Streetsblog New York City

Speaking this morning at the launch of weekday Select Bus Service along 34th Street, Mayor Bloomberg, Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and New York City Transit President Thomas Prendergast released the latest stats documenting the effect of Select Bus Service improvements along First and Second Avenues.

All-door boarding is one of the features speeding up buses on the East Side and, as of yesterday, 34th Street. Photo: Noah Kazis

On the East Side, travel times improved 18 percent thanks to the SBS upgrades that went into effect a year ago, according to the city. Much of that speed increase comes from off-board fare payment: With passengers boarding at any door and no longer dipping their Metrocards, the amount of time buses sit idling is down 36. The enhancements also include dedicated bus lanes enforced with automated cameras.

Quicker trips are attracting new riders. Along First and Second Avenue, total ridership is up nine percent, especially impressive since overall Manhattan bus ridership has been declining.

Those numbers are up slightly from April, when preliminary data showed a 15 percent improvement in travel times and an eight percent boost in ridership.

Similar jumps in speed and ridership are expected for Midtown bus riders. Since bus lanes were installed along 34th Street in 2008, ridership has increased by five percent, according to MTA Department of Buses Senior Vice President Darryl Irick. Improved boarding, he predicted, would boost ridership along the routes by another five to ten percent.

While NYC still lacks full Bus Rapid Transit, these improvements are making a real difference for tens of thousands of riders every day and attracting thousands more.

“Select Bus Service is proving to be a success wherever we install it,” Bloomberg said in a press release. “Travel times go down, ridership increases and safety improves with Select Bus Service. We expect to see the same positive results here on 34th Street and we will continue to look for more opportunities to expand this great service. We all know that when mass transit works well, more people use the service, which helps to free up our streets – a boost for our economy and our environment.”

Select Bus Service fare machines sit in front of Macy's Christmas decorations, ready to be turned on this Sunday. Photo: Noah Kazis

It’s no physically separated transitway, but bus riders can still get excited about the launch of Select Bus Service along 34th Street this Sunday.

Additional SBS features should significantly speed trips along.34th Street, which already has dedicated lanes for the heavy crosstown bus traffic. By taking care of fare payment before riders board and allowing them to enter and exit using all doors, SBS should cut the time buses sit at the curb and keep people in motion, especially at super-crowded stops like Penn Station. Also going into effect this weekend is an expanded camera enforcement program to ensure that the bus lanes stay clear of traffic.

Additional bus improvements are scheduled to be installed in 2012, including transit signal priority to give buses more green time. Bus bulbs installed next year will improve pedestrian safety, add some room to 34th Street’s packed sidewalks, and keep bus drivers from needing to pull over to the curb.

Plans for a more robust transit and pedestrian redesign, which would have physically separated buses from traffic and built a pedestrian plaza across between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, was scuttled due to opposition from major property owners along the street.

Construction on the final segment won't start until roughly 2020, but when complete, the midtown gap in the East River Greenway will be filled. Image: East Side Open Space via Flickr.

The signing of an agreement to close the East River Greenway gap between 38th Street and 60th Street is big news for people who want to enjoy the waterfront on Manhattan’s open space-starved East Side. There’s finally a realistic plan in place to build a continuous route to walk, run, or bike along the water. When finished, it could form the backbone of the bike network on the East Side.

But the deal signed this week is an early step in a complicated and lengthy process; construction will take place in three stages and won’t wrap up for at least a decade. We checked in with City Council Member Dan Garodnick, a strong supporter of the greenway project, to hear how the process will move forward from here.

Building the full esplanade will cost roughly $200 million. To fund the project, the city turned to a land deal with the United Nations. The City will turn over a piece of the under-used Robert Moses Playground to the United Nations for $70 million and pay for the rest with the proceeds from the sale of One and Two UN Plaza, buildings in which the city owns a stake.

The first $70 million can’t pay for the entire greenway, Garodnick explained, meaning work will have to be done in phases. The playground deal will fund an extension of the greenway from 60th Street south to 53rd, where caissons left over from an FDR Drive detour are already in place. That first segment will connect to an existing pedestrian bridge over the highway at 51st Street.

Once the UN buildings have been sold — which Garodnick said could take some time, depending on the market, since the agreement requires them to go for a high enough price to pay for the construction work — work could take place on the southern portion of the greenway.

At the same time, work will already be underway on turning the Con Ed pier between 38th Street and 41st Street into a greenway and parkland. Construction on the Con Ed pier should begin soon, according to a press release from the mayor’s office. But work on the first new segment of the greenway likely won’t start until 2016. At the southern end, work won’t begin until roughly 2020.

Moreover, the agreement signed Wednesday is a memorandum of understanding putting the city, state and United Nations on the path to a completed deal; there’s still a lot of legal work to be done in addition to design and construction. While this deal clears the way for a continuous off-street cycling route along the East Side, it will be a long while before that connectivity materializes.

Bike traffic on the Eighth Avenue protected bike lane. Photo: BicyclesOnly/Flickr

By a vote of 26 to 10 Wednesday night, Manhattan Community Board 4 endorsed DOT plans to extend the protected bike lanes on Eighth and Ninth Avenue from 34th Street to 59th Street. The bike lanes will improve safety for all users on some of Midtown’s most chaotic streets, which pass by Penn Station, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and the Lincoln Tunnel entrance.

Though there were objections from a couple of businesses when the CB 4 transportation committee discussed the project last month, last night only one person testified about the lanes.”I’m just someone who got injured and started biking to heal the injury,” said Detta Ahl. “I found it was a good way to get around the city. I want to get around the city safely.”

Ahl also pointed out that the redesigned streets will improve safety for pedestrians and motorists as well as cyclists; further south on Eighth Avenue, a similar redesign reduced traffic injuries for all street users by 35 percent.

On the community board, opponents of the bike lane focused on what they saw as bad behavior by cyclists. Calls for additional education and enforcement of traffic laws earned loud applause.

Construction will take place in two phases next year. The lanes will be extended to 42nd Street in the spring and to 59th Street in the fall.

Community Board 4 will vote Wednesday on the DOT plan to extend protected bike lanes on Eighth and Ninth Avenues north from 34th to 59th Streets.

As Noah reported in September, the lanes will offer a much safer route for commuters, delineating protected space on wide avenues sorely in need of taming, particularly near Penn Station, the Port Authority, and the Lincoln Tunnel (though two blocks of Eighth in front of the Port Authority will not be protected). According to DOT, eight pedestrians and one motorist were killed in traffic crashes on this stretch of Eighth Avenue since 2005, while six pedestrians were killed on Ninth. Similar safety improvements on a stretch of Eighth Avenue further downtown precipitated a 35 percent drop in injuries for all street users.

The lanes got the go-ahead from the CB 4 transportation committee last month, but true to form the anti-bike minority got the headlines. As always, the more friendly voices heard on this vital measure for safer cycling and walking, the better.

Wednesday’s meeting will be held at Roosevelt Hospital, 1000 Tenth Ave., at 6:30 p.m. The full agenda is here.

DOT’s plan to extend the protected bike lanes on Eighth and Ninth Avenues from the low 30s north to 59th Street won unanimous approval from the transportation committee of Community Board 4 last night. With the exception of two blocks of Eighth Avenue in front of the Port Authority, the lanes will be fully protected through the length of Midtown.

Bike traffic on the Eighth Avenue protected bike lane. Photo: BicyclesOnly/Flickr

The redesign will make cycling a more attractive option to access the city’s biggest employment center and the theater district, and it will bring badly needed safety changes to the wide and chaotic west side avenues where they pass by Penn Station, the Port Authority, and the Lincoln Tunnel. Since 2005, eight pedestrians and one motorist were killed in traffic crashes on this stretch of Eighth Avenue, according to DOT; six pedestrians were killed on Ninth. Similar safety improvements caused traffic injuries for all street users to drop by 35 percent on a stretch of Eighth Avenue further downtown.

On each avenue, the space for the protected bike lane and pedestrian refuge islands will come from narrowing the existing travel lanes by two feet each, not removing a travel lane, DOT officials said. With the addition of left-turn space in the form of mixing zones — where bike traffic and turning cars overlap — and signalized turn bays at major intersections, traffic capacity will in fact increase on Eighth and Ninth Avenues. “If anything, speed should actually improve,” said DOT Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione.

Construction would occur in two phases. The lanes would be built south of 42nd Street in the spring of next year with the northern sections completed that fall. The full board of CB 4 will meet to vote on the proposal next month.

Unlike the bike lanes on the east side, DOT’s plans do not call for the lanes to run without protection for any significant distance. Between 40th and 41st Streets on Eighth Avenue, however, the protected lane will become a buffered lane running to the right of the Port Authority cab stand. The plastic bollards currently in place there will remain to the right of the bike lane, however, providing some protection at that location. On the following block, cyclists would share the second lane from the left with motor vehicles turning left.

The need for this design stems from the double left-turn lanes onto 42nd Street, said DOT bike and pedestrian direct Josh Benson. “If the bike lane was between those two left lanes and the curb,” he said, “it would be very difficult to go straight on your bike.”

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The Bryant Park lawn, 2010. Dan Biederman says opposition to the private management of a public park in the 1980s was more vociferous than the opposition encountered by NYC DOT's Midtown street reclamation projects today. Photo: Ed Yourdon/Flickr

Here’s the second installment of Streetsblog’s interview with Dan Biederman, head of the 34th Street Partnership and the Bryant Park Corporation. In the first part of the interview, Biederman discussed reactions to NYC DOT’s recent public space projects on Broadway, and why the reality on the ground is much better for Midtown than most press accounts have let on.

Ben Fried: Do you see any similarities between the changes happening to Midtown streets now and the restoration of Bryant Park 25 years ago?

Dan Biederman: Oh yeah. [With Bryant Park] it was outright opposition from the left, mainly saying the idea of private financing and management of public parks was undemocratic and unnecessary and the like.

I think there will be a time in the next three to five years when people will look back and say, how could we have been so opposed to that change?

So if you try to change things, you get opposition. Today it’s probably broader but less vociferous. We had a narrow group of opponents and they were vociferous. You would have thought the world would come to an end if a different approach would be tried at Bryant Park.

I sent [Janette Sadik-Khan] an email once when she was really under attack saying sometimes you just have to live through these things when you’re a change agent. And she knows that. She’s a strong person. It’s been good. I keep saying to people that this team is absolutely terrific. I’ve worked with DOT since 1980. This is the best the agency’s ever been by far.

BF: What sets them apart?

DB: Her accessibility. Making deadlines. Meeting deadlines. Looking abroad for models. Something this city doesn’t do enough of. I do it a lot. I’ve always complained New Yorkers think all the wisdom in the world is in these 13 square miles. To the point where when I did Bryant Park I had a Boston architect, a Philadelphia landscape architect, a Philadelphia adviser. The only New York people were Holly White and Hugh Hardy. But I had people from Boston and Philadelphia making the initiative and everybody said, “You don’t have to go to those cities for expertise. We have all the expertise you’ll need in New York.” It’s ridiculous.

So yeah — accessibility, meeting deadlines, models from abroad, just a mid-agency management strength. Rational answers come back. They’re really trying to improve the city, and I think in the end – I think there will be a time in the next three to five years when people will look back and say, how could we have been so opposed to that change? I don’t expect whoever the next mayor is to reverse this. I can’t imagine it.

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Herald Square, summer 2010. Photo: Ed Yourdon/Flickr

Before Dan Biederman came to Bryant Park, there were no movable chairs, no free movies on summer evenings, no kiosks selling sandwiches and refreshments. No lunch time crowds and not much in the way of civic life or social activity, either. There was, basically, an open-air drug market in the New York Public Library’s backyard.

In 1980, Biederman co-founded the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, beginning a long career in public space management. He blended a business executive’s managerial expertise with an urbanist’s sense of what makes places work — the latter honed at the side of pioneering public space analyst William “Holly” Whyte. Property owners in other parts of Midtown sat up and took notice of his success at Bryant Park, and by the 1990s he was also leading the 34th Street Partnership and the Grand Central Partnership. Today he continues to oversee the Bryant Park Corporation and the 34th Street Partnership, while also bringing lessons from his New York business improvement districts to cities all over the country.

Dan Biederman

A firm believer in the importance of a quality pedestrian environment, Biederman has advanced a number of street safety and public space improvements over the years. In 2009, NYC DOT’s reclamation of Broadway for pedestrians and cyclists augmented two of the 34th Street Partnership’s big public space success stories: Herald Square and Greeley Square. When the city announced the changes would be permanent last year, Biederman stood in front of the TV cameras and said, “This is a 21st century idea.”

Streetsblog recently sat down with Biederman at his Sixth Avenue headquarters, across from Bryant Park, to talk about the transformation of Broadway, the 34th Street Transitway, and how New Yorkers adjust to change. The first installment of the edited interview is below.

He started off our discussion by noting that critics of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan have managed to command more attention than her supporters.

Ben Fried: Any theories as to why?

Dan Biederman: First, cab drivers are terrible participants in public fora. They don’t know shit because they’re on the phone all day long, yet they’re able to drive. The fact that they’re also, in their minds, better transportation analysts than people who went to school in that subject and have all kinds of citywide roles, baffles me. But the view of most business people is that you can count on cab drivers to tell you what the right answer is. I think that’s crazy. They will tell you that they’re annoyed that something isn’t going their way, but they don’t have the broader view.

We don’t pay that much attention to Steve Cuozzo. I think he’s a great real estate reporter but he doesn’t know this field.

They don’t understand because they over-emphasize the inconvenience that is experienced right after a change. They don’t understand that things work themselves out because people eventually get smart, including them. If 34th Street had been closed from Fifth to Sixth [for the transitway plaza], it defies belief that cab drivers would continue driving right into the blockage and therefore there would be horn-honking at Seventh Avenue and Sixth Avenue from now till the rest of time.

But if you could go into the mind of the average building manager in midtown Manhattan, that’s what they’re picturing: “Cab drivers are right because if you close something there will be horn-honking and trouble.” So we can’t make transportation policy that way. We have to go with the better-informed people who either are consulting or working for DOT.

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As it is, the NYC DOT “Midtown in Motion” initiative is a bit of a head-scratcher. To learn that the city is devoting well over a million dollars in addition to staff resources to speed up car traffic in Midtown, which the mayor has declared the “lifeblood” of the CBD — is it 2006 again?

Here’s another jaw-dropping facet of the program, as reported in the Times:

[City engineers] also plan to offer this data to software developers so that drivers and passengers can gain access to this detailed information on their iPads or iPhones.

Distracted driving is a known killer, an epidemic so widespread and pernicious that it even has Albany’s attention. You’ve got to wonder about the logic behind encouraging drivers to pilot their two-ton missiles through streets teeming with pedestrians while not looking where they’re going.

From inside DOT's traffic control center, engineers will now be able to tweak Midtown traffic lights in response to real-time conditions. They'll only be getting information about automobiles, however. Photo: Jill Colvin/DNAinfo.

The Department of Transportation is rolling out a response to Midtown traffic congestion that is as high-tech as it is intellectually outdated. Microwave sensors, video cameras, and E-ZPass readers will gather traffic information in real-time and beam the information to the DOT’s Queens command center, where engineers will instantly adjust the traffic lights as needed in an attempt to fine-tune the workings of the traffic grid.

All that technology, however, will only measure the movement of automobiles through Midtown. Moreover, new turn signals and turning lanes are being added to dozens of intersections in the affected area, between Second and Sixth Avenues and 42nd and 57th Streets. That could mean time and space taken away from other modes and given to automobiles, counter to the city’s transportation goals under PlaNYC.

According to a DOT spokesperson, there is no mechanism currently in place to measure pedestrian volumes in the “Midtown in Motion” area, despite the huge number of people on Midtown sidewalks. Neither is there any transit signal priority, a system that grants a few extra seconds of green light to buses, each of which carries far more people than a few automobiles. Both of those features could theoretically be added to the system at a later date, said the DOT spokesperson.

In the meantime, however, DOT’s highly capable engineers will be told to solve a problem based only on information about motor vehicles. If they wanted to balance the needs of drivers against pedestrians or bus riders in real time, much less prioritize the latter two, they wouldn’t have the tools. Bus riders might benefit incidentally from a bump in overall traffic speeds, but couldn’t be given the extra priority they deserve.

More permanent changes also prioritize traffic capacity over all else. At 53 intersections, turning lanes will be added to the cross-town street, replacing on-street parking, loading zones, and no standing areas. In some cases, what’s being replaced might be important for pedestrian safety, whether by protecting pedestrians on the sidewalk or maintaining visibility at intersections, or needed by local businesses. Notably, the media’s same hyped-up fears about any loss of parking for a bicycle or pedestrian project have not appeared when the space remains dedicated for the automobile.

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