The Bronx's second Select Bus Service route is planned for Webster Avenue, marked as #1 on this map of high-priority routes for bus improvements. Image: NYC DOT/MTA

A new crop of bus routes is moving into the pipeline for implementation as Select Bus Service. The MTA and NYC DOT are in the initial stages of bringing SBS to the Bronx’s Webster Avenue, where the most unreliable bus in the borough runs, and to Brooklyn’s Utica Avenue, the second-busiest bus route in the city.

The innovations of SBS — pre-paid boarding, dedicated bus lanes, priority at traffic signals — have sped buses and attracted new riders on Fordham Road, First and Second Avenues, and 34th Street. And they can work on bus lines all over the city. So as the first round of SBS implementation comes to a close (lines on Nostrand Avenue and Hylan Boulevard are scheduled for completion in the next year or two), the development of new routes is a welcome signal that the MTA and NYC DOT are committed to bringing bus improvements to more New Yorkers.

The city’s first Select Bus Service line launched on Fordham Road in the Bronx in 2008, and it’s been a smashing success. Bus speeds increased by 20 percent and ridership by 30 percent. So expanding SBS to more routes in the borough is a no-brainer. The choice of the Bx41 for the upgrade was first reported in the Daily News yesterday.

“There was a lot of support in the Bronx for doing a route along Webster Avenue,” an MTA spokesperson told Streetsblog. “This would be a full-fledged SBS route with all the features offered by the Bx12 and the M15.”

Running down Webster, the Bx41 has relatively high ridership — 7.6 million annual riders — but was ranked the most unreliable bus in the borough this year by the Straphangers Campaign. Perhaps in part because of all that bus bunching, ridership on the route has been in free fall. The Bx41 saw one million fewer trips in 2010 than in 2009, according to the MTA.

There’s no roll-out date for the Bx41 yet, according to the MTA, and any eventual route will need to go through a public review process.

Though there’s no mention of Webster Avenue on the joint NYC DOT/MTA website dedicated to SBS, there is a new page on that site marking the start of planning for bus improvements along Brooklyn’s Utica Avenue.

Both Webster and Utica Avenues were identified as targets for bus improvements in a 2009 joint DOT/MTA study mapping out potential routs for the second phase of Select Bus Service. Each was considered an “underserved area”: a corridor that was far from the subway yet densely developed.

Along Utica, it’s not yet clear what shape the bus improvements would take. DOT started conducting a study on both transit and traffic safety conditions this October — in addition to carrying 16 million annual bus riders, Utica is also one of Brooklyn’s most dangerous streets — and the study will be complete this spring, according to the website. The study only covers a stretch of Utica a bit longer than a mile, however, between St. John’s Place and Church Avenue. Once the study is complete, DOT will develop a menu of options to improve safety and transit service and present them to the public.

The driver who dragged Milo Montivilla down Broadway in the Bronx says he never saw him. Photo: Daily News

A 57-year-old Bronx man was struck and killed by a school bus driver on Tuesday.

According to reports, at around 6:00 a.m. Milo Montivilla was crossing with the light at Broadway and Mosholu Avenue in North Riverdale when the bus driver, turning right, ran him over. The Daily News interviewed a witness at the scene:

“He was walking to catch his bus and the [school] bus just hit him and dragged him down the street,” said the witness, who declined to give her name.

“He was under it for a good 10 minutes. I couldn’t believe it.”

The witness said the bus operator did not appear to have seen the pedestrian and continued driving.

“Everybody was screaming, ‘You hit someone! You hit someone!’ Everyone bum-rushed the street,” she said.

“That’s when he stopped and got out. Everyone was on their phones calling the cops.”

The driver was too distressed to talk at the scene but could be overheard telling a supervisor on the phone: “I didn’t see him. It was too dark.”

The driver’s identity was not released. He was not charged.

“I didn’t seem him/her” are the magic words for the motorist who pulverizes another person, even if the victim is breaking no laws, is directly in front of the vehicle when hit, and is dragged down the street until passersby intervene. The driver’s speed, the possibility that he was distracted in some way — these factors seemingly become irrelevant to police and prosecutors when presented with the invisible pedestrian or cyclist defense, despite state laws enacted to protect vulnerable street users from everyday driver negligence.

The crash that killed Milo Montivilla occurred in the 50th Precinct. The commanding officer there is Captain Kevin J. Burke. To voice your concerns about neighborhood traffic safety directly to Captain Burke or other precinct higher-ups, drop in on the next community council meeting. The 50th Precinct council meets the second Thursday of every month at the station house, located at 3450 Kingsbridge Avenue, at 7:30 p.m. Be sure to call ahead (718-543-5978) to confirm meeting times and dates.

The "gateway" treatment at Longfellow Avenue and 167th Street marks the lower speed limit with prominent signage and stenciling on the street. A new speed hump is just visible in the background. Photo: Noah Kazis

The city’s first “neighborhood slow zone” officially opened this morning, bringing a 20 mph speed limit and new traffic calming treatments to the residential Claremont neighborhood in the Bronx. Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, joined by Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., City Council Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca and local District Manager John Dudley, announced that the 20 mph zones would soon be coming to neighborhoods across the city. Starting today, residents and community boards can apply for their own slow zone.

The new Claremont zone covers the roughly 35 city blocks bounded by 167th Street, 174th Street, Southern Boulevard and West Farms Road/Boone Avenue. At each entrance to the zone, street signs flank the road announcing the 20 mph limit and that it is a residential area. Inside the zone, stencils and street signs continue to trumpet the lower speed limit. Nine new speed humps have been added to five already in place, which Sadik-Khan said makes the zone largely self-enforcing. In London, slow-speed zones incorporating traffic-calming treatments are preventing dozens of deaths and serious injuries each year.

Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., City Council Transportation Committee Chair Jimmy Vacca and District Manager John Dudley announced the opening of the Claremont neighborhood slow zone. Photo: Noah Kazis

“To some people, this neighborhood is nothing more than a shortcut,” said Sadik-Khan. That attitude, she noted, has had deadly results. In the last five years, 46 people were killed or seriously injured in traffic crashes in the larger community district between 2006 and 2010. The slower speeds would restore the streets to the community, she said. “Our streets are for New Yorkers. They’re where we live, where we play, where we shop.”

“The slow zone is now one where pedestrians will feel safe,” said Diaz, who said he’d been hearing complaints about safety in the area since he served in the state Assembly. Diaz touted the fact that the program would be expanding to other neighborhoods. “This is not going to stop at Claremont,” he said.

Vacca, too, celebrated the safety improvements. “They will save lives,” he declared. In addition to the speed bumps slowing down cars, he urged motorists to respect the speed limit voluntarily. “Look at your speedometers and see how fast you’re already going, and then slow down,” he said.

The form to get your own neighborhood slow zone is already live on DOT’s website, where the agency lays out the characteristics that will lead to successful applications. DOT is looking for zones that include schools, daycare centers, senior centers, and mostly residential uses, taking up an area roughly five blocks by five blocks and set off by clear boundaries, such as parks or major roads. The city wants to keep the slow zones separate from commercial areas, bus and truck routes and hospitals and fire stations.

Applications must come from community boards, business improvement districts, civic associations or elected officials, and are due by February 3. The first round of slow zones will be selected in March, according to DOT, and installed over the course of next year.

More photos of the slow zone below:

New speed humps are paired with closely spaced signs announcing the bumps and the speed limit. Photo: Noah Kazis

Even where speed bumps weren't placed, striping narrows travel lanes for drivers and stencils remind them of the lower speed limit. Photo: Noah Kazis

Funded with a federal TIGER grant, the DCP study will examine much more than the effect of a highway removal on traffic. Especially encouraging: The department wants to use a “triple bottom line” approach, measuring the impact of any decision on the economy, society, and environment. “For example, a road geometry change could reduce vehicle capacity but also reduce air pollution, maintenance costs, and injuries to pedestrians,” the agency explains in its slideshow.

That kind of perspective is a world apart from the New York State Department of Transportation’s approach. The state DOT’s most recent analysis of a Sheridan removal studied only traffic impacts, and based its evaluation on the unrealistic assumption that nothing would replace a decommissioned Sheridan.

DCP, in contrast, is studying three scenarios: one with the Sheridan kept in place, another with the expressway turned into a boulevard (think West Street or San Francisco’s Embarcadero), and a third with no road at all. In every case, major improvements to the Bruckner Expressway would be installed, including a new exit that would significantly improve truck access to the Hunts Point food market. Some of the opportunities DCP identified for the area, such as fostering development along the East Tremont Avenue corridor, could take place regardless of what happens to the Sheridan. Others, like the redevelopment of a small industrial zone sandwiched between the Sheridan and the Bronx River, DCP identified as contingent on changes to the expressway.

The Sheridan team will also investigate how each option would affect real estate values and employment, not only at existing job centers like the food market but also on newly developable land along or on top of the highway’s footprint. Additionally, the city is collecting new traffic data to improve transportation modeling.

The overall framework put together by DCP includes a number of goals, like improving waterfront access and pedestrian mobility, that are essentially incompatible with the Sheridan as it currently stands. Other goals include improving truck access to Hunts Point, which could be sufficiently achieved through the new off-ramps and other Bruckner improvements, but might end up cutting against a Sheridan teardown.

Early in the study process, local advocates had voiced complaints about DCP’s method and outreach, but those were quickly rectified. For now, DCP is compiling an honest and complete accounting of the costs and benefits of tearing down the Sheridan.

James Vacca and Janette Sadik-Khan take advantage of new pedestrian countdown timers crossing 165th Street at the Grand Concourse. Photo: Noah Kazis.

City Council Transportation Chair James Vacca showed his safety supporter side at a press conference in the Bronx this morning. Standing with DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan at the corner of the Grand Concourse and 165th Street to announce the installation of countdown pedestrian signals, Vacca had strong words for speeding motorists and endorsements for both automated speeding enforcement and slow speed zones.

“The accidents are too many and the speed is unacceptable,” said Vacca of the Grand Concourse. That avenue had 411 pedestrian injuries between 2005 and 2009 and nine pedestrian fatalities, according to Sadik-Khan. Vacca heartily endorsed the installation of countdown timers along the Grand Concourse, saying he hoped to see them throughout the city.

The countdown signals have also already been installed along Queens Boulevard, Hillside Avenue and Kissena Boulevard in Queens and West Street in Manhattan, among other streets. They will eventually be come to 1,500 intersections citywide.

Off the Concourse, Vacca called for two measures in particular to keep speeds down. He repeated his endorsement of 20 mile per hour speed limits, saying they could work in many neighborhoods, given “local input” in the process. Vacca had hoped that the city’s first 20 mile per hour speed zone would be located in his district, though DOT selected the Claremont section of the Bronx for the first site.

Vacca also urged Albany to pass legislation allowing the city to install automated cameras to enforce the speed limit. “Many motorists have to look themselves in the mirror,” he said. A pedestrian hit at 30 miles per hour, the New York City speed limit, has an 80 percent chance of surviving the crash; a pedestrian hit at 40 miles per hour has only a 30 percent chance of survival. Speeding, said Vacca, is “something we can’t have any tolerance for.”

Vacca’s commitment to promoting street safety through enforcement stands in tension with his positions on redesigning the streets themselves for the same purpose. The transportation committee chair seems more willing to let speeding continue if reining it in would require taking away a parking space, building a bike lane or creating a pedestrian plaza.

Last year, City Council Member James Vacca supported a plan to increase parking minimums in the red striped areas, which largely run along the path of the 6 train through the Bronx. For a larger version of the image, click here.

The Bronx is booming. Over the last decade, no borough added more new residents or posted faster wage growth.

The Bronx’s incredible resurgence even attracted national attention last week from USA Today, which turned to City Council Member James Vacca to explain the wave of residential development in the borough. Vacca used the opportunity to basically argue for halting growth in much of the outer boroughs, advocating for restrictions on density and higher parking requirements.

As both a council member and a community board district manager, Vacca has responded to rising demand for housing by fighting for zoning changes that would lock in a more car-centric cityscape. Neighborhoods like Throgs Neck were granted the city’s special suburban-style classification (the technical term is “Lower Density Growth Management Area“), meaning even more parking and even larger yards are now required for new development.

Regrettably, there’s nothing unusual about New York’s representatives closing the door to development in their neighborhoods by pushing for a major downzoning, even near transit. Swathes of the city have seen development restricted, nearly always to cheers from residents and elected officials.

On a City Council full of believers in subsidized parking, Vacca has managed to distinguish himself with a laser-like focus on providing more and cheaper parking, even right next to the subway. In explaining why development had to be limited, the transportation chair told USA Today, “Many of these row houses that went up came without parking or adequate parking.”

Nowhere has Vacca’s commitment to high parking requirements been more evident than in a rezoning adopted last March for the Westchester Square and Pelham Bay neighborhoods of the Bronx, which he strongly supported.

In 2006, the Department of City Planning had rezoned most of the area as low-density districts with high parking requirements. Along the last six stops of the 6 train, however, urban-style growth would still be allowed. In fact, City Planning explicitly reduced parking requirements on shopping streets close to transit. The East Bronx would be allowed to stay semi-suburban, but not near the subway.

Last year’s change effectively undid that policy, hiking parking requirements in the same areas where they had been left low.

Mandatory parking ratios were increased from three parking spots for every ten dwellings to five. Perhaps more importantly, the changes prevent developers from subdividing their lots to earn a waiver from the parking requirements. Waivers are commonly used to get around parking requirements, so much so that Department of City Planning officials count on them to mitigate the impact of imposing high parking minimums.

For the purpose of parking regulations, last year’s change even makes the areas along the 6 a “Lower Density Growth Management Area,” despite the fact that City Planning reserves that designation for areas that are “generally distant from mass transit.” While other rezonings have forced more parking into new development, few if any have so deliberately injected parking around subway stations.

“Many of our apartment houses in Pelham Bay are pre-World War II,” Vacca told Streetsblog at the time, meaning they were built without parking. “Everybody’s complaining about the lack of parking. They come home at night and can’t get a parking space.”

As transportation committee chair of America’s most car-free city, Vacca considers himself a supporter of mass transit. When he pushed for this rezoning, though, he didn’t think the area’s subway and bus lines would be able to serve East Bronx residents. “Although I have the 6 train,” he said, “not everyone has easy access to the 6 train.” That’s true, but a quick glance at the map of last year’s changes shows the argument is largely irrelevant; the affected areas have strong access to the 6.

More people want to live in the East Bronx than live there now — that what keeps motivating Vacca to bring up parking, whether in the land use process or to USA Today. And the demand exists for housing without parking attached; the developers’ repeated willingness to subdivide their lots in order to earn a waiver is testament to that. Ultimately, Vacca would rather fill that space in his district with cars instead of people.

Though the 2 train runs up White Plains Road, the Department of City Planning has proposed downzoning all the areas bounded by yellow on either side of the street. Image: NYC DCP

The Department of City Planning’s commitment to rezoning the city along more transit-oriented lines is a critical component of its sustainability agenda. Allowing more people to live and work next to transit means more people will ride transit and fewer will drive.

Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden, upzonings have indeed been concentrated near transit. But what the administration gives with one hand, it takes with the other. Over the last decade, the Department of City Planning has also downzoned large swaths of transit-accessible land, preventing further development in these locations. Indeed, under one representative five-year period of Bloomberg and Burden’s city planning, three-quarters of the lots rezoned for greater density were located within a half-mile of rail transit, but so were two-thirds of the lots where development was further restricted, according to research by NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.

The pattern still holds. In fact, some of DCP’s most recent rezonings are restricting development on blocks literally around the corner from a subway stop.

Take the Williamsbridge/Baychester rezoning in the Bronx, which the City Planning Commission certified last month. There, an elevated train, the 2, runs up White Plains Avenue. Along White Plains itself, DCP proposes to either maintain the existing rules or allow slightly more growth. But turn the corner off the main street even a fraction of a block, and the department is seeking to sharply curtail the opportunity for growth.

At the 219th Street station, for example, the allowable floor area ratio (or FAR), a measure of density, would drop from 2.43 to 1.25 as soon as you move east off of White Plains. Parking minimums would rise, requiring 85 parking spots for every 100 homes (up from a 70 percent ratio). To the immediate northwest of the station, the proposed zoning would be even stricter, with a FAR of 1.1 and a parking space required for each new residential unit.

The story is the same one stop further north at 225th Street. Walk one short block south of the station, turn left and the allowable FAR drops to 0.9, again with a parking space required for each unit.

Two sides of the Baychester Avenue stop on the 5 line are slated for the same extremely restrictive zoning, but in that case there won’t even be any upzoning along a main street to compensate for it.

Those neighborhoods are in the northeast Bronx, near the end of the subway system. Even so, transit is heavily used in the area; in that City Council district, less than half of residents drive to work.

Moreover, DCP is tightening its zoning precisely because developers want to build in these areas. Explaining the need for the new restrictions, the department writes on its website that “the residential neighborhoods in the rezoning area have been experiencing development pressure” and that the new rules are needed to “preserve the scale and context of these areas.”

Richard Gorman, the chair of Bronx Community Board 12, put it more explicitly. “We are all extremely excited about the proposed rezoning,” he told the Bronx Times-Reporter. “We have low-density communities, and we would like to keep that character alive here.”

Surprisingly, City Planning claims that this rezoning is transit-oriented. Said DCP Commissioner Amanda Burden to the Times-Reporter, “In keeping with our commitment to transit-oriented growth, this rezoning would direct development away from residential side streets with small homes, to blocks than can accommodate new commercial and housing opportunities.” DCP did not respond to Streetsblog inquiries for this story.

Williamsbridge and Baychester are far from exceptional cases. Another DCP proposal currently working its way through the public review process will change the development rules for Sunnyside and Woodside in western Queens. That plan includes some significant upzonings near transit, near the 40th Street 7 station, for example. But while DCP pushed for more growth near some rail stations, it proposed restrictions near others.

In the four-block area between the 65th Street station on the M and R lines and the 69th Street station on the 7, for example, DCP is seeking to reduce the allowable density of development while adding a requirement that all new residences include a front yard. The yard must be at least as deep as that of the yard next door and no less than five feet deep.

Every time the Bloomberg administration restricts development near transit, it means people who would want to live or locate businesses there cannot. The forestalled development will be pushed somewhere else, perhaps away from transit, out in the suburbs, or out of the New York region altogether. Those would-be transit riders will drive and New York housing prices will rise. It’s hard to see how actively halting or shrinking development near transit squares with the goals of PlaNYC.

Bright blue signs in the roadbed will inform drivers that they are entering the city's new 20 mph zone in Claremont. Image: NYC DOT

Last month DOT announced plans for the city’s first 20 mph zone, located in the Claremont section of the Bronx. The agency’s presentation to the local community board is now online [PDF], so you can see how DOT plans to implement the slow zone strategy in what could be the first of several neighborhoods. The approach is low-cost but should be effective: Every entrance to the area will be marked with a highly visible “gateway” announcing the reduced speed limit, and the neighborhood will be blanketed with regularly-spaced speed humps.

A number of factors led DOT to select this quarter square mile of Claremont for the city’s first slow zone. There are five schools in the area, and the streets are relatively dangerous — the number of injuries per mile is higher than almost three-quarters of NYC’s streets. The DOT presentation also notes that Claremont has clearly defined boundaries, with an elevated train on the west and the Sheridan Expressway on the east, making it easier to set the zone apart from the other city streets.

When drivers enter that zone, it will be immediately clear that they are meant to slow down. At each entry point, large signs announcing the 20 mph zone and surface markings narrowing the right-of-way will replace one parking space on each side of the street. Compare the rendering above to a typical school zone treatment, where the signs don’t figure so prominently within the motorist’s field of vision:

School zone signs on Lorillard Place in the Bronx. Image: Google Street View

Within the borders of the slow zone, DOT will add speed humps at regular intervals to physically enforce the 20 mph limit. Near the five schools, the speed humps will be spaced to keep traffic moving even slower, at 15 mph. Between the speed humps, markings on the street will regularly remind drivers of the speed limit.

The 20 mph zone approach has proved enormously successful in London. There, more than 400 slow zones have been put in place, covering 11 percent of the road length of the city. In some of them, speeds are controlled with physical traffic calming measures, and in others, cameras enforce the 20 mph limit. The total number of serious traffic fatalities and injuries has fallen by 46 percent within London’s slow zones, according to the British Medical Journal, preventing an estimated 27 deaths and serious injuries each year.

The gateway to a 20 mph zone in London, including a raised crosswalk. Photo: ITDP Europe/Flickr

Peter and Lillian Sabados were killed by a driver who had racked up 29 license suspensions. The calls for stricter licensing procedures following their deaths were far less numerous than the calls for reforming the tour bus industry following last week's fatal casino bus crash in the Bronx.

Much of the attention has centered around whether Ophadell Williams, the bus’s driver, should have been licensed to operate the bus in the first place. Governor Andrew Cuomo took a break from high-stakes budget negotiations to order an investigation of Williams’ driving and criminal records and Senator Chuck Schumer has called for the state DMV to audit every driver’s license held by a tour bus driver. Said Schumer in a WNYC report, “Looking after a crash, or a spot check while the driver is behind the wheel, that’s good, but what would be better is preventing these people who shouldn’t be driving, from getting behind the wheel in the first place.”

Schumer’s focus on prevention must be cold comfort to the family of Peter and Lillian Sabados. The elderly couple were killed in a hit-and-run crash while walking to Thanksgiving Mass in 2009. Their killer, Allmir Lekperic, had amassed at least 29 license suspensions in the three years beforehand. Any attempt to prevent Lekperic from getting behind the wheel in the first place was clearly ineffective.

You’d never know it from watching the news this week, but there are far more Allmir Lekperics in the world than deadly bus drivers. Each year, around 375 people are killed in bus crashes nationwide, according to a 2009 report by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration [PDF]. The bulk of those deaths come from crashes involving school buses and transit buses; charter and tour buses were involved in only 396 out of 2,629 fatalities between 1999 and 2005, around 57 a year.

Compare that to the number of people killed in crashes with improperly licensed drivers. One in five fatal traffic crashes nationwide involves at least one driver without a valid license, according to research by the AAA Foundation [PDF]. Those crashes killed an average of 8,801 people each year.

Crashes involving unlicensed drivers, therefore, killed more than 154 times as many people as all crashes involving charter buses.

Here in New York, the problem is just as acute. According to Transportation Alternatives, unlicensed drivers are four times as likely to be involved in traffic crashes as properly licensed drivers, but 75 percent of motorists with suspended licenses continue to drive.

Attempts to ensure that private automobiles are driven by people with proper licenses never seem to get the traction that the current push to regulate tour bus operators has managed to generate. A bill introduced in the state legislature last session, which would have increased the penalties for drivers with suspended licenses who cause serious injuries, went nowhere. A 2009 City Council resolution on the issue was ignored at its hearing and died in committee. And of course, one important reform proposed by Governor Eliot Spitzer — allowing undocumented immigrants to apply for a driver’s license — was abandoned after two months of intense political opposition.

Over the last week and a half we’ve seen an extraordinary focus on the importance of licensing to ensuring traffic safety. If the goal is to save lives, however, rather than score political points in the wake of a high-profile tragedy, the focus needs to include private cars, not just tour buses.

This block of Bathgate Avenue will have two fewer affordable apartments as a result of parking minimums. Image: Google Street View.

Parking minimums continue to stymie the creation of affordable housing in New York City, according to an architect who frequently designs those projects. When a rezoning suddenly put parking minimums in effect for an affordable housing project in the Bronx, Richard Ferrara of DeLaCour & Ferrara Architects was forced to cut apartments out of the building.

The HUD-sponsored project, located on Bathgate Avenue between 183rd and 184th Streets, was originally slated to be an 18-unit building. Under the zoning that used to govern the site, the parking minimums were low enough that fewer than five spaces were required, said Ferrara. With such a small number of required spaces, the project was eligible for a waiver, meaning it didn’t need to build any parking at all.

In October, however, the area was classified as a “neighborhood preservation area” by the Department of City Planning in its Third Avenue/Tremont Avenue rezoning. The new zoning, known as R6A, carries slightly higher parking requirements for affordable projects [PDF]. “When we went down to an R6A,” said Ferrara, “it put us in a position where we couldn’t get the parking waived.” In effect, the rezoning added parking requirements where there hadn’t been any before.

Including the now-required parking in the project came at the cost of affordable housing. “We had to reduce the number of apartments. We wound up losing two apartments,” said Ferrara.

In general, said Ferrara, parking minimums add to the cost of projects. “There’s a cost implication,” he said. “In some places you have to go into the cellar, it becomes more expensive.”

Even though he reported that it’s “not uncommon” to subdivide a project into smaller buildings in order to receive a waiver for each half, Ferrara said even that “is a cost item.” If you subdivided a taller project to avoid parking requirements, you’d have to spend twice the money and space on elevators, he offered as an example.

Two affordable units are not, on their own, the difference between an affordable housing market and an unaffordable one. But if it’s routine for parking requirements to cut 11 percent of the units out of other affordable projects, the impact would be substantial indeed. That’s not a price worth paying for the dubious goal of making it easier and cheaper to drive in New York City.

The green jobs working group presents its recommendations for a PlaNYC update. Photo: Noah Kazis

The Bronx wants to see the next version PlaNYC go further and be more equitable than the original. At last night’s public outreach event for the upcoming revision of the city’s sustainability agenda, dubbed a “Community Conversation,” Bronx residents demanded that PlaNYC 2.0 be far bolder in its efforts to green the city — and especially their environmentally disadvantaged borough. Whether by tearing down the Sheridan Expressway, tackling truck traffic, or eliminating parking minimums, they want the city to step up its sustainable transportation efforts in particular.

The evening began with a staffer from the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability explaining the benefits that Bronx residents had already reaped from PlaNYC, like 102,000 new trees planted in the borough, the city’s first Select Bus Service route, or shifts away from the dirty heating oils that have contributed to asthma rates among Bronx residents far above those of the other boroughs.

That same presentation also tipped off the audience to a few issues that are likely to make it into the updated PlaNYC: the city’s solid waste disposal and food distribution systems. Both rely heavily on truck traffic and impose a particular burden on Bronx neighborhoods.

But the participants in last night’s forum wanted more. The climate change working group, for example, said a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gases wasn’t good enough. They called for a 50 percent drop by 2030.

The open space group praised new parks like Concrete Plant Park, built on a remediated brownfield. But those parks aren’t worth much, they argued, if the city doesn’t make it easy to reach them. “You want people to walk to a park, but you don’t want them walking under a highway,” said a member of the group presenting its findings.

Concrete Plant Park is separated from all residential neighborhoods by the Sheridan Expressway, which many last night called to tear down. “Decommissioning the Sheridan, it would allow access to the parks that have been developed,” said an environmental justice organizer with Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice.

And in the transportation group, the participants weren’t taking any excuses from the city. After high school student Govin Baichu named the MTA’s service cuts as a top priority for him, the mayor’s office employee pleaded that the city doesn’t control the MTA.

Devona Sharpe, an organizer with the Bronx River Alliance, wasn’t ready to accept that answer, however. “They still make it very easy to drive,” she noted, arguing that the city can prioritize sustainable transportation modes if it wants to. She pointed to low on-street parking costs, the city’s support for large parking garages, and city streets that are designed primarily for private vehicles as three ways the city unduly prioritizes cars.

The transportation group also pushed hard for the PlaNYC update to include a strategy for greening freight transport, not just passenger travel, and for ensuring that environmental burdens are shared more equally across the city. “We get a lot of the trucks transporting things for all the other parts of the city,” said Juan Carlos Ruiz, deputy director of Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice. “There is this mentality that we are the dumpster of the city, and that needs to be addressed.”

Because the goals of PlaNYC are interconnected, transportation issues came up in other groups’ presentations as well. The open space group called for more waterfront greenways, for example. The air quality group advocated not only for cleaner vehicles, whether powered by natural gas or electricity, but also for reducing the speed limit in the city to 20 miles per hour.

There is one more Community Conversation scheduled, for next week, in Queens. After that, community boards will have a chance to comment on the PlaNYC update this winter.

With an official vision for what could replace the Sheridan Expressway funded by a TIGER II grant, teardown advocates stand a much better chance. This rendering came from the community-based South Bronx River Watershed Alliance.

The TIGER II leaks keep coming. Here in New York, Congressman José Serrano just announced two winners of the much-sought-after federal funds (hat tip to the Tri-State Transportation Campaign on the news). $1.5 million will fund a planning study of the Sheridan Expressway area, which could provide a big boost for efforts to replace that little-used highway with housing, jobs, and parks. Another $10 million will go toward the redesign of Fordham Plaza, one of the most important spaces for transit and pedestrians in the city.

The Sheridan study could advance highway teardown plans by taking the blinkers off the state DOT’s analysis. In deciding whether to rehab the highway or decommission it, the agency is putting a finger on the scales by refusing to consider the positive benefits of whatever might replace the highway. It’s only comparing a Sheridan that carries traffic to a Sheridan  that carries no traffic — and who wants a blocked-off highway?

Thanks to the TIGER grant, there may soon be an officially sanctioned vision for the area’s future, and the hope of replacing the neighborhood-sapping expressway is much brighter.

“We are eager to remake this area into a livable, walkable and green section of our community, and this is the first step towards achieving that goal,” Serrano said in his press release.

The funding for the Fordham project is also an exciting development for livable streets. With the third-busiest Metro-North station in the system, eight bus lines, and more foot traffic than Penn Station, Fordham Plaza has the potential to be one of New York City’s great public spaces. However, poor design means it’s also home to the third-deadliest intersection in the city. The proposed redesign would not only improve safety at Fordham, it would create 15,750 square feet of new pedestrian space and speed buses along as well.

We’re looking into whether any of New York’s other TIGER II applications earned a nod from US DOT.

A man walking on this Cross-Bronx Expressway exit ramp was killed in a hit-and-run early this morning. Image: Google Street View.

A 69-year-old Hispanic man was struck and killed at 4:02 this morning on the Amsterdam Avenue/Major Deegan exit of the Cross-Bronx Expressway, according to the NYPD. The man, who has not been identified, was walking westbound along the exit ramp when the driver struck him and was pronounced dead at the scene.

The driver fled the scene and the police investigation is ongoing. There are no suspects at this time.

Only two weeks ago, another New Yorker was killed while walking on the highway; in that case, he was trying to cross the Harlem River Drive. One reader speculated that the victim may have been trying to get to the waterfront park on the other side of the highway, which is notoriously hard to reach on foot. The police do not know why this crash victim was walking on the Cross-Bronx.

Pedro Espada didn't show up for last night's transportation debate. Neither did his leading challenger, Gustavo Rivera. Photo: Noah Kazis

Last night’s 33rd Senate District transportation debate pitted two candidates against each other who are unlikely to ever appear on the same ballot: Democrat Daniel Padernacht and Green John Reynolds. Padernacht is running a distant third place in polling for the September 14 primary, after incumbent Pedro Espada Jr. and challenger Gustavo Rivera. Neither Espada nor Rivera showed up at last night’s debate: Espada refuses to debate his opponents and Rivera chose to attend an NAACP forum instead.

Unseating Espada this cycle is perhaps the top target of public transit supporters (and good government organizations, and tenants’ advocates, and labor unions, and… let’s just say he’s made some enemies in the last few years). The district, which covers the area west of Bronx Park and south of Van Cortlandt Park, has extensive transit coverage, including the B, D, 4, and 1 subway lines, two MetroNorth lines, and the Fordham Road Select Bus Service. Among all households in the district, 71.5 percent don’t own a car [PDF]. But even so, Espada led the opposition to tolling the free bridges onto Manhattan, all but dooming his constituents to fare hikes and service cuts.

Since Espada’s cardinal transportation sin was over transit funding, it’s worth asking if his challengers are any better. Though Padernacht said he’d fight for state funding for transit at last night’s debate, he told the crowd that he doesn’t want either road pricing or increased taxation to raise revenues. “The Bronx will become a parking lot for Manhattan,” he said of congestion pricing, and argued that higher taxes would only drive residents and businesses from New York.

I approached Padernacht after the debate to ask him how he would find the billions that the MTA needs, if those two revenue sources are off the table. “The first thing I would do is look to cut costs,” he said, suggesting that limited buses could be eliminated during midday hours and that smaller vehicles might be cheaper to operate on low-ridership routes. After that, he said, he’d have to “brainstorm the issue.”

In Rivera’s response to the TA/TSTC transportation survey, he rightly pointed the finger at Albany for cutting off transit funding over the past few decades and forcing the MTA to drop ever deeper into debt. On what to do, however, Rivera showed himself to be an expert hedger.

“I take the subway in NYC to work every day,” he wrote. “If elected to the State Senate, I will put a new priority on public transportation and seek to stop the MTA from borrowing its way into a hole too deep to dig out of.” No specifics, but dodging the controversial issues of road pricing and tax increases, of course, hardly compares to the obstructionism and stunts pulled by Espada last year.

Green Party candidate John Reynolds suggested making the state income tax more progressive to pay for transit and creating a state-owned bank to help build infrastructure. “The austerity measures that are being imposed on this community are unacceptable,” he said.

All the challengers were supportive of efforts to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety. Two intersections in the district, both along the Grand Concourse, are among the ten most dangerous for pedestrians in the city, according to CrashStat.

Padernacht boosted greenways as particularly effective in both attracting more pedestrians and cyclists and keeping them safe. He also suggested keeping unlicensed drivers off the streets by actively seeking them out and helping them find alternative modes of transport.

In his survey, Rivera suggested reducing the speed limit on narrow streets to 25 miles per hour and said stepping up enforcement of speeding, possibly through automated cameras. He also would consider impounding the vehicles of those whose licenses are suspended.

Reynolds suggested that the state devote more funding to bike lanes and pedestrian infrastructure.

The most recent poll for the primary has Espada at 30 percent, Rivera at 20 and Padernacht at 8, with 42 percent of likely voters still undecided.

Fordham Plaza, one of the city's busiest transit and retail hubs, but also one of its most dangerous, is slated for a major redesign [PDF] by NYCDOT and the Economic Development Corporation. Highlights of the badly-needed overhaul include a massive increase in public space, a slew of safety improvements for pedestrians, and a block-long bus- and bike-only street.

Currently, Fordham Plaza is one of the most important public spaces in New York City. It has rich transit access, with the third-busiest Metro-North station in the system and eight bus lines, including the city's first Select Bus Service route. According to DOT counts, the retail corridor along Fordham Road sees as much foot traffic as Herald Square or Penn Station -- more than 80,000 pedestrians over the course of 12 hours.

Traffic collisions injuring pedestrians (red) and cyclists (yellow). The biggest red dot is the intersection of Fordham Road and Webster Ave.

Despite those assets, however, Fordham Plaza doesn't work the way it should. Its northwest corner, the intersection between Fordham Road and Webster Avenue, is the third most dangerous intersection in the city. According to CrashStat, between 1995 and 2005, drivers injured 116 pedestrians and cyclists and killed one pedestrian. Whether on their way to shop, to work, or to class, pedestrians are hemmed in by excessive asphalt. 

This plan should go a long way toward making Fordham Plaza the safe and vibrant place it ought to be. Many streets next to the plaza would get serious traffic-calming measures, with wider sidewalks helping pedestrians to cross streets. All told, the plan adds a full 15,750 square feet of pedestrian space to the area. 

At the heart of the plaza, Park Avenue would no longer extend north of 189th Street, opening up room for a large, contiguous public space. Third Avenue would become a one-block busway between 189th Street and Fordham Road, with sharrows to connect the bike network south of the plaza to the Fordham University campus. A slip lane at the hazardous Fordham and Webster intersection would be converted to sidewalk space.

Filling in the plaza (left) will reduce some conflicts between pedestrians and buses, which currently plague the site (right), but it will still be very tempting for pedestrians to cross Fordham Road midblock.

The plan isn't a cure-all, however. One reason there are so many injuries in the area is that the quickest way between the Metro-North station and the bus stops is to walk across Fordham Road mid-block. It seems likely that many pedestrians will continue to do so. On Third Avenue, bus and bike traffic will be funneled together without any dedicated space for cyclists.

The redesign comes at the same time as a Department of City Planning proposal to rezone much of the neighborhood. The rezoning calls for more intensive development than is currently allowed near this transit hub. Together, these changes could transform the area. 

Next up for the Fordham Plaza overhaul, which is currently in the conceptual design stage: a detailed plan by DOT for permanent construction

Pedestrian space in the re-designed Fordham Plaza, overlaid on the present plaza.

Streetfilms' Robin Urban Smith was up on the Grand Concourse this morning for one of New York's Bike to Work Day traditions -- the Bronx Borough President's ride from Poe Park down to Lou Gehrig Plaza. Watch and see all the different answers you get when you ask people, "Why do you bike to work?"

After the jump, more Bike to Work Day pics by photographer Andrew Hinderaker from today's pit stops and press events.

Fueling up at Transportation Alternatives' Queensboro Bridge pit stop.

At the Brooklyn Bridge, near the end of the ascent.

The Commish.

SELF Magazine editor Lucy Danziger at a Times Square press event with TA director Paul Steely White. Danziger asked her staff to bike to work today. Details at 6 and 11.

The rules don't apply to you if you've got one of these on the dash. Photos: Boogiedowner

The bike lane on the Grand Concourse has been a positive addition for a lot of Bronx residents. As you know, there is a serious lack of parking on the Grand Concourse, but I have always respected the bike lane and apologize for blocking it. In this instance, my car was left in the bike lane for a few moments while I was unloading supplies for my district office. I realize that caused some inconvenience and will make every effort to avoid blocking the bike lane in the future.

A few refreshers. Forcing cyclists into traffic isn't just an "inconvenience," it endangers other people. The rate of injuries and deaths on the Grand Concourse led the Tri-State Transportation Campaign to name it the second most dangerous road in the Bronx last year. Also, as Transportation Alternatives' Wiley Norvell told the Bronx News Network, a placard on the dash doesn't make bike lane-blocking legal. But it's enough to intimidate traffic agents into not issuing a ticket.

Gibson, a freshman Assembly member who replaced her former boss, Aurelia Greene, after a special election last fall, didn't explain why she was using a police placard. Giving it up for good might help her keep the promise not to block the bike lane. It will still be tough to find a safe, legal place to park and unload stuff in front of the district office, so the next step would have be to putting in a request with the city for performance parking on the Grand Concourse.

Photo: Jo Sef Gray/Flickr

"The Inwood Hill Runners are planning a celebratory crossing to Riverdale on the first Saturday of its re-opening," says Tamara Ewoldt, a running group organizer and Inwood resident who first alerted Streetsblog to the bridge closure two-and-a-half years ago. "The availability of this route will improve our safety because it will allow us to avoid running through traffic elsewhere. We have waited a long time for this and look forward to a modernized pathway."

Tangentially, when researching potential links for this post we found a 2003 New York Times article that recalls how the tolled Henry Hudson Bridge, constructed in the 1930s, came to divide Manhattan's last remaining natural woodland in the first place. In light of Pedro Espada's proposal to toll East River bridges but put no price on "free" Harlem River crossings, it's a story that still resonates:

Robert Caro's biography ''The Power Broker,'' published in 1975, outlines the characteristic [Robert] Moses ingenuity at getting things done. Moses was allowed to use free federal labor on ''park access roads,'' which is how he designated his highway through Inwood Hill Park. The park site also provided land at no cost.

Furthermore, the bankers who issued bonds looked skeptically on the prospect of a toll bridge built close to an existing free bridge, the Broadway Bridge. Thus, he was bound to the Inwood Hill Park route, even though it would destroy the ancient silence of the place, as well as despoil the sleepy neighborhood of Spuyten Duyvil.

Google Street View of Crotona Avenue near the reported crash location.

According to the New York City Police Department, the woman was traveling southbound on Crotona Avenue near East Tremont Avenue when she swerved into the traffic lane and struck a bus.

Information about the crash is still emerging, but you've got to question the choice of words here. Does it accurately convey the risks of large vehicles and the responsibilities of their drivers to other people on the road?

"To say that a cyclist 'struck' a city bus, when buses weigh somewhere around 25,000 pounds, seems to skew perceptions," said Caroline Samponaro of Transportation Alternatives. "That language implies blame."

Update: Here's the NY1 headline.

The frequently-ignored "One Way" sign at Briggs Avenue and East Moshulu Parkway. Image: NY1

A report from NY1's Susan Jhun today describes the dangerous conditions at an intersection right next to P.S. 8 in the Norwood neighborhood of the Bronx, where parents and students constantly contend with cars darting the wrong way down the block.

Here, motorists on Briggs Avenue make an illegal left turn onto a short stretch of East Moshulu Parkway, in order to quickly cut over to East 203rd Street. Even with parents complaining about the danger to their kids posed by unexpected wrong-way traffic, police haven't made the intersection safe. 

Moshulu Parkway is clearly marked as one-way, but according to parents, drivers make illegal lefts "hour after hour." The police, however, don't seem inclined to measure the problem and tackle it with the data-driven techniques they apply to violent crime. The underlying assumption that NYPD has employed so successfully with CompStat is that you have to be able to count crime to fight it; right now, the NYPD isn't doing much of either when it comes to law-breaking behavior behind the wheel.

When NY1 called the NYPD, police said that 20 summonses had been issued in the last 60 days. The more important question is whether those tickets are actually reducing the risk to students and parents. So does the 52nd Precinct in the Bronx have a plan to systematically improve safety at P.S. 8? What sort of resources would they need to measure the problem and enforce the rules effectively? The precinct has not responded to Streetsblog's calls.

The NYPD has trouble answering questions about street safety because police grade their traffic enforcement performance mainly by counting summonses. The actual rate of traffic violations, which can be measured, is one metric they have so far ignored.

The parents of P.S. 8 know exactly how big a problem it is when cars drive the wrong way down a one-way street in front of a school. So should the police.