Streetsblog New York City

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.

Read more…

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.

Read more…

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.

Read more…

Photo: Liz Patek

We have an update from NYPD on the curb-jumping motorist who struck and injured a pedestrian in Midtown this morning. Police said the driver hit a 73-year-old woman on the sidewalk while attempting to back into a parking space on 58th Street. The victim was sent to New York Presbyterian Hospital with serious head injuries, according to NYPD; she is now in stable condition.

The driver remained at the scene, the police said, so as usual, “no criminality is suspected.”

A driver jumped a curb and struck a pedestrian, reportedly severing one of her legs, on 58th Street this morning. Photos: Liz Patek

Reader Liz Patek sends this account from a crash scene in Midtown this morning:

As I was biking through Midtown, I came across this scene on West 58th Street between Seventh and Sixth Ave. It happened before I got there, I am guessing about 9/9:30 a.m. A pedestrian, a woman, was hit by the car. She was on the sidewalk when she was hit. According to witnesses, she was sent flying through the glass door of the restaurant, and according to their accounts, she was in pretty bad shape (her leg was severed). The driver was still on the scene. There was also a camera person from CBS 2 and another reporter on the scene. According to another witness account, the woman appeared to be about 55-60 years of age.

Also, according to witnesses, they are not sure if the driver was trying to execute a three-point turn or trying to parallel park and possibly lost control/accelerated in reverse into the woman. The woman was alive when ambulances took her away. Again, this is all accounts from people who either witnessed the accident or arrived just after it happened.

Streetsblog will be following up with NYPD on the outcome of their investigation.

The East River Greenway currently ends a few blocks south of the United Nations. Under a complicated land swap that is moving closer to completion, the city would be able to eventually connect the greenway through Midtown. Photo: Amy Zimmer/DNAinfo

The State Legislature took another step forward in the long and arduous process of filling the Midtown gap in the East River Greenway two weeks ago. By passing a law that would allow a swap of land between the city and the United Nations to move forward, DNAinfo reported yesterday, Albany cleared the way for a deal to be negotiated.

Under the terms of the arrangement reported by DNAinfo’s Amy Zimmer, the city would give part of the Robert Moses Playground, located just south of the UN headquarters, to the UN, which would build a new office tower there. In return, replacement park space would be added elsewhere and a segment of the greenway could be built between the UN and the water.

The deal would also allow the city to sell two buildings it currently leases to UN-related tenants and use that money to pay for the greenway connector. Though the Parks Department says the greenway will have a functional, no-frills design, the cost is still estimated to reach $150 million.

If it comes together, the deal would lead to the creation of a north-south trunk on the East Side that would provide a continuous, safe route for biking and walking. On the West Side, the Hudson River Greenway is now the busiest bike path in the country and the cycling backbone for all of Manhattan. It currently attracts cyclists from the East Side who go out of their way for the safety of biking apart from city traffic.

The general outline of the deal has the support of the Bloomberg Administration, as well as State Senator Liz Krueger, Assemblymember Brian Kavanagh, City Council Member Daniel Garodnick, and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. The empowering bill still needs to be signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo to become law.

The Albany legislation includes a sunset provision. If the UN and the city don’t ink a memorandum of understanding by mid-October, the legislation will expire.

Assuming that a deal is worked out — the momentum seems to be building in that direction, but there are a lot of moving parts — a completed East River Greenway would still be many years away. A feasibility study requested by the city in April, for example, would take two years alone.

Photo: Valerio_B/Flickr

Yesterday the 18th Annual Taste of Times Square filled up the crossroads of the world, serving dishes to throngs of people. DNAinfo reports that the event broke with tradition a little bit, and the vendors were better off for it:

This year the festival concentrated all its booths on Broadway, instead of to placing them on West 46th Street between Broadway and Ninth Avenue as they had last year. Participants said the move helped them reach more people.

“With all the tents on Broadway it’s gotten better visibility, it’s more popular. And the weather always helps,” said Gus Montesantos, director of food and beverages for Doubletree Hotel, home of Ginger’s restaurant.

Eat your heart out, Steve Cuozzo.

Read more…

Last year, Manhattan Community Board 6 voted to support buffered bike lanes on a Midtown stretch of First Avenue. Last night, however, the board's transportation committee chair declared it had never made such an endorsement and eliminated the option of buffered lanes from discussion. Image: NYC DOT

NYC DOT’s proposed design for bike lanes from 34th Street to 57th Street along First and Second Avenues, which call for a protected lane on First Avenue from 34th to 49th Streets and shared lanes everywhere else, earned the endorsement of Community Board 6′s transportation committee last night. The 7-5 vote in favor of DOT’s plan — the nays thought it included too much space for cyclists, not too little — came after a misleading discussion in which the committee members seemed not to understand what they were voting on.

This marks the second time that this CB 6 committee has endorsed DOT’s plans for the corridor, though those plans have changed in the intervening year. Last May, the full community board endorsed a DOT plan similar to this year’s but with a buffered bike lane on First Avenue from 49th to 57th Streets. The community board also urged DOT to consider the buffered lanes, then called Design D, for Second Avenue. DOT, however, decided that endorsement was not enough and that it needed an additional community board vote to build bike lanes from 49th to 57th.

Over the course of the evening, it became clear that the committee was confused about just what Design D was and where they had called for it. “There are two kinds of bike lane,” committee chair Fred Arcaro declared at one point, “protected and shared” — leaving out any variety of striped bike lane, buffered or otherwise. That false dichotomy went unchallenged throughout the debate, eliminating the buffered option that both DOT and the community board had previously endorsed. The committee continued to refer to “Design D,” but under the assumption that they were talking about fully protected bike lanes.

That wasn’t the only Arcaro statement of fact that shaped the course of the evening. Arcaro also claimed that the board had never endorsed Design D — “it was to consider, not necessarily that we support, to consider Design D, to do a study.” In fact the board had endorsed buffered lanes on First and called for them to be studied on Second. Arcaro simply laughed off claims that building a bike lane wouldn’t necessarily worsen traffic, which deserved to be taken seriously given the fact that a protected lane further south on First and Second didn’t slow drivers and that a buffered lane would take away parking rather than a moving lane.

Read more…

Pop-up indeed!

A reader sends along this photo of the new pop-up café on 44th Street, just west of Third Avenue. The local community board just approved the café in March, while one local resident, convinced that Midtown is an “inappropriate location” for more public seating, was still fighting to block it last month. Now the chairs have been set out and residents and visitors in this crowded part of the city are already using it to sit and chat. This photo was taken early in the morning on a Saturday, and we hear it gets much more use on weekdays.