Streetsblog New York City

The New York City Parks Department has come up with a striking new method to demean pedestrians and cyclists and disrupt the public right-of-way.

Parks has allowed a catering hall called the Vanderbilt ("Staten Islands only oceanfront ballroom") to fence off a portion of the greenway running alongside the boardwalk in South Beach, according to a report in the Staten Island Advance. The fence forces greenway users to turn around and detour to Father Capodanno Boulevard, and it's already claimed a victim: Local resident Gregory DeRespino landed in the hospital with injuries to his shoulder, neck and calf, after unsuspectingly biking into the fence the morning it went up.

Vanderbilt manager Joe Tranchina received permission from Parks to put up the fence after pitching it as a safety precaution to reduce conflicts between greenway users and the restaurant's delivery vehicles and valet service. Apparently, someone at Parks gave the green light "on a trial basis," according to a department spokesperson quoted by the Advance.

You've got to wonder how the city allowed such an idea to reach this point. A private business just convinced Parks to let it block off the public right-of-way and "erase" street markings with what looks to be a hasty paintjob. Did they even have to fill out any paperwork, or does it just take a few phone calls? Neither the Parks Department nor Tranchina have returned our requests for information so far.

Hat tip to Meredith Sladek for alerting us to this story.

Here's something you'd like to see more of from the NYPD: Cops cracking down on speeders near a school zone. Reports the Staten Island Advance:

Staten Island's newest speed trap is snaring unsuspecting drivers who must drop from a highway speed of 50 mph to 30 mph on the off-ramp, to a 20-mph crawl outside a school zone off the South Avenue exit of the Staten Island Expressway.

Police have been issuing summonses to lead-footed drivers who missed or ignored the new diamond-shaped yellow signs alongside Goethals Road North in Graniteville, where the new Staten Island School of Civic Leadership for grades K-8 opened earlier this month.

The tickets were given out as part of a targeted enforcement initiative, police said. While officers won't be outside the school every day, it will be on their rotating list of "hot spots," because of the nature of the school zone, and because a pedestrian was hit on the street in the past.

So, enforcing the speed limit near an area swarming with kids -- everyone can get behind that, right? Not if you identify with those "unsuspecting drivers" more than the K-8 students who have to navigate the streets near their school. Proving that no form of traffic enforcement can avoid scorn from a certain subset of motorists, many Advance commenters take the speed trap as evidence of a city campaign to "milk the taxpayer."

As irresponsible as it may be to call speed enforcement a revenue-generating exercise, some of the complainers kind of have a point. This stretch of Goethals Road North is definitely sending some mixed signals. Those 20 mph school zone signs compete for drivers' attention with huge green highway signs on a street that looks designed for maximal vehicular flow. The stepped-up enforcement is great, and let's hope the cops keep it up, because the students at the School of Civic Leadership need it. They also need a street designed to put drivers on notice that doing 40 is totally wrong and unacceptable.

The recent motorist assault on a Staten Island cyclist is a symptom of anti-bike bias routinely displayed by local politicians and the Staten Island Advance, as chronicled on a web site encouraging action for safe streets.

Drawing exclusively on Advance coverage, Islander Rob Foran's site, called "Life or Death?," notes that City Council Members Vincent Ignizio and James Oddo, along with Borough President James Molinaro, have called on NYPD to excuse illegal bike lane parking, for the elimination of "sharrows" on Jefferson Avenue, and for the removal of the bike lane on Father Capodanno Boulevard, where Gregory DeRespino was allegedly yanked off his bike by irate driver Michael Graziuso in July. Graziuso now faces charges of assault and harassment.

For its part, three times in the past two months the Advance has editorialized against bike infrastructure, while criticizing NYPD for enforcing laws intended to keep drivers out of bike lanes. Here's a passage from the first screed, published July 4, entitled "The City's Bike Obsession":

More people should ride bicycles, for a number of reasons. But in the real world, that's not going to happen to the degree the cycling true believers fantasize about. Many people simply can't. And the great majority of those who have the physical ability have no desire to ride bicycles for transportation or sport -- especially on city streets. So hard-core cyclists will always be a finite minority, no matter how many bike lanes the city creates. And the notion that all these new lanes will promote a massive surge in cycling is pure fantasy.

Not only do they object to safer cycling conditions on the grounds that so few Staten Islanders bike -- in part because it isn't safe -- Advance editors claim that helpless motorists are bound to occasionally act out against cyclists who insist on exercising their right to the road.

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One of the more common excuses we've been hearing from local pols during the current MTA crisis is that "service never improves," so why bother to fund transit? Set aside, for the moment, the fact that subways and buses are moving way more New Yorkers than they did just a few years ago. Courtesy of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, here's an interesting case study of service actually getting worse and why it happened.

Last month, the state DOT opened the dedicated bus lane on the Staten Island Expressway to cars with two or more passengers. Tri-State's Michelle Ernst has more:

The conversion aims to appease some politicians and drivers who’ve pressured NYSDOT to open the bus lanes to cars since the lanes were opened. But even the commenters in the Staten Island Advance recognize that it will do little to alleviate congestion in the general purpose lanes, and will completely obliterate any time savings currently enjoyed by Staten Island’s bus riders.

The Expressway was widened to add the bus lane in 2005. Now, opening the busway to private cars turns that transit enhancement into a de facto highway expansion. Before the change, average bus speeds in the dedicated lane averaged 50 mph despite lax enforcement of the bus-only policy. With any multi-passenger car allowed in the lane, and even more license for solo drivers to break the rules, buses may soon move at the same speed as the regular traffic lanes -- 25 mph.

"There's already plenty of people carpooling on the Expressway," Ernst said. "This is just going to pull cars from the regular lanes and induce more traffic." The state DOT, for its part, says bus-exclusivity will be restored if riders end up saddled with slower rides.

So where did the political pressure come from? The Advance reports:

Many people welcome the change. Sen. Charles Schumer, Rep. Michael McMahon and Councilman James Oddo are three elected officials who have been outspoken in their support of the switch to HOV lanes.

Mr. Oddo said upon hearing of the DOT's plan, "Maybe they've woken up," adding, "You have to maximize the infrastructure."

Someone should inform the efficiency-minded Oddo that buses carry a lot more people than cars, and that potentially cutting their speeds in half is no way to "maximize infrastructure." Meanwhile, at least one of those Advance commenters is pinning responsibility on -- you guessed it -- the MTA.

Here's State Senator Andrew Lanza, a Staten Island Republican, explaining why he supports tolls on the East River bridges. For Staten Island drivers looking at a $3 hike in cash tolls to cross the Verrazano (or a $1.32 hike for locals with E-ZPass), the sight of other motorists getting a free pass into Manhattan must be a source of perpetual gall and resentment.

Lanza spends most of this video, however, in standard MTA-bashing mode, lashing out at the agency and unnamed politicians in other boroughs who "support" the doomsday scenario. Not a word about his fellow Senate Republicans, who refused to budge on an MTA rescue package that needed only a few more votes to pass. Lanza himself is on the record opposing the payroll tax in the Ravitch plan, so, by his own logic, you could say he also "supports" higher tolls on the Verrazano.

When you're about to set off a scenario of mutually assured destruction, the person who blinks first helps everyone win. Lanza could play a big part in walking the State Senate back from the brink of doomsday, and holding down the one-way toll on the Verrazano. All he has to do is reconsider the Ravitch plan and rally a few other Republicans to do the same. Hard to see how anything else would fulfill the promise he makes here to fight the MTA austerity plan "every step of the way." We called his Albany office to inquire about his plan and expect a response later today.

Two pedestrians were killed by drivers in Staten Island in separate incidents last week. Despite indications that both deaths were caused by careless driving -- one motorist struck an elderly man while making a left turn, the other jumped a curb and slammed into a man waiting for a bus -- only the driver involved in the latter crash faces charges, according to reports.

On Thursday, as Nathan Pakow, 47, waited for a bus at the intersection of Seaview Avenue and Capodanno Boulevard in the Ocean Breeze area, an out-of-control car driven by 19-year-old Joseph Catrama came up onto the sidewalk, pinning Pakow against a metal pole. Pakow was later pronounced dead at Staten Island University Hospital.

Catrama, a licensed driver for a little over a month, was suspected of speeding at the time of the crash. Police initially let him go, but a short time later a charge of criminally negligent homicide was issued, and Catrama surrendered to authorities.

Last Monday, 84-year-old World War II veteran Howard Adrian was hit by an SUV driver turning left at the intersection of Burgher Avenue and Hylan Boulevard in Dongan Hills. Adrian died Monday evening. A quote from the driver seems to paint the victim as the culpable party.

About two dozen relatives crowded the waiting room of Staten Island University Hospital's Intensive Care Unit in Ocean Breeze ... some sobbing, others raging against the driver who hit him.

That man, Michael Pierre of Castleton Corners, said he had just pulled out of the parking lot of the TD Bank on the corner; he made the left, he said, after the two cars ahead of him started moving.

"He [Adrian] tried to rush, you know, to cross the street," Pierre said.

No charges had been filed against Pierre as of last week, as Adrian's relatives and neighbors continue to grapple with the most basic of questions.

Alex Harris, who lived in the apartment above Adrian on Delaware Avenue, wondered why the driver didn't stop for Adrian as he crossed.

"Why wouldn't you slow down? You're not speeding to make a left turn," he said.

NYC DOT is proposing to turn Manhattan's 34th Street into a river-to-river "transitway."

In what she half-jokingly called "probably the first-ever co-presentation" between their two agencies, Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan stood with New York City Transit President Howard Roberts earlier this week to unveil the city's current Bus Rapid Transit program in its entirety -- including a plan that would "redefine the public realm" on Manhattan's 34th St. by redesigning it as the city's first "transitway."

At a forum co-hosted by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, Transportation Alternatives, the Pratt Center for Community Development and the Straphangers Campaign, over 100 people gathered at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx Tuesday morning, just a few blocks from where the city is poised to launch its first BRT project on Fordham Road, to hear international experts explain how other programs work, and don't work, around the world. Walter Hook, executive director of New York's Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, profiled elements of BRT models in cities like Jakarta, Indonesia and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where his organization has served a consultatory role. Oscar Edmundo Diaz, also with ITDP and once a senior advisor to former Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa, detailed the workings of the wildly successful TransMilenio, which Hook described as state-of-the-art in Bus Rapid Transit.

Outlining New York's plans, Sadik-Khan previewed big changes for some of the city's major corridors.

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Rev. Lyle Guttu, a fixture at Staten Island's Wagner College since 1972, was struck by an SUV in the West Brighton neighborhood of Staten Island last Saturday. He died Sunday evening.

The Staten Island Advance reports:

Guttu was crossing Bement, heading east from Chase Manhattan Bank at around 2:40 p.m. Saturday, when he was struck by a 2006 Nissan Pathfinder driven by 47-year-old Theresa Totorelli of West Brighton, according to a police report.

Ms. Tortorelli -- who had been heading west on Forest Avenue and just made a left onto Bement -- claimed she did not see Guttu in the road until it was too late.

Guttu was conscious when police arrived and complained of "pain all over his body," the report said.

There were no tickets issued at the scene, though police say an investigation is ongoing. Reports say Tortorelli was not speeding and was not under the influence of alcohol or drugs. According to NY1, the medical examiner "has ruled the death an accident, caused by the impact of the crash."

As Wagner faculty, alumni, and acquaintances and friends of Guttu pay their respects, SI Advance readers are debating who, if anyone, is responsible for the popular chaplain's death.

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"Walking is Transportation" blogger Dan Icolari has extensive coverage of last night's seventh and final Traffic Mitigation Commission hearing on Staten Island. He reports "a notable unanimity" among Staten Island's elected representatives. "Even South Shore Republican Councilman Vincent Ignizio -- a reliable foe of government whose salary is paid by government -- said that despite great skepticism, he was determined to keep an open mind."

All elected officials who attended (Borough President James Molinaro sent a representative) declared their support for some sort of congestion mitigation program––but only if Staten Island's share of the dollars on offer from the Feds were made commensurate with the problems of a borough whose average commute is acknowledged to be the longest in the entire country.

Staten Island may be New York City's most car-oriented borough, but Icolari notes that many of those who testified at last night's hearing advocated for improving mass transit:

Patrick Hyland of the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce expressed his organization's support for Congestion Pricing, provided five thoughtful recommendations that address a range of transit-related problems experienced island-wide are implemented. Significantly, every recommendation involves mass transit.

•Reinstitution of rail service (roadbeds are deteriorated but right-of-way is intact)
•Increase in the number of Bus Rapid Transit routes (the first and so far the only such route was instituted earlier this year; ridership was surprisingly strong from the beginning and continues to grow)
•Fast ferry service to and from the South Shore--the most remote and least well served by mass transit of the island's three community board areas
•Full extension of the currently limited-distance express bus lane on the Staten Island Expressway, and
•A fourth bus depot (the third, already in the MTA capital budget, has already been outpaced by demand for express bus service)

The hearing, amazingly, adjourned 10 minutes early, at 8:50 pm. Icolari writes:

I took the bus home. No one else from the hearing joined me. We've obviously got a lot of work to do on Staten Island. But the (very) conditional willingness of many Staten Islanders to at least consider some sort of pricing scheme to reduce traffic and improve local mass transit services was encouraging.

After a weekend that saw three pedestrian fatalities and just as many serious injuries -- with no known criminal charges filed against any of the motorists involved as of this writing -- a Manhattan-based advocacy group has renewed calls for action on pedestrian safety.

Spurred by the death of third-grader Prince Harris, Jr. (pictured), the fourth pedestrian to die this year along a notorious stretch of Ninth Avenue, the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition (CHEKPEDS) is again urging the city to convene an interagency panel "to address this critical health issue."

On Friday, 8-year-old Harris was on his way to a park with his father and siblings when he reportedly "darted on W. 17th St." and was hit by a Toyota Scion, driven by an unidentified 44-year-old man. Harris's father said the Toyota and a taxi "were speeding down the block to make the light." The driver stayed at the scene and was not issued a ticket.

Today CHEKPEDS issued an e-mail bulletin offering condolences to the Harris family, and imploring the city to turn its attention to the pedestrian casualty epidemic.

The "new DOT" is moving fast and all problems cannot be tackled in one day. Priorities must be set, and in our book none is more important than pedestrian safety. 11,000 injuries and 163 deaths annually would qualify as a national disaster if they were all happening in one day. But they keep happening year after year.

In March, CHEKPEDS worked with Community Board 4 to draft a letter (PDF) to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer asking them to organize a citywide task force "bringing the various players to the table to address street and signal engineering, agencies jurisdiction, enforcement and traffic safety laws, reporting traffic problems and police procedures in accidents." But it hasn't happened.

Also over the weekend, a speeding taxicab jumped a curb and struck three members of the same family, killing 60-year-old TV helicopter pilot Paul Smith; no criminal charges have thus far been reported. On Staten Island, a 4-year-old is "fighting for her life" after being hit by a car yesterday while trying to cross the street with a group of other children; the unidentified driver was not ticketed. And yesterday morning in Coney Island, the driver of a charter bus making a U-turn hit an 60-year-old woman, knocking her down and running over her abdomen; the driver was not charged.

This weekend's carnage comes after last week's angry memorials to Hope Miller and Julia Thomson, who were run down five days apart at the end of September.

Photo of Prince Harris via New York Daily News