeed connect to the protected lane below 34th Street, however.)

Benson did reveal some enhancements to the agency's shared lane design that will debut on Second Avenue: DOT will paint more bike symbols per block and replace the normal dashed line separating the lane with a solid line, in an attempt to deter frequent lane changes. 

The MTA is also pursuing some changes based on CB 6 suggestions that may result in slower buses. Specifically, they are seriously considering adding an SBS station at 28th Street, near Bellevue Hospital. "Reasonable people would say it doesn't work," Orosz said of the 28th Street station, but "there's a lot of interest in making it work." One of the challenges, he said, will be coordinating station placement with ambulance and drop-off access for the many nearby medical facilities.

For some speakers last night, that wasn't enough. The well-organized Turtle Bay Association loudly protested the absence of a 50th Street SBS stop, which Orosz explained simply didn't have the boarding numbers to justify inclusion. Every additional station means buses spend more time at rest and less in motion.

At times, some attendees actually argued that SBS would slow down bus service. (Empirical evidence suggests otherwise: SBS improvements on the Bx12 route have sped travel times 20 percent.) Tempers got so heated at one point that Fred Arcaro, the committee chair, gave Orosz a friendly reprimand: "There's no need to be so hostile about it."

In the end, the committee voted 6-5 to postpone its resolution. The request came from both supporters and opponents of the street redesign on the committee. Community board member Bill Oddo, a self-described "big advocate of transit use and safe bike routes," was the first to call for tabling the vote. He told Streetsblog that there hadn't been "enough time given to discussion of the bike route." 

While a community board vote is advisory, not binding, many supporters of livable streets were disappointed to go home without a resolution. "There's a complete lack of vision about what it's meant to be," said local resident Sandy McKee. "To hold it hostage for a few riders on 50th Street -- and I live on 49th Street -- lacks civic sense." 

The CB 6 district includes most of the blocks designated in NYCDOT's East Side proposal for Design C -- which lacks a protected bike lane.

The vote could also swing the other way. When the same committee first discussed the East Side plan two months ago, support for the protected bike lanes was noticeable but far from overwhelming. If some CB members are wavering about their votes, good turnout and testimony from supporters of livable streets might help them decide.

Tonight's action will be the second community board vote on the East Side plan. Last month, the Manhattan CB 3 transportation committee voted in favor of the re-design in the East Village, the Lower East Side, and Chinatown, including a 14-block stretch of protected bike path above Houston Street. CB 8 is expected to hold a committee vote on the Upper East Side section of the plan next Wednesday.

The CB 6 meeting starts at 7 p.m., so if you plan to sign up to speak, be sure to get there before 7. Here's where to go:

NYU Medical Center
550 First Avenue
Classroom C

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 Busy Bee bike shop has been shut down for criminal possession of stolen property. Photo: Jack Savage.

Busy Bee Bikes, a familiar destination for local cyclists, was forced to close its doors last Friday for criminal possession of stolen property, according to Lt. Patrick Ferguson of the Ninth Precinct.

One Busy Bee employee was arrested at the store that day after purchasing stolen property from an undercover officer, Ferguson said, adding that the owners of Busy Bee will appear in civil court on Wednesday. We are awaiting further information from the police on how they determined that the shop intentionally dealt in stolen goods. We also have a request in with the Manhattan DA's office on the charges facing the store employees.

Ferguson told Streetsblog that another Busy Bee employee was arrested at the store last month, also for criminal possession of stolen property. A business will usually face closure by the city following two such arrests on the business's property, according to David Duhan, an attorney who specializes in civil enforcement cases.

Friday's arrest capped an ongoing investigation spearheaded by the NYPD's Ninth Precinct, Ferguson said. The operation had been in progress for months, first coming to Streetsblog's attention at a Ninth Precinct community council meeting in January, where police stressed the usefulness of having one's bicycle registered with the local precinct. NYPD serial numbers can help police recover bike frames lost to theft.

A rendering of the proposed Moynihan Station. (Photo: The Real Deal)

The grant makes the intended successor to the current Penn Station, a longstanding priority for New York's congressional delegation, the first winner in a highly competitive chase for $1.5 billion in federal transport funding aimed at moving the U.S. DOT towards a more merit-based decision-making process.

The TIGER funding will allow the project to begin its Phase I of construction, which includes building vertical access points from the street to the new transit hub. Work should begin by the end of the year, according to Friends of Moynihan Station, a private-sector advocacy group founded by the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's (D-NY) daughter.

"Moynihan Station is the poster child for the best way to use federal funding -- it creates jobs, upgrades aging transportation infrastructure, and leaves behind an economic engine for the entire region," Schumer said in a statement.

Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer also hailed the federal grant through his spokeswoman: "For too long, Moynihan Station has been stopped dead in its tracks. Now that our congressional delegation has been able to secure a down payment, we can begin moving forward on this project, which will create jobs, ease congestion, boost tourism, and right the wrongs of half a century ago" -- a reference to the destruction of the original, above-ground Penn Station, which urbanist pioneer Jane Jacobs fought to preserve.

The rest of the Obama administration's TIGER grants are expected to reach public view starting tomorrow, with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood slated to visit Tuscon (hoping for streetcar aid) and Kansas City (home to the ambitious Green Impact Zone).

To offset the effects of its terror trial security zone, NYPD should adopt a zero tolerance policy for placard abusers.

The soft perimeter appears to include around five-and-a-half linear miles of streets comprising 17 "lane-miles." (These figures exclude Park Row and other streets already taken out of service by the NYPD since 9/11.) Clearly, restricting vehicular travel on these streets will aggravate gridlock, but by how much, and at what “time cost” to travelers? City Hall isn’t saying, of course, but with the help of the Balanced Transportation Analyzer, it’s possible to make a rough estimate.

Assuming that the restrictions take away one-quarter of the carrying capacity of the affected streets (one-half for streets within the inner section), vehicles in the area can expect to spend 2,200 additional hours stuck in traffic each weekday. Scaled to a full year, that translates to $30 million in lost time for motorists, truckers, taxi riders and bus passengers. (Go to the “Cordon” tab of the BTA spreadsheet to view derivation.)

This is a mere drop in the regional bucket, which now loses $13 billion a year to gridlock, according to the Partnership for New York City [PDF]. But locally, where most of that lost time will tick away, the impact could be tangible -- particularly in Chinatown, the epicenter of post-9/11 business closings and a major component of the area targeted by the NYPD.

Yet this new gridlock could be mitigated, and perhaps even offset altogether, if the city took steps to reduce car commuting into lower Manhattan. Using the BTA, I calculate that eliminating 4,000 to 5,000 daily round-trips by car into and out of the area around Foley Square would cut traffic levels in proportion to the travel restrictions. That is, even with street capacity reduced by 25 percent throughout the NYPD's soft perimeter, traffic speeds could be held steady via a 4,000 to 5,000-car reduction in commuting in the vicinity of the trial.

This calculation is extremely preliminary and should be firmed up by a street-level engineering analysis. Nevertheless, it suggests a possible path for averting a potential traffic and economic nightmare for Chinatown and the Civic Center area.

The alternative is to move the trial out of Lower Manhattan altogether, perhaps via the Menin plan. Police Commissioner Kelly appeared open to considering Governors Island as a venue — at least before federal officials warned him off the idea, according to The Times.

If Governors Island is indeed off the table -- and the feds’ arguments should be carefully scrutinized -- Mr. Kelly’s good intentions could still be channeled into a full-frontal assault on placard abuse. Not only would the benefit outlast the upcoming trial. Weeding out free parking in Lower Manhattan would also help “upstream” communities whose streets and roads are clogged with privileged government employees driving to their free parking spots.

Manhattan Community Board 7 voted last night in favor of converting 240 parking meters to bike racks on 40 blocks of the Upper West Side. The 23-12 vote (with one abstention) was the CB's closest of the evening, but the outcome was never really in doubt. Debate focused on board control over the placement of individual racks more than the broader merits of bike racks. Thanks in part to the strong support of the Columbus Avenue BID, momentum for bicycle infrastructure continues to grow on the Upper West Side. 

The vote was an important step in advancing DOT's plan to recycle defunct parking meters into bike racks. As CB 7 member Ken Coughlin put it during the meeting, the Upper West Side will be "greening a piece of infrastructure designed for the automobile, and without doing almost anything to it, giving it to bicyclists."

Last night's vote got a big boost from the Columbus Avenue BID. The BID, which has worked closely with Project for Public Spaces to develop a vision of the avenue as a livable boulevard, went block by block to determine the ideal placement of bike racks in the neighborhood. On average, they proposed (and the CB approved) converting three parking meters to bike racks per block face on Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues between 67th and 86th Streets. 

George Beane, the secretary of the Columbus Avenue BID's executive committee, captured the importance of bike parking for the neighborhood, noting the purchasing power of New York City's daily cyclists: "We on the Columbus Avenue BID would like those 185,000 bikers to shop in our stores and eat in our restaurants."

Not every CB 7 member was so enthusiastic about bike racks. Member Richard Asche spoke most forcefully against the proposal, saying he didn't want to cede control of bike rack placement to DOT. Asche claimed after the vote, "I'm not an opponent of bike racks; I was an opponent of this resolution."

The vote on bike parking follows CB 7's October vote requesting plans for protected bike lanes on Amsterdam and Columbus from DOT.

The full text of the bike rack resolution reads:

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT Community Board 7/Manhattan approves an average of six racks per block (three per block front), with the understanding that some blocks will not accommodate three, and some may require more than three, depending on street obstructions, merchant objections, and other placement issues, on Amsterdam Avenue between West 67th and 86th Streets and on Columbus Avenue between 67th and 86th Streets. 

Will NYPD cruisers and other bus lane blockers steer clear of the next transit improvement on 34th Street? Photo: Chris O'Leary.

DOT and the MTA released concept plans for a physically-separated, river-to-river busway on 34th Street last April. That idea, or something like it, is one of the options on the table as the project enters the "alternatives analysis" stage -- a standard stop on the route to implementing most transit projects. The DOT presentation [PDF] lists "Bus Rapid Transit" among seven options under consideration. Of the five options that change the status quo significantly, BRT is by far the most affordable to build.

CB4 transportation committee co-chair Christine Berthet expects the question of commercial deliveries to come up at tonight's meeting. Several businesses on 34th, she said, would like to have direct access to the curb restored. While local support for the transit project remains strong, she added, "maybe a center median option is much better. It relieves the issue of how do you do these deliveries."

We'll have more details for you tomorrow. To get the latest information from DOT and give your feedback, head to the Piano Room at Holland House, 351 West 42nd Street, at 6:30 tonight.