Streetsblog New York City

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:

Two months after the MTA and NYCDOT first presented East Side Select Bus Service to Manhattan Community Board 6, officials were back with a modified plan last night, hoping to get a vote from the transportation committee. After a combative couple of hours, they didn't get one. The committee chose to put off a vote until its next meeting rather than come to a decision. The big news to emerge was the announcement of a specific launch date for the first phase of Select Bus Service on the corridor.

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. 

Sorry for the late notice folks, but there's one more public meeting on this week's busy schedule with big implications for street safety, and it's happening tonight. The transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 6 is expected to draft and vote on a resolution regarding plans for Select Bus Service and protected bike lanes on the East Side. If you want to help support for safer biking and walking, you'll want to turn out for this one.

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

"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.

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.

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.

New York City's Moynihan Station project has snagged $83 million in grant money from the stimulus law's Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) announced today.

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).

The pending trial of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has thrown lower Manhattan into a tizzy, for good reasons. Foremost, of course, is the dread of revisiting the horrors of that day, mingled with fears of new attacks linked to the trial. But there are also concerns that the NYPD's aggressive countermeasures will impede movement, worsen traffic and suffocate the economy of the area, pockets of which never recovered fully from police-ordered street closures and other 9/11 aftershocks. These concerns could be assuaged by a tough, zero tolerance stance on parking placard abuse by government employees.

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.

These naked meter poles will be reborn as bicycle racks. Photo: Wiley Norvell.

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."

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.