Streetsblog New York City

Across the street from Grand Central, a new pedestrian plaza is being installed this afternoon. Jonny Hamilton, who works nearby, snapped this short video of DOT workers laying down the new surface at Pershing Square between 42nd and 41st Streets, on the east side of the Park Avenue viaduct.

Once the plaza is installed, the block will also receive two bike-share stations with 59 docks each, making it the city’s biggest bike-share hub.

An airport bus stop was relocated to accommodate the plaza and bike-share stations, ”turning that street essentially into a bike-share plaza that would really allow it to be a gateway to Grand Central,” DOT’s Kate Fillin-Yeh said at a bike-share planning meeting with Community Board 5 last year.

On the other side of the viaduct, Hamilton said the southbound block of Park Avenue didn’t get attention from DOT crews today, but it will soon: a plaza plan in the works for that block since 1987 is scheduled to begin construction next year. The space will be managed by the Grand Central Partnership business improvement district.

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At the end of its second meeting on a DOT proposal to improve bike safety on the Manhattan approaches to the Queensboro Bridge, the transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 6 reached a conclusion. The committee needed more time to make up its mind.

“We will have a decision by June,” chair Fred Arcaro said.

North of 59th Street, Community Board 8′s transportation committee decided last week that two meetings was enough, and voted to support the plan with modifications. It’s scheduled to go before the full board on May 22.

Last night, Robert Cohen, who is not an appointed board member but sits on the CB 6 committee, said that DOT’s presentation, with diagrams, maps, and photo simulations, wasn’t enough. He needed a walk-through with DOT to fully comprehend the proposal. Other committee members said that they had already done a walk-through, but Arcaro went ahead and asked DOT to do a site visit with committee members.

DOT had tweaked the proposal [PDF] since it first presented the plan last month. It now includes a traffic signal for southbound cyclists using the proposed two-way protected bike lane between 59th and 60th Streets. In addition, signal timings at the intersection of 59th Street and First Avenue have been changed so that pedestrians and cyclists will cross the intersection at different times than drivers turning from First Avenue to 59th Street on their way to the Queensboro Bridge.

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Last night, two community boards in Sunset Park and Manhattan’s West Side voted to support bike lanes, bike parking and permanent pedestrian plazas. As a result, Sunset Park will be receiving shared lane markings on Fifth Avenue, the permanent reconstruction of a plaza at Ninth Avenue and 14th Street will move ahead, and bike lanes and on-street corrals are on track for the West Side of Manhattan.

In Sunset Park, Brooklyn Community Board 7 voted to support the extension of shared lane markings on Fifth Avenue from 23rd to 65th Streets. (On Fifth Avenue between 23rd and Dean Streets, there are already bike lane and sharrow markings.)

The proposal received a supportive transportation committee vote in July, but stalled after a 15-9-10 vote at the full board in October. CB 7′s first vice chair, Daniel Murphy, reintroduced the sharrows resolution last night, and it passed, 23-5, with seven abstentions.

“We always planned to reintroduce it, it was just a question of when,” Murphy said, adding that a few board members who opposed the plan in October switched to support it this time around. “We didn’t get angry. We got rational,” he said. Murphy said he doesn’t believe this will delay DOT’s ability to install the markings this spring. Streetsblog has asked DOT to confirm an implementation schedule.

In Manhattan, Community Board 4′s transportation committee passed a resolution in support of the permanent reconstruction of a 9,000 square-foot plaza on Ninth Avenue between 14th and 15th Streets. DOT will add street trees on the east side of the plaza; the committee is asking DOT to add greenery to the center of the space, as well.

The Ninth Avenue protected bike lane, which shrinks to a standard painted lane at this location before becoming a buffered lane on Hudson Street, is often full of double-parked cars and trucks. “They told us there is not enough space on the avenue to create a protected bike lane,” committee co-chair Christine Berthet said. “We’re definitely not happy about it.”

A median pedestrian island on Ninth Avenue at 15th Street will be removed and replaced with a curb extension. The design will include cobblestones to match the aesthetic of plaza spaces on Ninth Avenue as it approaches Gansevoort Street.

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Can we get a James Vacca City Council hearing on this?

A man in his eighties was seriously injured today when an SUV driver jumped the curb and slammed into Saks Fifth Avenue in Midtown a little before 11 a.m. Gothamist reports that the victim was walking by the store at the time and was taken to Bellevue in stable condition.

Even though Fifth Avenue has some of the most crowded sidewalks in the Western Hemisphere, the driver who careened off the road was immediately exonerated by NYPD, who told Gothamist there’s “no criminality suspected.”

At least six pedestrians were killed by curb-jumping motorists in NYC last year. Those victims were all 58 years or older. Given the prevalence of traffic violence — more than 10,000 NYC pedestrians are hurt by motorists every year — it’s likely that hundreds of other New Yorkers were injured while on the sidewalk in 2012.

Thanks to reader Liz Patek for sending in the photo from the scene.

In separate crashes in Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx, city motorists killed five pedestrians between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Four of the crashes, which took the lives of a child and three young mothers, were hit-and-runs.

At approximately 8:45 a.m. on December 28, 11-year-old Miguel Torres of Jackson Heights was crossing at Northern Boulevard and 80th Street, in the crosswalk and with the light, when he was hit by the driver of a dump truck.

Miguel was on his way to participate in a school field trip to Grand Central Terminal when he was killed. Olga Gonzalez, who witnessed the aftermath of the crash, told the Post: “It was so bad, when the ambulance guy came, he was crying … The car hit [Miguel] so hard his shoes came off. I just saw a little kid in the middle of the street, and I just started crying.”

The driver, who did not stop, was later located by police. To the dismay of Miguel’s grieving family, no criminal charges were filed. From DNAinfo:

“They’re just giving him summonses,” [Miguel's aunt Yolanda] Ardezzone said. “I think he should get more than summonses — jail time, so this won’t happen to another child.”

A spokeswoman for the NYPD said that although the police originally stated the child was involved in a hit-and-run, police were actually able to track down the driver at the scene.

“It appeared the driver was unaware they struck someone,” said the spokeswoman. No criminal charges had been filed by Sunday, but she said the case was still under investigation.

In New York State, a driver must know or have reason to know that he or she has caused injury in order to be charged for leaving the scene of a fatal crash. Even when police and prosecutors muster the will to bring charges — no sure thing by any means — an admission that the motorist “didn’t see” the victim serves as a reliable defense. From the Daily News:

A few hours after the incident, police found the driver of the 1988 truck in Park Slope, Brooklyn. He told police he didn’t know he had hit someone, tested negative for alcohol and had a valid driver’s license. Police said no criminal charges will be filed.

No charges, though according to the same Daily News story: “A police source said the truck’s rear wheels struck the boy, though a second source said the boy may have first been struck from the front end of the truck.”

If Queens District Attorney Richard Brown does indeed pursue a criminal case against Miguel Torres’s killer, it is a virtual lock that leaving the scene would be the top charge. Minus evidence of intoxication, a city motorist who kills a pedestrian or cyclist is practically guaranteed to escape charges for taking a life.

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The protected bike and pedestrian space on Broadway between 42nd and 35th Streets will be redesigned in 2013 to give more space to pedestrians, removing a motor vehicle lane. The alterations will also change the bike lane from a protected route often used by pedestrians as a de facto sidewalk extension to a buffered lane between curbside parking and moving cars.

Because Broadway carries fewer motor vehicles than it used to, thanks to the elimination of through traffic at Times Square and Herald Square, DOT is reducing the number of motor vehicle lanes on this section of the street from two to one. Cyclists riding in the buffered bike lane probably won’t have to worry much about speeding cars, since traffic on Broadway has been calmed significantly. But instead of pedestrians ambling in the protected bike lane, cyclists may have to contend with more double-parked vehicles blocking the way.

In its presentation to Manhattan Community Board 5′s transportation committee last month, DOT dismissed the option of moving the bike lane from the curb to the other side of the pedestrian spaces so it could remain protected by a row of parked cars, as on Broadway between 57th and 47th Streets. DOT said it was not considering this option because the buffer between the parked cars and the bike lane, when combined with the required fire zone, would significantly reduce the amount of space available for tables, chairs, and other public amenities.

The change does not affect other sections of Broadway that have been redesigned from Columbus Circle to Union Square. It was unanimously supported by CB 5′s transportation committee on October 22, and it will go before the full board tomorrow at 6 p.m. at Xavier High School, 30 West 16th Street.

Yesterday at the Municipal Art Society Summit, three architecture firms — Foster + Partners, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and WXY architecture + urban design – unveiled proposals to remake public space in Midtown East, as the Bloomberg administration sets out to rezone the area for taller towers.

The rezoning covers a large swath of Midtown, aiming to take advantage of new transit capacity as the Second Avenue Subway and the LIRR’s East Side Access project bring more people to the area. In an interesting twist, the administration wants developers to pitch in for pedestrian improvements as the area becomes a bigger destination for people.

In their public space proposals, the three firms focused on the area immediately around Grand Central Terminal, because although it lies at the heart of the district, the public realm outside the station’s grand interior often leaves much to be desired. The streets surrounding Grand Central empty out at night, and from the outside, the terminal can feel like a bit like a fortress. “It’s opaque,” said Claire Weisz of WXY. “There should be so much more happening.”

The attention-grabbing visual yesterday was SOM’s proposal to build a circular walkway above Grand Central, floating up and down between new skyscrapers on either side of the train terminal. In a panel discussion with the architects, New York magazine architecture critic Justin Davidson dismissed the concept as a “flying doughnut.”

The encouraging part of the panel was that aside from the flashy rendering, the architects are generally looking down, not up, to improve the public realm in Midtown East – and they urged the city to do the same as the rezoning moves ahead.

“The vibrancy of Manhattan is because there is so much action at the sidewalk level,” said Sir Norman Foster. “In exploring the fine print of the zoning, it should be sensitive to the activities at the ground plane, on the sidewalk.”

City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden has already expressed interest in pedestrianizing Vanderbilt Avenue to accommodate the increased foot traffic that will accompany the completion of the East Side Access project. The architects followed Burden’s lead and went further, proposing to expand the pedestrian realm beyond Vanderbilt Avenue.

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Three pedestrians and one cyclist have been killed in the city since Friday night. Two drivers fled the scene, and two were reportedly exonerated by NYPD.

At approximately 11:30 p.m. Sunday, Mary Gater was on the sidewalk on Jamaica Avenue near Sutphin Boulevard when an 85-year-old motorist, eastbound on Jamaica, “lost control” of a Chrysler sedan, jumped the curb and struck her. Gater, 60, died at Jamaica Hospital. NYPD issued no charges or summonses, according to DNAinfo.

At around 3:45 a.m. Sunday, 26-year-old Ken Baker, a Massachusetts native who lived in Binghamton, was hit by the driver of a Peterbuilt semi truck as he walked with his girlfriend on Sixth Avenue near 47th Street in Midtown. The driver, who was not hauling a trailer, was turning left from Sixth onto 47th. Baker was “sitting on the sidewalk, conscious and alert, with cuts on his arms and torso” when police arrived, according to the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, but was pronounced dead on arrival at Bellevue.

The driver of the truck was unaware he had hit someone. He stopped after he was flagged down and remained on the scene.

Police said no alcohol was involved, and no criminal charges or citations were issued.

“It was just an unfortunate accident,” the police spokesman said.

A little over 24 hours before Baker was killed, at 11:45 p.m. Friday, a hit-and-run driver struck and killed 75-year-old Arnold Slater as he walked on 114th Street at Broadway. CBS 2 reported that the driver was northbound on Broadway, and Slater was crossing east to west. NYPD is reportedly looking for the killer, who was driving a black Honda Civic. From DNAinfo:

Robert von Gutfeld, 78, a research scientist at Columbia, said the intersection is dangerous.

“When you’re crossing that intersection, you have the right of way and the drivers don’t look to see you crossing,” he said.

“Very often they almost hit me. I curse at them, I scream at them but I see it getting worse.”

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Hats off to @J_uptown, who spotted this bit of temporary bike infrastructure in Midtown. He writes:

Unfinished 9th Ave protected #bikenyc lane gets protected detour at 50th! Thx @NYC_DOT

Nice to see DOT taking a page from cities like Copenhagen, where construction crews take care to keep cyclists safe. The extension of protected bike lanes on Eighth and Ninth Avenues will improve safety for cyclists and pedestrians north to 59th Street. The project was proposed by DOT and endorsed by Community Board 4 last year.

Jacob also tweeted a shot of the new bike lane on 30th Street at Ninth, where DOT has sandwiched cyclists between two through lanes and a double turn lane. It’s hard to imagine Citi Bike riders lined up in this lane, surrounded by crosstown traffic. See it after the jump.

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Crosstown bus service on 34th Street runs faster, more frequently, and has attracted more riders since DOT and the MTA began phasing in Select Bus Service improvements four years ago. Compared to 2008, travel times for buses on 34th Street are down 23 percent, or 7.5 minutes along the full corridor. And according to an update released by DOT yesterday, ridership is up 12 percent, with weekday ridership regularly reaching 20,000 passengers. A quarter of riders say that they use the buses more often because of the service upgrades.

The gains outpace those made on some other SBS routes, in part because crosstown buses have the most room for improvement. In 2003 and 2004, the Straphangers Campaign awarded the M34 its “Pokey” award for slowest bus in New York.

Dedicated bus lanes first arrived on 34th Street in 2008. In November 2011, off-board fare collection, expanded bus lane camera enforcement, and new buses that match the blue SBS color scheme were added. Those changes improved the efficiency of the route to the point that the MTA was able to schedule 24 more bus runs a day, Monday through Saturday.

Originally, 34th Street was slated for a river-to-river traffic-separated busway featuring a block-long pedestrian plaza between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. That version of the project was scrapped after major real estate interests objected. It was replaced by DOT with a scaled-back proposal to run buses between the curb lane and the general traffic lane.

To get the buses away from the curb, where they currently have to deal with illegally-parked cars, DOT and the MTA are planning to build bus bulbs — sidewalk extensions where passengers wait for the bus. In early 2013, the route will also begin using articulated buses, like those seen on other SBS routes, that carry up to 85 passengers.

DNAinfo erroneously reported that the project has spent $36.5 million to achieve the benefits realized so far, but in fact, many of the improvements that have been budgeted for have yet to be built. Update: Since 2008, DOT and the MTA have spent about $4.3 million on bus lanes and off-board fare payment for 34th Street, according to a DOT spokesperson.

In the next two years, 13 bus bulb stations and three other curb extensions are scheduled for installation to further speed the boarding process. East of Lexington Avenue, construction is scheduled to begin in late 2013, and will last for up to two years. Two bus bulbs between 10th and 11th Avenues, constructed by the Hudson Yards Development Corporation, are scheduled for completion by summer 2013. The rest of 34th Street west of Lexington Avenue should see construction begin in spring 2013 and wrap up in early 2014.