One of 45 new bike racks installed in the Hudson Square area at the request of the local BID. Photo: Hudson Square Connection

Workers in the Hudson Square area are demanding bike infrastructure and employers are helping them get it.

The Department of Transportation has installed 45 new bike racks in response to requests from the local business improvement district, the Hudson Square Connection, which covers Manhattan’s west side between Canal and Houston Streets. The 45 new bike racks are located in a roughly 20 block area, a significant expansion of bicycle parking.

In a press release, Hudson Square Connection President Ellen Baer tied the request for bike racks not only to a desire to make the neighborhood more environmentally friendly, but to demands from area employees. “We are seeing an increasing volume of people biking to work and building owners are receiving a growing number of requests to provide amenities for cyclists,” she said.

The new racks come at a what might be an especially opportune time. The local community board has requested that the city upgrade the Hudson Street bike lane, which cuts right through the area, into a parking-protected lane, a change that if implemented would make cycling a more attractive way to get around the neighborhood.

One of these bike-share workshop participants is the star of this classic Streetfilm.

It was another evening of hands-on bike-share station planning at Manhattan Community Board 2 last night, as New Yorkers hunched over maps of SoHo and Greenwich Village, marking the best places to site bike-share kiosks.

If you live or work in the bike-share service area, you really ought to mark your calendar for the station planning meeting in your neck of the woods. There’s something very gratifying about the process that NYC DOT and Alta Bikeshare have put together for people to rate different sites. Each time you put a sticker on the map, you’re shaping the bike-share system in a small but tangible way.

The other thing is that you never know who else will show up. Last night, former Talking Heads frontman and one-time Summer Streets spokesperson David Byrne was in the house, marking up a map. If the pattern holds, it looks like Jay-Z will be on hand for the Manhattan CB 6 workshop later this month, and John Franco and John Starks might turn up at Brooklyn CB 2.

A pedestrian manager hired by the Hudson Square Connection BID helps pedestrians cross traffic headed for the Holland Tunnel. Photo: Hudson Square Connection.

Every afternoon, all four lanes of Varick Street are packed solid with traffic heading to the Holland Tunnel. Drivers block crosswalks and cross-streets as they press forward, hoping the traffic would continue to move ahead and guessing wrong. On Friday afternoons, you can hear the honking from Streetsblog HQ, ten blocks over and twelve stories up.

The unpleasant and unsafe conditions created at the mouth of the tunnel are a top priority for the Hudson Square Connection, the business improvement district in charge of the area between Houston and Canal and Sixth Avenue and Greenwich Street. The BID’s latest focus is on keeping crosswalks clear for pedestrians in this gridlocked part of the city.

“Unlike other business improvements districts which were created to address security or sanitation issues, in this neighborhood our businesses want something done about the traffic,” said BID president Ellen Baer in a statement. “We need to even the playing field so that pedestrians can safely get from one place to another in the district.”

Already, the BID has worked with the Department of Transportation to install yield to pedestrian signs, move stop lines for vehicles back from crosswalks, and create exclusive pedestrian phases into the signal timing at area intersections.

In its most recent effort to make the area more friendly for pedestrians, the BID is hiring pedestrian managers to keep intersections on Varick clear. NYPD traffic enforcement agents are already stationed on Varick below Spring Street, said Baer, but the gridlock extends all the way north to Houston. The pedestrian managers will keep drivers from blocking crosswalks or intersections along the rest of Varick.

Said Baer, “Our priority here, with our pedestrian traffic managers, is to assure the convenience and safety of pedestrians.” Compare that to how an NYPD officer near the Lincoln Tunnel described his job: “My objective is the cars, not the people.”

The BID is also working toward a comprehensive reimagining of the area’s streetscape, said Baer, which should be unveiled towards the beginning of next year. “This area, which was originally the printing district years ago, was an area that worked well for printers,” she said. “Now you have a more dense population here.”

Baer wouldn’t reveal what might be in the plan while it’s still under development, but a few clues are available on the BID’s website. Signe Nielsen, a principal at the landscape architecture firm leading the streetscape redesign work, suggested in an interview that “Other ideas include street closings or shared streets that can become seasonal or weekend places that can offer different opportunities for interaction and engagement.” One flyer for a public meeting on the plan brought up the idea of “reclaiming/rebalancing road space” as a topic for discussion. This definitely seems like a plan and a neighborhood worth keeping an eye on.

Jasmijn Rijcken was stopped and almost ticketed by an NYPD officer for biking in this outfit. Her skirt, the officer said, was too distracting for drivers.

Rijcken was in town for the New Amsterdam Bike Show on April 30. After she had dismounted on Broadway in SoHo, an NYPD officer stopped, berated, and threatened to ticket Rijcken for wearing a skirt while cycling, which, it must be noted, is entirely legal and common. Rijcken says the officer told her that her skirt was dangerous because she would distract drivers and potentially cause them to crash.

“I was standing there next to my bike, looking at my map, and then this police guy stops and starts telling me about my skirt,” reported Rijcken. “At first I thought he was making a joke or maybe even a compliment, but then I found out he was serious because he got really mad.”

The officer got out of his car and threatened to ticket her, said Rijcken, even though, it bears repeating, there is no law against biking in a skirt. The justification for a potential ticket was the danger her exposed skin posed to everyone on the street. “That was the bottom line, that I was very dangerous,” said Rijcken. “I think every woman, even when walking in a skirt, would be dangerous then.”

According to Rijcken, the cop’s words were not merely an empty threat. He took her ID and only began to back down when he saw that she was Dutch. She hurriedly explained that in Amsterdam, it’s common for women to bike in skirts. In the end, the officer told her she should change into pants and let her go.

At the time, Rijcken said, she wasn’t sure that she hadn’t broken the law. “If you’re by yourself in a different country and a police guy comes really angrily at you, you get scared,” she said.

This is not the first time an NYPD officer has stopped cyclists for completely frivolous non-offenses. In April, a private school administrator received a ticket for biking with a tote bag on her handlebars. The police have not responded to a Streetsblog inquiry about Rijcken’s allegations.

Her harassment at the hands of the police has colored Rijcken’s perception of not only New York City but the United States. “I was shocked,” she said. “In Holland, people refer to America as the country of freedom.”

The pop-up café on Pearl Street has boosted foot traffic and improved business for nearby restaurants. Image: NYCDOT

Last Thursday evening, Manhattan Community Board 2 voted down five of six approved pop-up cafés in their neighborhood, choosing parking spaces over public seating.

In the wake of that defeat, we were hoping that, as with Midwestern governors sending their high speed rail dollars to California, their loss would be someone else’s gain. Would those cafés pop up on another neighborhood’s street?

Unfortunately, that won’t be happening. The 12 cafés proposed by DOT, listed at the bottom of this Post article, were the full list of applicants that met all of DOT’s siting criteria, according to a department spokesperson. Accordingly, CB 2′s decision to kill its pop-up cafés won’t mean that somewhere else can get them instead.

There will still be some new pop-ups, however. According to DOT, Community Board 6 has approved a pop-up café in front of Le Pain Quotidien on Third Avenue near 45th Street. The only pop-up café approved outside of Manhattan, sponsored by Cobble Hill’s Ecopolis Café, received a unanimous vote from the CB 2 transportation committee, though it still needs a vote from the full board. The two remaining locations, both in Midtown, had not been presented to their community boards as of the end of last week.

The pop-up café on Pearl Street has boosted foot traffic and improved business for nearby restaurants. DOT's plans to expand the program face an important community board vote tonight. Image: NYCDOT

When DOT installed its first “pop-up café” over a few parking spaces on Lower Manhattan’s Pearl Street last summer, the 14-table public seating area helped increase business by 14 percent at its two sponsoring restaurants. With New York City still recovering from recession and much of the city starved for public space, DOT has moved to expand the program. Restaurants were given the option of requesting a café and DOT selected twelve locations from that pool of applicants. The selected locations are concentrated in the Village and SoHo, making tonight’s Community Board 2 vote a critical moment for the program.

The pop-up café program is an import from San Francisco, where what they call “parklets” have replaced parking spaces with seating across the city. In New York’s program, the cafés are paid for by nearby restaurants looking for more nearby seating and greater visibility, though the seating is open to all and restaurants aren’t allowed to provide table service to the café. The cafés are only allowed in neighborhoods where there isn’t space for regular sidewalk cafés.

The basic premise is that in these neighborhoods, the balance between space for people and space for storing cars is out of whack; businesses will do better with more seating than with more parking.

DOT has decided to give community boards the total power to veto any pop-up café, according to the Downtown Express, which has editorialized in support of the program. Since more than half of the proposed locations are in the Village or SoHo, tonight’s vote by Community Board 2 will largely determine the shape of the project citywide.

Though CB 2′s transportation committee approved six out of the seven proposed applications in the area, tonight’s full board vote is expected to be more contentious. Sean Sweeney, co-chair of the board’s landmarks committee, strongly opposes the pop-up café concept, telling the Express, “It’s a commercial use incompatible with residential use.” Sweeney has a habit of using his organization, the Soho Alliance, to oppose any change in the neighborhood, including bike lanes and car-free streets.

The full board will vote tonight after allowing public testimony on this and other issues. Show up at 6:00 p.m. tonight at SEIU Local 32BJ’s offices, 101 Avenue of the Americas, 22nd Floor, to let the board know that you think supporting local businesses and creating public space is more important than a few parking spaces in this largely car-free neighborhood.

The only thing more congested than Canal Street might be Canal Street's sidewalks. Photo: Bertrand Duperrin via Flickr

Canal Street, to put it mildly, is due for a makeover. The street is clogged with traffic from the Holland Tunnel and the un-tolled Manhattan Bridge. Pedestrians jostle for space on the packed sidewalks, and they’re especially at risk of getting hit by a car, according to the city’s Pedestrian Safety Study.

Fortunately, the funds are in place for an eventual reconstruction and re-imagination of the street, thanks to federal World Trade Center emergency relief aid. To help determine how to design Canal Street, which must strike a balance between serving the local community and the regional transportation system, NYMTC, the region’s metropolitan planning organization, has been engaged in a nearly decade-long process of studying the area and drawing up recommendations for the corridor.

In a report released last Thursday [PDF], NYMTC recommends making Canal Street friendlier for pedestrians by adding significant amounts of sidewalk space. But larger changes, in particular the creation of a carpool lane in the Holland Tunnel, weren’t included. According to the NYMTC report, NYCDOT has agreed to use the recommendations to inform its plans, though a DOT spokesperson said only that the agency was reviewing the findings.

The Canal Area Transportation Study process began in 2002, and the first phase ended with some relatively small improvements to the area, like high-visibility crosswalks, new signage, and temporary improvements near Allen Street. Since 2005, the second, larger-scale phase of the study has been underway, bringing together all the regional transportation agencies as well as others with a stake in the project.

The NYMTC team studied a wide array of congestion-busting ideas for the corridor. Some, like two-way tolling on the Verrazano Bridge or congestion pricing, were dismissed because they required legislative approvals well outside the project’s scope. Transit expansions, like bringing the PATH train north from the World Trade Center or building light rail on Canal, were rejected as too costly. Some ideas were nixed because they lacked community support or because they conflicted with New York City’s Street Design Manual. Other ambitious proposals, like keeping traffic off side streets including Pell, Doyers, Mosco, and Mulberry, were referred to the appropriate agency for further study.

What’s left still has a lot to like.

In addition to a few recommendations that have already been implemented, like a HOV lane on the Manhattan Bridge and a median on Bowery, the plan calls for significant new pedestrian amenities. Those include leading pedestrian intervals at intersections and a redesign for the intersection of Bowery and Canal, at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge. Curb extensions would be built on Canal at Varick Street, between Elizabeth and Mulberry and between Baxter and Lafayette, replacing traffic lanes.

A separate memo on parking policy [PDF] also puts forward some powerful suggestions for making the most of scarce curb access and reducing parking-induced driving. That document recommends a further crackdown on parking placards, which in Lower Manhattan would significantly cut traffic. It also suggests that Park Smart might be successful in the area and puts forward the goal of keeping ten percent of spaces open at all times, which Donald Shoup would approve of. Though the report does raise the idea of building more parking on the area’s periphery, it notes that this hasn’t been particularly successful in other downtowns.

But NYMTC recommends against one significant change. Putting a HOV3 lane through the Holland Tunnel, the NYMTC model found, would shift cars with one or two passengers from the Holland Tunnel to the Lincoln Tunnel, George Washington Bridge, and Staten Island crossings. A NYMTC spokesperson added that those new trips, since less direct, would likely add extra vehicle miles traveled overall, and that a HOV lane already exists for the approach to the tunnel on the Jersey City side. While the tunnel itself would have less traffic with a HOV lane, NYMTC projected, the Manhattan streets it empties into would just fill up again with other traffic from the over-congested streets nearby.

NYMTC also looked into turning Canal Street one-way headed east, pairing it with a westbound Grand Street. While that option would have allowed for even wider sidewalks on Canal, wrote NYMTC, “the wider Canal Street sidewalks in the one-way alternative would be offset by the negative traffic impact of the one-way pair on both Grand Street and Spring Street.” In other words, the cars won out over the pedestrians on that one.

The study also includes a wealth of data for those interested in the area’s travel patterns. Congestion on Canal Street is worst on Sundays, for example, because non-work trips mean that there are more turns onto side streets, more cruising for parking, and more passenger drop-offs. The sidewalks are the most overcrowded between Broadway and Centre Streets. And during the weekday rush, there are roughly equal amounts of vehicles crossing Manhattan, beginning or ending their trip in Manhattan, and traveling within the Canal Street area.

We have a few still shots for now, and some archival footage of the old Petrosino from the Streetfilms vault, featuring Streetsblog publisher Mark Gorton and Project for Public Spaces' Ethan Kent. Yes, they filmed this just four years ago:

After the jump, a shot from Robin showing the square's spiffy new bike parking.

A view of the new Petrosino from Spring Street.

MacPherson claims he's innocent.

Well, in addition to running the aforementioned shell game and bondage business, he pens a blog called Soho Politics, where he's been known to rail against car-free streets, bike lanes, and other measures to make the public right-of-way more pleasant for pedestrians, cyclists, and bus riders. Followers of the downtown community board scene knew MacPherson as an ally of the Soho Alliance's Sean Sweeney on CB 2, from which the alleged scammer recently resigned. Now the world knows him as the whips-n-chains guy who made a fraudulent fortune off the real estate bubble.

This stencil appeared on the corner of Manhattan's Duane and Greenwich Streets late last month. Our source tells us the message -- "DOT what will it be, traffic light or dead like me" -- stems from years of fruitless neighborhood efforts, as documented in this Streetfilm from 2006, to persuade the agency to install a signal at what residents say is a dangerous intersection. Community Board 1, Council Member Alan Gerson and Borough President Scott Stringer have joined the call, but to no avail.

Our tipster also speculates that this latest attempt could be the work of the SoHo Alliance, which we're told has also demonstrated for the cause. What say you, Mr. Sweeney? 

Sean Sweeney, the one-man show known as the Soho Alliance, has been sending this video around to the media, continuing his quest to preserve Soho streets for the convenience of motorists. What we basically have here is a careless truck driver butting grilles with a sociopath behind the wheel of an SUV. Sweeney's conclusion: Give these vehicles more street space and forget about providing cyclists with a basic safety amenity.

The head-scratching logic continues on his website, which bemoans congestion on Soho streets while railing against bike lanes, pedestrian zones, sidewalk cafes, and, in general, any measure that would actually mitigate traffic and improve conditions for people who walk and bike. The site touts clips of media outlets eating up Sweeney's act. Like the time Fox 5 put him on camera in a Grand Street hatchet job.

But where was Sean Sweeney and his media crusade in October, when a Con Ed worker was struck and killed by a truck on Grand Street? About that tragedy, the Soho Alliance site is silent.

Before Streetfilms were called Streetfilms, Clarence Eckerson and Streetsblog Publisher Mark Gorton identified Grand Street, with its expanse of asphalt forcing pedestrians to the margins, as a prime spot for space reclamation. Now home to a conniption-inducing parking-protected bike lane, check out this 2005 vid to see why Grand was due for a livable streets makeover.

Visit the old New York Streets Renaissance page for more goodies from the Streetfilms vault.

Don't be fooled: No one on a bike was quoted for this story.

"By putting in a bike lane protected by a row of parked cars, the city has essentially turned Grand Street into a single lane," correspondent Ti-Hua Chang tells us, neglecting to mention that Grand Street already had a bike lane and a single moving lane before the parking protection went into effect (in fact, drivers have more space in the new design to make right turns). The difference now is that double-parking actually has consequences for other drivers instead of cyclists, but you don't see any motorist-on-motorist recriminations here. Also unmentioned in this traffic blame-fest: free East River bridges and the low, low price of on-street parking.

What we get instead is a parting shot from Sean Sweeney -- the man who fought tooth and nail against the Prince Street bike lane -- invoking the specter of people burning to death as a result of this safety improvement. Good thing Fox 5 put him on camera.

Though modest by comparison, here's another first for this historic day. Manhattan Community Board 2's Ian Dutton sent over photos of the new Grand Street cycle track, the city's initial attempt at a parking-protected design.

Says Ian:

With a one-block exception, from Varick St. to Centre St. seems to be open for business, only lacking the bicycle symbols on the lane itself. The section through Little Italy and Chinatown is nearly complete, with a few minor surface details remaining.

My experience on two circuits today was that it worked beautifully. Cars were parked as expected and the "mixing zones" accommodating turning vehicles across the bike lane were handled unusually respectfully from drivers, who were probably not sure how to treat them. Not bad for the first (or maybe second) day.

There were a few pedestrians who stepped off the curb to cross the street and waited in the bike lane, but that is no different than any other bike lane. I'm very hopeful that we're off to a good start.

Photo pool contributor Jacob-uptown had similar things to say after cruising the new Grand: "Cars have learned where to park ... This is a huge precedent for creating these cheap yet highly effective bike lanes."

More pics after the jump. Note the overhead signage.

Snapped by Streetsblog regular Ian Dutton this afternoon: Crews prep Grand Street for the city's first physically-protected crosstown bike lane [PDF]. Stretching from Varick to Chrystie, the Grand Street cycle track features some new design touches on account of its placement on the right side of a narrow street. The guys on the crew say the finished markings will be in place by next Tuesday.

Manhattan Community Board 2's Ian Dutton sends along this shot of a motorist about to be ticketed for blocking the box on Broome Street at W. Broadway in SoHo. Yesterday, police and traffic agents stepped up enforcement of what is a normally ignored traffic regulation. However, writes Ian:

Note that blocking the box only applies to getting in the way of other cars, not blocking the crosswalk making it dangerous for pedestrians.

Commenter ddartley elaborates:

The bigger problem is blocking pedestrian crosswalks. It's a bigger problem because it happens more often, it affects more people (pedestrians outnumber motorists), and the risks of harm are far greater than mere car-obstructing (peds are forced to walk out into moving traffic every minute of ever day all around town). Nevertheless, the new law, while great, only deals specifically with cars in the middle of the intersection. It does not define ped crosswalks as part of "the box," so I wonder if TEAs are now ticketing cars blocking crosswalks.

Anyone else who witnessed yesterday's action notice whether agents were also ticketing for crosswalk violations?

DOT has unveiled plans for a Grand Street cycle track [PDF] that bear the fingerprints of Danish planner Jan Gehl. It would be Manhattan's first cross-town protected bike path.

Grand Street is narrower than Ninth Avenue, where the existing protected path runs. Whereas the Ninth Avenue cycle track uses signal timing to prevent conflicts between bikes and turning vehicles, the Grand Street plan uses what DOT is calling a "mixing zone," a space shared by cyclists and drivers at the approach to an intersection (shown above).

In an unusually thorough and bike-positive story about cycle tracks (headline: "Streets are on track for safer bike lanes"), Villager reporter Gabriel Zucker explains:

The narrow-street pilot on Grand St. lacks these special lights; instead, a 90-foot “mixing zone” where the bike lane merges with a right-turn bay will allow cyclists and motorists to negotiate the intersection themselves. The mixing zone, like the entire cycle track design, was copied from Copenhagen, Denmark. According to Josh Benson, New York City D.O.T. bicycle program coordinator, the zones have led to a steep decrease in intersection crashes in Copenhagen.

The Grand Street cycle track would run from Varick Street to Chrystie Street, making the lack of a protected path on Chrystie, a north-south route, look like an even bigger missed opportunity. As DOT creates a network-within-a-network of safer bike lanes, what's holding back protected paths? Community Board politics seem to be the determining factor. While the Grand Street path falls almost entirely within the boundaries of CB2, which recently approved an Eighth Avenue cycle track, Chrystie Street is the domain of CB3. Community Board votes are not binding, but they are seen as a proxy for public opinion.

CB2 voted on the Grand Street cycle track last night. A CB2 representative was not able to retrieve the results of the vote this morning.

Image: NYCDOT 

Mister Softee set up shop on the Prince Street bike lane near the corner of Broadway this weekend. Note the pedestrians squeezing through the narrow strip of sidewalk between the ice cream truck and the subway railing. Prince Street, you may recall, was slated to go car-free on Sunday's all summer long until the SoHo Alliance scuttled the deal back in March.

Have you got a good Eyes on the Street photo? Send it along.

A tipster sends this shot from earlier today of a newly-painted bike lane on Prince Street.

After the jump, DOT bike program coordinator Josh Benson answers a question from a City Room reader about painted lanes.

Q: I’ve seen green paint in the bike lanes in some neighborhoods (like Brooklyn Heights). How do I get them painted in my neighborhood? — Posted by Adamsky

A [Benson]: The high-visibility green bicycle lane on Henry Street in Brooklyn Heights is an experimental treatment we are testing on bicycle lanes where the potential for bicycle/motor vehicle conflict is high. It is our belief that the green markings will improve motorist awareness of bicycle lanes at key conflict points. Test locations include curbside bicycle lanes, such as Henry Street and Adams Street in Brooklyn, and Prince and Bleecker Streets in Manhattan and complex intersections such as Ninth Avenue and 14th Street in Manhattan. We are continuing to collect data on how the high-visibility green treatment affects driver and cyclist behavior as well as the durability of the treatment itself. If the treatment proves effective and durable, it will be integrated regularly into new bicycle lane projects to highlight points of potential conflict to motorists and cyclists. 

Here's some levity for a dreary Monday -- and an appropriate way to kick off bike month. Following up on a video from 2003, Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson recently took to the streets with bike mechanic Hal Ruzal of Bicycle Habitat, checking up on how effective city cyclists are in securing their rigs. Writes Clarence:

As with most sequels you need a new wrinkle. This time we thought we’d give Hal some company and invited former Recycle a Bicycle mechanic Kerri Martin (and founder of The Bike Church in Asbury Park, NJ) to weigh in with her expertise. Once again, bikes on the streets of SoHo provide lots of fodder for laughs and lessons to learn.