Police are certainly reviving their tough-on-cyclists PR campaign, bragging to the Post earlier this week about the 19th Precinct’s bike enforcement prowess on the Upper East Side. Meanwhile, the message to motorists remains the same: If you’re sober and stay at the scene, you can do just about anything, like run over and kill a 12-year-old girl who stopped in a crosswalk to retrieve her backpack, and not face repercussions.

By leaking their cyclist summonsing stats to the Post, the police at least made it a little easier to highlight their skewed priorities. As reader Chris O’Leary pointed out this morning, the 19th Precinct issued 2,436 tickets for failing to stop at traffic signals in 2011 [PDF]. Apparently, nearly half of those tickets — 1,101, according to the Post — were handed out to cyclists.

Police are devoting all these resources to cyclist enforcement on streets where disproportionate numbers of New Yorkers get maimed by motor vehicles. Community District 8, which roughly overlaps the 19th Precinct on the Upper East Side, has the third-highest rate of injury-causing traffic crashes in the city.

Here’s what the precinct’s enforcement priorities look like out on the street, according to an account from reader Albert Ahronheim:

At about 1:50 on the afternoon of January 7, as I was walking on First Avenue by 81st Street, I noticed four police “three-wheeled scooters” and four police motorcycles completely straddling the bicycle lane, and eight police milling around, a couple of them writing, most just gabbing and laughing, while there were plenty of empty parking spaces they could have easily moved into. At least one cyclist I saw had to veer out into car traffic to get around what seemed to be a completely unnecessary blockage of basically a whole block. But a run-of-the-mill police blockage of the bike lane isn’t why I’m writing.

I was standing around trying to get up the nerve to ask eight cops to vacate the bike lane as long as whatever threat was over, when an elderly man with a walker, who’d been watching also, started talking to me. He told me that all these police were “just to give a ticket to a bicyclist.”  I asked him if he knew what the cyclist had been ticketed for, and he said he didn’t know — he just saw him ride away afterwards. The man with the walker told me, “I don’t care what he was doing, it takes so many cops just to give a cyclist a ticket?” When he mentioned all the real mayhem on the streets, I told him how NYPD routinely lets motorists kill without filing charges, and he wholeheartedly agreed that they’re failing to protect people.

So then I went up to one of the cops and politely asked what all the excitement was about. He paused, like he was trying to figure out how to tell me just enough to satisfy me, and said, “Uh, we just had somebody stopped — that’s about it.” Then I said, “It would be great if they’d not be blocking the bike lane if nothing is going on,” to which he politely replied, “We’ll be done in a few minutes and be out of your way.”  Only later did I realize that, since I wasn’t on a bicycle at the time and had just gone around a car and walked up to him from the curb, he must have thought I was a driver who needed to get through the bike lane and out of a parking space. After a couple more minutes they all drove away.

Last night the board’s transportation committee heard from NYC DOT about the city’s bike-share plans, and apparently it was a drama-free affair.

Streetsblog reader Steve Vaccaro (also our attorney in the FOIL case seeking documents from opponents of the PPW bike lane) sends this recap:

On bike-share, a CB8 member who adamantly opposed the proposal for cross-park shared bike/ped paths four months ago expressed no hostility, asking if the bikes would have enough cargo room for all her things, and if DOT would consider including three-wheelers in the bike-share program to better accommodate seniors.

The co-chair of the transpo committee, Jonathan Horn, who also opposed the cross-park bike path reso at the full board, expressed no opposition to bike-share and helped explain that the CB would have an opportunity to select exactly where the stations would go, subject to the DOT’s overall density requirements and safety restrictions.

Only one community member, a woman with a canvas bag on which was scrawled “Enforce the Bike Laws,” spoke against the bike-share program. She claimed that seniors would not able to use the bikes and therefore that they were “excluded” from the program. DOT’s Jon Orcutt explained that this was inaccurate.

The presentation by a representative of the Stuart C. Gruskin foundation on the “5 to Ride” education/pledge campaign for commercial cyclists was well received.

The committee then took up a proposal on electric-assisted bicycles, or “e-bikes.” Statements from NYPD and the State DMV were distributed to demonstrate that most if not all e-bikes cannot legally be operated on NYC streets. A proposal was discussed under which businesses seeking a cafe license would have their applications recommended to be approved by the CB only if they agreed not to use e-bikes to deliver food. This proposal passed after thoughtful discussion.

Finally, the committee took up the issue of whether insurance, registration and licenses would be required of commercial delivery cyclists. This issue had been referred to the committee by the full board, after the full board rejected the committee’s proposal last month to require these things of all cyclists (commercial, recreational, and others). The committee chairs seemed to understand that the proposal for commercial cyclists was largely redundant with the rules that already apply to them — something stressed by opponents of the broader blanket reso that had been rejected the preceding month — and after some discussion, decided to table the issue until January.

This is significant, because several members of the Transportation Committee have for years said that licensure and insurance for cyclists was their #1 priority in the area of cycling.

Fifth Ave. and 65th St., where a tow truck driver killed an 86-year-old pedestrian while she was in the crosswalk yesterday. Image: Google.

A tow truck driver struck and killed an 86-year-old woman walking on the Upper East Side yesterday morning. The driver was turning left from Fifth Avenue onto 65th Street at 9:30 a.m. when he hit the victim, who was walking north in the crosswalk, according to the NYPD.

An NYPD spokesperson said that “no criminality is suspected at this time” but that the investigation is still ongoing. Police did not have any further information about who had the right of way, but the known circumstances strongly suggest that the driver failed to yield to the victim while she had a walk signal.

The Second Avenue bike lane in the East Village. Photo: DNAInfo

Last night, the full board of Manhattan Community Board 8 voted in favor of building a protected bike lane on First Avenue between 60th Street and 96th Street.

Once construction is finished, the lane will be one segment of a complete street running from Houston to 125th with Select Bus Service, protected bike lanes and pedestrian refuge islands (though the cyclist protection and pedestrian islands disappear near the Queensboro Bridge). On the Upper East Side, the Second Avenue lane will be on hold until subway construction is complete, but the First Avenue lane could be in place as early as this fall. In East Harlem, construction will start on Second Avenue next spring.

CB 8 approved the project by a vote of 20-11-1. That total masks the closeness of the vote, however. According to community board member Scott Falk, with two people left to vote the total stood at 16-13-1. Since resolutions need more than half of all voters to support them to pass, had both those two people voted no, the resolution would have failed. Neither did, though, and once the resolution had passed, two nays switched their votes to join the winning side.

The biggest issue was how the bike lane would affect local businesses’ ability to make deliveries, said Falk. “This was going to force triple parking, as they put it.” That argument was ultimately defeated by an appeal to the life-saving effects of protected bike lanes. Said Falk, “This isn’t about bicycles. It’s about safety by design.”

The transportation committee of CB 8 voted to upgrade the buffered bike lane on First Avenue, here blocked by a line of trucks, to a parking protected bike lane. Photo: BicyclesOnly via Flickr.

On the Upper East Side, community board members are willing to vote for safer streets, so long as they can vent about cyclists beforehand.

After a discussion that emphasized bad bike behavior, the transportation committee of Community Board 8 voted 9-2, with one abstention, to support the construction of a protected bike lane on First Avenue from 60th Street to 96th Street.

Above 72nd Street, First Avenue already has a buffered bike lane. Upgrading to a protected lane requires only that DOT flip the lanes for bikes and parking, while maintaining existing lanes for drivers. Between 60th and 72nd, though, there isn’t any bike lane at all. Filling that gap between the shared lane through Midtown and the buffered lane further north would be DOT’s top construction priority, said Ryan Russo, DOT assistant commissioner for traffic management. Construction could start as early as this fall.

DOT is neither building nor presenting plans for a new bike lane on Second Avenue, and won’t until Second Avenue Subway construction is complete years from now. Even in the few blocks below the construction zone, where DOT had originally planned to paint a shared lane, Russo said the combination of subway and water tunnel construction meant that no changes would be made.

To some extent, the limited scope of the redesign contributed to the committee’s endorsement. “I see 72nd to 96th Street as a no-brainer,” said committee co-chair Jonathan Horn. “There’s already a bike lane there. We’re trading a few parking spaces to get pedestrian islands which shorten the crossing for seniors and other people.” A 2009 resolution from the community board said that if bike lanes were to be built on the Upper East Side, they should be protected lanes.

Even so, for many committee members, the idea of drawing more cyclists to the neighborhood was tough to tolerate. “Unless you enforce the laws and make the penalties enough to deter people from doing what they’re currently doing, you should not be encouraging bicycling,” said board member Elizabeth Ashby.

Barry Schneider told the story of a friend of his who was hit by a cyclist 20 years ago and urged that the state register cyclists. “Be an advocate for that,” Schneider told DOT. “Make them part of the vehicular culture.”

“The bike lanes are preceding education,” complained another board member. “You have given us the perfect picture to look at, but in reality it’s really not a perfect picture.” She asked for a public service announcement on safe cycling, and when informed that “Don’t Be A Jerk” ads were already running demanded far wider distribution.

Many board members who complained about cyclists nevertheless voted for the lanes. In the end, the proven increase in safety from the new design further downtown and the desire for pedestrian refuge islands carried the day. In fact, a proposed compromise put forward by Horn, in which the protected bike lanes would be built north of 72nd while a shared lane would be built south of 72nd, was shot down because it wouldn’t improve pedestrian safety.

“In our area, I’m one of them, there are more and more seniors,” explained Judy Schneider. “I like having a shorter street to cross.”

Public testimony, which was overwhelmingly in favor of the protected lanes, surely helped swing some votes in favor of the lanes as well. “It is very tough to go on the streets of Manhattan and without having a protected bicycle lane, it is very dangerous,” said Upper East Side bike commuter Steven Moss. He explained that while he rides in the protected lanes further down on First and Second, uptown he often ends up riding in the Select Bus Service lane for safety reasons, slowing down transit riders in the process. “I’m not supposed to be there,” admitted Moss, “but what is a bicyclist to do?”

The committee’s resolution does request additional cyclist enforcement on First and Second Avenue (specifically praising the 19th precinct for its borough-leading level of bike citations), as well as a stronger education campaign. The committee will discuss a proposal to require licenses for all bike riders at next month’s meeting.

The full board of Community Board 8 meets to vote on the issue on September 21.

Last November, Council Member Melissa Mark Viverito, backed by State Senator Jose Serrano and Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh, helped deliver 2,500 handwritten letters to City Hall asking for protected bike lanes up to 125th Street. Photo: Noah Kazis

Presentations will be made on Tuesday the 6th and Wednesday the 7th to the transportation committees of Community Boards 11 and 8, respectively. If you walk or bike on the East Side, these will be can’t-miss meetings. Votes in favor of the project next week would lead to construction next year.

Between 1998 and 2008, nearly 4,900 pedestrians and cyclists were injured or killed on First and Second between Houston and 125th, according to the New York State Department of Transportation. Almost three-fourths of the incidents occurred between 34th and 125th streets.

Some background: In 2010 the city unveiled a comprehensive plan for improved bus, pedestrian and cyclist facilities on First and Second from Houston to 125th Street, including protected bike lanes on Second between 100th and 125th, and on First between 34th and 49th and between 57th and 125th, with a buffered lane in the gap. CB 6, CB 8, and CB 11 all voted for redesigns including protected bike lanes that spring.

Residents and officials — particularly in East Harlem, with its high cyclist count and hazardous conditions for walking and biking — were incensed when they later learned that work north of 34th Street would be delayed indefinitely. This April, progress was accompanied by further uncertainty when DOT announced plans to extend bike lanes on First and Second up to 57th Street in 2011.

Now that it looks like the rest of the project is moving forward, it’s crucial that supporters make their voices heard — particularly in District 8, where the concept of reallocating street space can always be contentious. Times and locations for the meetings are here and here. We’ll have more next week.

The car-free park trial has picked up committee votes at no fewer than seven community boards, as well as full board votes from CB 7, CB 5, and CB 9 (we’ll have more on the CB 9 vote later today). So far, the proposal seems to be on track to pick up an overwhelming show of public support from the districts surrounding the park, which will be needed to have a shot at overcoming Mayor Bloomberg’s opposition.

The CB 8 vote, which comes from a district bordering the park on the Upper East Side, is notable because the board has reverted to displaying one of the more virulently anti-bike stances in the city, and any proposal perceived to benefit cyclists must overcome a certain level of ingrained resistance.

Board member Michelle Birnbaum is probably the most consistently vocal opponent of bike and pedestrian improvements on CB 8. At a recent transportation committee meeting, she objected to the installation of marked crosswalks and pedestrian signals at an approach to the East River esplanade that crosses underneath the FDR Drive at 96th Street, saying that devices like advance-stop bars would cause traffic to back up too far on the highway service road, and that the city can’t put “plazas and umbrellas” everywhere.

Birnbaum was the only CB 8 member to speak against the car-free park proposal Wednesday night, which was introduced by transportation committee co-chair Jonathan Horn as “another proposal about Central Park and bicycles,” following the board’s vote against shared bike-ped paths across the park (more on that below).

Some highlights from Birnbaum’s unsuccessful attempt to sway the board against the car-free trial:

• She dismissed the 100,000 signatures gathered in favor of a permanently car-free park between 2000 and 2005, which car-free park advocate Ken Coughlin mentioned at a recent committee meeting. “They neglected to mention that the 100,000 signatures were being gathered since 2003, which preceded the current car-free hours,” she said, asserting that collecting so many signatures is easy if you stand on the loop drive and flag down cyclists. Birnbaum neglected to mention that all those signatures were in favor of a permanent, 24/7 car-free Central Park, and that the people who collected them will tell you that the vast majority came from pedestrians, who are much more likely to stop and sign something than cyclists.
• The lengthening of the car-free hours in the park in recent years “has been devastating to traffic,” she said, citing no evidence.
• Birnbaum believes “it’s important that there’s a quick way for traffic to cut through local streets.”
• “The philosophy [behind the car-free park proposal] is based on a Danish engineer who believes that if you eliminate roadways, you eliminate cars. I don’t buy that philosophy,” she said. In reality there is a wealth of empirical evidence that people consolidate trips, shift to different modes, and otherwise alter their behavior in response to reductions in road space, and it doesn’t come from Copenhagen and Jan Gehl.

While those arguments were unpersuasive to most board members Wednesday night, the full board did sign on to a rather virulent declaration of anti-cyclist sentiment, passing a motion opposed to the establishment of shared bike-ped paths across Central Park.

The Central Park Conservancy has been working on a plan to establish four east-west routes that would give cyclists a safe and legal path across the park. While the two routes that the Conservancy is currently considering do not border CB 8, the board took it upon themselves to forcefully denounce the idea of demarcating shared crosstown bike-ped paths inside the park.

The resolution, which took a few minutes for board member Elizabeth Ashby to finish reading aloud, is essentially a lengthy condemnation of people who bike in Central Park. (Sample clause: “Whereas virtually all bicyclists ignore the laws, rules, and regulations in Central Park.”) The full board passed it 33-10 by my unofficial tally. Streetsblog has a request in with CB 8 for the official text of the resolution.

At a Monday night meeting of the 19th Precinct community council, reports DNAinfo, locals spoke of being afraid to cross the street, and asked why new vulnerable user laws were not being applied in the cases of Jason King and Laurence Renard.

“Careless drivers are killing people in this neighborhood on a monthly basis,” said Erin Lamberty. “If we’re going to teach drivers to slow down and use care, we need to charge VTL Section 1146 [the section incorporating Elle's Law and Hayley and Diego's Law] in every case of negligent injury or death of a pedestrian or cyclist.”

Yesterday it was reported that, following an investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and the urging of Assembly Member Micah Kellner and state Senator Liz Krueger, the dump truck driver who backed over King last December in pursuit of a parking spot has been charged with violating Section 1146.

At the precinct meeting, Vance pointed out that Section 1146 is enforced by the NYPD and the Department of Motor Vehicles by way of traffic summonses and does not fall under the purview of the district attorney, except in cases of repeat offenders. Although the district attorney investigates crashes that kill or seriously injure, the ultimate decision to charge under Section 1146 is made by NYPD. “If you had found criminal misconduct it wouldn’t be Elle’s Law that we would use,” Vance said. “It would be vehicular manslaughter or vehicular misconduct.”

Deputy Inspector Matthew Whelan, meanwhile, said crash investigations are handled by NYPD Highway Patrol, not officers of the precinct. Steve Vaccaro, who heads Transportation Alternatives’ East Side committee, said he hoped to clear up confusion regarding the new laws through a joint meeting with the 19th Precinct and Highway Patrol.

East Siders may not be getting the answers they want yet, but if nothing else, you can bet their presence on Monday was duly noted. Community council meetings — every precinct has one most every month — offer citizens a rare direct audience with NYPD decision-makers and other higher-ups (like Vance, whose presence was a surprise to attendees). In my experience, council members and state legislators are often in attendance. I have also seen that people who show up for these meetings get results.

Another benefit: Normally, police hear a lot of complaints about cyclist transgressions and requests for more bike enforcement at these meetings. The street safety advocates who appeared on Monday were able to focus the attention of the officers — and the regular participants in the community council — on the dangers posed by deadly driving.

A template to prioritize walking, biking, and transit at the intersection of Third Avenue and 117th Street. Image: Transportation Alternatives

Earlier this week, Laurence Renard was killed as she crossed First Avenue when a dump truck driver turned into her path from 90th Street, hitting her from behind. Renard was one of at least six pedestrians and cyclists who have lost their lives in traffic crashes on East Side streets since last August.

People are seriously hurt and killed with terrible frequency on the East Side of Manhattan: 148 pedestrians and cyclists died on its streets between 1995 and 2008, and more than 15,000 were injured. The area is rife with wide streets and intersections that invite speeding and reckless driving. At the same time, the East Side is home to high percentages of walk-to-work commuters, car-free households, and senior citizens. East Siders lead walkable lifestyles and make many trips by foot or bike, but their streets are extremely dangerous.

Last night, more than 100 people gathered at St. Mark’s Church on East 10th Street for the unveiling of Transportation Alternatives’ East Side Action Plan [PDF], which outlines a broad vision for making this part of Manhattan safer and more livable.

In a series of public workshops, more than 600 East Siders helped TA put together recommendations to redesign their streets and put walking, biking, and transit first. The Action Plan came out of those workshops to serve as “a tool for local East Side experts to use as citizen planners, so they can educate their communities and generate the local support needed to engage decision makers around design and policy change,” said TA’s Julia De Martini Day. Dozens of community groups from Chinatown to Harlem have signed on to the campaign.

With political attacks on pedestrian and bicycle improvements fresh in everyone’s mind, the kick-off event last night was something of a rallying cry for the coalition. New Yorkers who want safer streets have to organize and mobilize as effectively as possible, a point that former Bogota Mayor Enrique Penalosa brought home when he told the audience that the allocation of street space “is a political decision, not a technical decision.”

The East Side campaign has an ally in Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh, who told the crowd that he’s been very encouraged by last year’s improvements for transit, biking, and walking on First and Second Avenues, and that he wants to see the NYC DOT and the MTA do more to prioritize those modes of travel. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and City Council Member Dan Garodnick also lent their support to the campaign in TA’s press release.

The East Village Community Coalition is one of the neighborhood groups that will be making the case for safer streets. EVCC Managing Director Kurt Cavanagh said he hopes to meet with the local community board and elected officials in about a month to talk about the recommendations in the East Side plan. Other community groups in Harlem, the Upper East Side, and Chinatown will be approaching their CBs and electeds in the months ahead as well. Stay tuned.

Video: Clarence Eckerson

Photo: DNAinfo/Jennifer Glickel

A dump truck driver hit and killed a 21-year-old man on the Upper East Side this morning at 6:06 a.m. The driver was traveling north on Madison Avenue when he realized he had passed his destination near 81st Street, according to the NYPD. He then put the truck in reverse, said police, and began to back up. The truck then hit the victim, who was crossing Madison, and killed him.

According to a report on DNAinfo, the pedestrian was in the crosswalk when the truck driver backed into him and dragged him for thirty feet before stopping. All this took place across the street from an elementary school.

DNAinfo reports that a summons may be issued, but the police apparently do not intend to file charges. The NYPD told Streetsblog that “no criminality is suspected at this time.”

The recently enacted Elle’s Law was passed in order to keep drivers who recklessly endanger and injure pedestrians from getting back behind the wheel. Three-year-old Elle Vandenberghe was left severely brain-damaged last year when an Upper East Side driver spotted a parking space and backed up through the crosswalk where the toddler was walking. In addition to using Elle’s Law or filing a steeper charge like criminal negligence, another option for police and prosecutors would be to charge the driver with careless driving under Hayley and Diego’s Law, which also passed this year in an attempt to hold drivers accountable for injuring pedestrians or cyclists. We have a call in with Manhattan DA Cy Vance’s office to see if he’ll use the legal tools at his disposal.

Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito holds 2,500 handwritten letters to Mayor Bloomberg, urging him to complete the First and Second Avenue bike lanes. Behind her are State Senator José Serrano, left, and Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh, right. Photo: Noah Kazis

After rallying on the steps of City Hall this afternoon, Transportation Alternatives delivered 2,500 handwritten letters urging Mayor Bloomberg to complete the protected bike lanes on First and Second Avenues. Joined by elected officials and more than forty supporters, T.A. called on Bloomberg to fulfill the promise of safe walking and cycling on Manhattan’s East Side and to complete the bike and pedestrian improvements up to 125th Street.

T.A. Executive Director Paul Steely White said he’s urging the city to complete the corridor by the end of next year. To meet that goal, he said, an announcement from the city needs to come in the next six weeks or so.

A completed corridor has received strong support from the East Side. Before designs for First and Second were announced, 19 electeds signed a letter calling for protected bike and bus lanes for the length of the route. After the plan was first released with protected lanes from Houston to 125th, every community board along the corridor supported the design, said White.

The fight to complete the unfinished lanes has earned the endorsement of 39 organizations, including transportation and planning groups, environmental advocates, and public health organizations like the New York Academy of Medicine and the East Harlem Aging Improvement District.

Today, elected officials continued to press for safer cycling and walking. Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh said he was “calling on the city to finish what they started.” The city had already budgeted funds for the full corridor’s construction and received community approval for the full plans, said Kavanagh. “We don’t want bike lanes to nowhere,” he argued.

State Senator José Serrano argued that shifting street space from the automobile to biking and walking would improve health in his neighborhoods. “If we reduce carbon emissions along these stretches of First and Second,” he said, “we can reduce asthma in East Harlem.”

City Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito highlighted the inequity of the city’s approach to installing bike infrastructure. “Why should Midtown get the benefits of these bike lanes and pedestrian islands?” she asked.

Between 1998 and 2008, nearly 4,900 pedestrians and cyclists were injured or killed on First and Second Avenues between Houston and 125th Streets, according to data compiled by the state Department of Transportation. Most of those injuries and fatalities — 72 percent — took place on the unfinished stretch between 34th and 125th streets.

Rally participants spoke for those whose lives have been harmed or taken away on streets with very long crossing distances and no provision for safer cycling. Sabrina Bishop recalled coming home to New York City on August 19 excited to find the new bike lanes in front of her home downtown. Only one week later, however, she found herself waiting for her friend Bob Bowen to arrive. “He didn’t show up,” said Bishop. “He had been hit by a flatbed truck.” That crash occurred at Second and 59th, where the promised bike infrastructure was not built. Bowen died on August 30.

Mt. Sinai pediatrician Kevin Chatham-Stevens highlighted the effect of East Harlem’s street design on the community’s children, who suffer the highest rates of asthma hospitalization in the city, as well as elevated obesity rates. “When I talk to them about cycling,” he said, “they often say that they don’t feel safe cycling in East Harlem due to speeding traffic and the lack of protected space.” With protected lanes, he argued, it might be possible to increase physical activity in the neighborhood.

This weekend, Select Bus Service debuted on First and Second Avenues in Manhattan, bringing a package of improvements to speed trips on one of New York’s most-used bus routes. Buses on the M15 route were traveling at a snail-like clip of less than 6 mph before the introduction of SBS.

Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, New York City Transit’s Director of Bus Planning Ted Orosz, and MTA Bus Company President Joe Smith spoke to Streetfilms about how SBS will make traveling on the east side of Manhattan faster and easier for transit riders. The major changes include dedicated bus lanes enforced by cameras, priority for buses at traffic lights, and off-board fare collection.

Select Bus Service in the Bronx has produced a 20 percent improvement in travel times and enticed thousands more New Yorkers to ride the bus. Officials project that once people get used to the new system on First and Second Avenues, transit riders on the east side will see similar gains. Have a look and see how it works.

A New York City Transit employee helps riders board at the middle door on a Second Avenue SBS bus. Photo: Noah Kazis

Select Bus Service is up and running along First and Second Avenues, bringing rapid bus enhancements to the second busiest bus line in New York City. Though riders will need some time to adjust to the new system, many are already praising the faster service.

A NYCT employee helps a student headed for school learn how to pay his bus fare before boarding. He didn't have any trouble. Photo: Noah Kazis

The thousands of bus riders along Manhattan’s East Side were surely in need of some relief. Though the M15 bus was one of the highest-ridership routes in the country, with 16,541,900 annual rides, it was also one of the slowest in New York City, moving at an average speed of less than six miles per hour. The lack of a decent transit option east of Lexington Avenue also contributes to intense and uncomfortable crowding on the 4, 5, and 6 subway lines.

With the SBS improvements, this critical route should run far more smoothly. Buses will spend less time stopped and more time in motion, thanks to off-board fare collection and three-door loading and unloading. During peak hours, passengers will speed through traffic in camera-enforced bus lanes. New York’s first SBS route, along Fordham Road, improved bus speeds by 20 percent and ridership by 30 percent, according to MTA chief Jay Walder.

First and Second Avenue could see similar gains. On the first weekday of service, at the outset of what figures to be an initial period of adjustment, riders were already noticing the difference.

“It’s definitely faster. You don’t have to wait in line for people to find their MetroCard,” explained Monica Sunwoo, who was headed to work in Midtown.

“It feels a little bit faster,” judged a rider named Miriam, who was traveling from 116th Street to 68th, “especially getting to enter all the doors.”

A bus traveling in a new, camera-enforced dedicated lane on Second Avenue. Photo: Noah Kazis

Where the lanes were marked with paint, they remained largely clear of obstructions. I saw only one motorist drive or park in the terracotta bus lane over a roughly fifteen minute period, as well as a dozen or so cyclists.

Both this SBS bus and the local bus ahead of it were forced out of their dedicated lane by a car idling in the right turn lane. Photo: Noah Kazis

With changes as significant as the SBS improvements affecting several miles of streets and tens of thousands of daily riders, there are bound to be some kinks to work out at first, both in terms of the way the service operates and the way passengers use the service. Today there was a recurring enforcement problem where the bus lane paint is interrupted before right turns. In those areas, cars are allowed to pull in next to the curb to turn right. However, the lack of red paint appeared to signal to motorists that this was an unrestricted area. A number of drivers used those zones to park or drop off passengers, often occupying the space with their blinkers on, which forced multiple buses out of the dedicated lane and into mixed traffic.

A line of people waited to pay their fare as the bus pulled away. Photo: Noah Kazis

As Ben Kabak pointed out on Second Avenue Sagas this morning, the “media moment” of a new bus service’s debut happens at the same time that riders are making their first adjustments to differences in their routine. Riders still lined up at the front door and sometimes entered at the middle of the bus. Only very rarely were all three doors employed. And despite the best efforts of the MTA staff on-site, one woman managed to break an off-board payment machine at 116th Street by trying to force her MetroCard into the receipt slot. These kinds of small inefficiencies are to be expected on the service’s first weekday.

On a day like this, it’s very easy to get quotes from New Yorkers who are skeptical of change. Almost every person I spoke with, for instance, complained that you wouldn’t be able to run for the bus anymore, because you have to get your fare receipt first.

But paying fares before boarding will, overall, make Select Bus Service more attractive by shaving a lot of time off people’s trips. We can’t measure that effect on the first day or the first week of the new service, but the real success or failure of SBS on the East Side should be clear a few months from now, when we’ll know how many more riders are opting for the M15 because it gets them where they want to go faster.

Riders are adjusting to the fact that they can board at any of the SBS bus's three doors. Photo: Noah Kazis

Park Smart's third pilot area will bring peak hour parking rates more in line with demand on the Upper East Side. Image: NYCDOT

The new Park Smart zone covers 86th Street between First and Madison Avenues, Madison between 86th and 79th, and small spurs of 85th, 83rd, and 82nd off of Madison. Along those stretches, parking is now priced at $2.50 per hour from 9 a.m. to noon and from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. In the afternoon peak hours, on-street spaces go for $3.75 per hour, making them the most expensive on-street spaces in the city. 

In comparison, single-space meters in the neighborhood charge $1.50 per hour, while the Greenwich Village Park Smart program charges $3.00 for peak hours, according to the DOT website. 

Of course, the more important comparison may be to the price of off-street spaces. Parking for one hour mid-afternoon at the ICON Alert garage, located on 85th at Madison, costs $22. With or without Park Smart, on-street spaces remain one of the best deals in New York City.

The neighborhood hasn't complained much about the increased rates, according to Michael Auerbach, president of the local civic group Upper Green Side, who attributed much of his neighborhood's traffic problem to cheap metered parking and the thousands of free alternate side parking spaces. "We hope the city continues to introduce innovative parking programs like Park Smart in other parts of the Upper East Side soon," he said.

Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs. Photo: City Hall News

The Age-Friendly New York City agenda includes 59 initiatives meant to make it easier to age in the city, including building traffic calming public spaces and redesigning the city's most dangerous intersections. Bloomberg's remarks didn't specifically mention the pedestrian safety aspects of the plan, but he did reaffirm his commitment to follow through on the entire Age-Friendly program. "When we take on a project," he said, "we actually do it." 

Quinn focused more closely on street redesigns. "Through complete streets, we're making New York a place that's safe in every way for seniors," she told the audience. In April, Quinn stood with AARP in front of the Ninth Avenue protected bike lane to participate in a safety audit. Discussing that experience last night, Quinn said that the redesigns of Eighth and Ninth had helped fix "two very problematic corners" at 23rd Street.

Perhaps most striking, it seems that livable streets advocates have a potential ally in Deputy Mayor Gibbs, who oversees the Age-Friendly New York City program. Discussing NYCDOT's Safe Routes for Seniors program, Gibbs had particular praise for neckdowns at dangerous intersections. "It creates an intentional bottleneck that not only makes the distance shorter, but slows down the traffic as it approaches the intersection," she said, "so you have a double benefit."

To keep seniors safe, one area that would especially benefit from Gibbs' influence is Manhattan's East Side.

The wide avenues there remain particularly dangerous for older pedestrians: AARP called attention to the problem in January, and Yorkville is targeted for a Safe Routes for Seniors treatment. While the original plans for re-designing First and Second Avenues included pedestrian refuge islands, which are of particular benefit to older New Yorkers, along most of the corridor south of 125th Street, as of this month the administration will only fully commit to pedestrian safety improvements south of 34th Street. 

When asked whether she'd support restoring refuge islands to the full extent of the original plan, Gibbs said she just didn't know that level of detail about the First and Second Avenue redesign, which isn't under her direct supervision. The original plan earned the support of community boards and elected officials representing the length of Manhattan, and more importantly, would save seniors' lives in East Harlem, the Upper East Side, and Midtown. It's an essential, and shovel-ready, way to make good on the promises of Age-Friendly New York City. 

The plan unveiled today for First and Second Avenues leaves bigger gaps than anticipated in the bike network above 34th Street. Click here to enlarge [PDF]. Image: NYCDOT

While Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan attributed the delay to the time constraints of building such a large project, stressing DOT's intention to finish the job, there is lingering uncertainty about the full 250-block re-design. The city's plans call for more bike and pedestrian improvements to be built during next year's construction season but no longer specify the addition of protected lanes to segments of First and Second north of 34th Street.

As presented to several Manhattan community boards, the project was supposed to include protected bike lanes on Second between 100th and 125th, and on First between 34th and 49th and between 57th and 125th, with a buffered lane in the gap. (Here's an earlier map of the project.)

Following today's announcement, it's unclear whether the mayor is committed to delivering all the bike and pedestrian improvements in the original plan. Above 34th Street, the changes on tap for this year call only for widening the existing bike lane on upper First Avenue by one foot and adding a painted buffer. The project web site does not identify segments that will receive protected bikeways in the future, going only so far as to say that the 2011 and 2012 construction seasons will bring "additional pedestrian and bike improvements throughout the corridor."

For now, advocates for safer streets will need to keep up the pressure to ensure that Midtown, the Upper East Side, and East Harlem receive the bike and pedestrian safety features originally promised. Today they stressed the groundbreaking nature of the re-design and the importance of completing the bikeway.

"When it's completed up to East Harlem, the East Side will have the best streets for biking, walking and buses anywhere in the country," said Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Paul Steely White. "It's critical that the full slate of improvements -- including physically separated bike lanes -- be extended north as rapidly as possible."

Support from local residents and representatives has been robust along the length of the East Side corridor. Last December, 19 elected officials representing the East Side signed a letter requesting physically separated bike lanes and bus lanes along First and Second Avenues. This spring, Manhattan Community Board 6 approved a design including major segments of protected bike lanes north of 34th Street. Community Board 8, which represents the Upper East Side, passed a resolution supporting protected bike lanes for East Side avenues last fall.

"For the city to kind of back off of its plans for Upper Manhattan, that really makes you scratch your head," said Michael Auerbach, director of Upper Green Side, a neighborhood advocacy group. "They have the support of the community. People want to see safe streets right now."

The Select Bus Service portion of the plan remains mostly unchanged. October 10 is still the target launch date, and work begins on resurfacing the streets next week. 

There was one significant addition to the bus plans. Starting in 2011, buses on First and Second Avenues will receive priority at traffic signals, with green lights lasting a bit longer if buses are approaching. Traffic signal priority, which is currently in effect on the Fordham Road SBS route, wasn't part of the original plans for the East Side. 

Enforcement of the bus lanes remains a big question mark, however. The plan calls for automated cameras to keep dedicated lanes clear of traffic, but that requires an OK from Albany -- far from a sure thing. The MTA's Ted Orosz wouldn't specify how much Select Bus Service would be slowed by the potential lack of camera enforcement, but noted that a delivery truck blocking the bus lane in a particularly congested area, such as near the Queensboro Bridge, could slow a bus by five minutes. 

When asked what the city's back-up plan was for enforcing the bus lane if Albany doesn't come through with enabling legislation in the next few weeks, Bloomberg answered only that "it makes it more difficult." He then proceeded to make the case for action by the legislature. "It's right that they should do it," said the mayor. "It's our city." 

Police talk to a man and woman at Essex and Rivington, where a cyclist was injured Monday night. Photo: DNAinfo

A pedestrian and a cyclist have been hurt in separate Manhattan crashes since last night.

DNAinfo reports that a cyclist was hit Monday at the corner of Essex and Rivington Streets:

Shortly after the crash, police on the scene were seen questioning a man and a woman while an ambulance drove away. A black SUV sat with a shattered windshield just north of Rivington next to a bike on the ground.

Police reportedly had nothing to say about the crash to DNAinfo. NYPD told Streetsblog this morning that the department had no information on the incident.

As DNAinfo points out, the city recently added bike lanes to Rivington as part of its effort to divert bike traffic from crash-plagued Delancey Street. Three weeks ago Community Board 3 member Harry Wieder was fatally struck on Essex less than two blocks away from the scene of last night's collision.

Just before 10:00 a.m. today, a pedestrian was hit at 83rd St. and Third Ave. According to NYPD, the victim was a woman who suffered a "badly injured leg." Police said she was taken to University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell. Streetsblog has contacted the hospital for an update on her condition.

The safety data and the workshop are part of a new campaign organized by TA called the East Side Streets Coalition, which aims to dramatically improve safety from East Harlem to Chinatown. The goal is to reduce traffic collisions that injure and kill pedestrians and cyclists by 50 percent over the next ten years.

Upper East Side workshop participants discussed street safety using a new map of the most frequent sites of traffic collisions that injure pedestrians and cyclists. Click here for the full version of the map, showing the whole East Side. Image: Transportation Alternatives. 

The campaign started by mapping out precisely where pedestrians and cyclists are most at risk of getting hurt by cars. Using advanced mapping techniques and new data from the state Department of Transportation, TA has identified and visualized the intersections where the most crashes occur along the entire East Side. These intersections will be the principal targets of the campaign. (The campaign will explicitly refrain from focusing on First and Second Avenues, which are already slated to receive major pedestrian and cyclist safety features.)

The coalition is beginning outreach to develop a vision for a redesigned East Side. The first workshop, for Upper East Side residents, was held last night, with about thirty participants meeting in the cafeteria of the Wagner Middle School to share their concerns about local streets and develop solutions.

Using tools like the city's Street Design Manual and detailed maps of some of the most dangerous intersections in the district, they plotted out their safety ideas. Some of the most popular fixes, like leading pedestrian intervals or sidewalk extensions, would make sense throughout the city. Others were specific to the neighborhood or even the intersection.

One especially interesting proposal was to give 86th Street, where two deep red ovals are visible on the safety map, the same treatment that DOT is proposing for 34th Street: a physically separated bus lane and a full block closed to cars. As Upper East Side resident Steve Vaccaro noted while presenting this idea, 86th Street is choked with cars even though it doesn't actually connect anything; the street doesn't directly connect to either the FDR Drive or a Central Park transverse.

The solutions didn't fall on deaf ears. City Council Member Dan Garodnick gave opening remarks, telling the group that he "will be very eager to look at the plans and then advocate for them." Representatives from Assembly Member Jonathan Bing and Council Member Jessica Lappin's office also participated in the group exercises and presented ideas.

The workshop was a success in another respect as well. Two local organizations, the E. 86th Street Association and Upper Green Side, became the first members of the East Side Streets Coalition, in addition to a local committee composed of TA members. According to Day, more organizations have already committed to joining the coalition but haven't officially signed on yet. Five more visioning workshops are scheduled for the rest of the East Side between now and mid-May. 

The area from 100th Street down to 67th Street, where the roadway has narrowed to accommodate subway construction, had been a big question mark in all the SBS presentations so far. Auerbach reports that DOT and the MTA intend to install temporary bus stations with off-board fare machines in the vicinity of 89th Street and 68th Street. That will be all for SBS buildout until conditions on the surface get back to normal, which means no dedicated lane for buses on this stretch. Auerbach writes:

DOT regulations require the MTA to maintain 4 lanes of moving traffic through the SAS zone at all times. A DOT official even went as far as to say that the current curb side lane (once a fully functional bus lane back in the day) is now NOT in fact a bus lane, but simply a lane for buses. Which also means it’s a lane for cars, and a lane for trucks... The statement makes one really wonder whether or not SBS will be able to truly achieve its stated goal of speeding bus trips along the corridor.

Streetsblog reader BicyclesOnly tells us that when the discussion turned to pedestrian and bicycle improvements in the East Side plan, parents told DOT they want to see better safety measures.

Heidi Untener, who bikes to school with her kids, criticized the decision to avoid implementing protected bike lanes on long stretches of Second Avenue. Untener got some spontaneous applause when she said that East Side congestion is driven by the free price of driving across the East River bridges, and that high traffic volumes are no justification for relying on the un-protected, shared route bike lanes in DOT's "Design C" configuration.

There was no vote but the early word is that CB 8 transpo committee will hold one at its next meeting.

East Side electeds continue to express support for the MTA and NYCDOT's redesign of First and Second Avenues while pushing for a more complete corridor. In exchanges with Streetsblog this week, they called attention, in particular, to the absence of plans for separated bus lanes along the corridor.

Assembly Member Jonathan Bing, who represents the Upper East Side and East Midtown, praised the redesign, "even if it's not everything that we asked for." The release of a specific design, he said, "brings into sharper focus the major benefits we will get." But Bing didn't hide his displeasure with the bus lanes: "I was one of the signatories to a letter a couple of weeks ago calling for segregated lanes and obviously anything that does not comport with the terms of the letter is disappointing."

Two years ago, a bill sponsored by Bing enabling the use of bus-mounted enforcement cameras fell short in Albany, a measure which he says is now urgently needed. "This current decision makes it even more important that we push for cameras, as that's going to be pretty much the only means of enforcement," he said.

State Senator José M. Serrano, whose district stretches from the West Bronx down to East Harlem and Yorkville, didn't single out the corridor's design itself but called on DOT and the MTA to implement the project equitably. Many improvements are on hold in Serrano's district pending Second Avenue Subway construction.

"This new service will improve the commute for East Side residents from the Lower East Side, all the way north to my district in East Harlem," he said. As such, Serrano "would like to emphasize how important it is that the design be completed in full throughout the corridor... We must ensure that, wherever possible, equal facilities and infrastructure -- such as the separated bike lane or the red painted bus lane -- are provided to the entire corridor."

Assembly Member Micah Kellner, who also represents the Upper East Side, told Streetsblog he's excited about the project, particularly after some of his concerns about station placement had been addressed. Even so, he isn't satisfied. "My remaining concern is the lack of physically separated bus lanes," Kellner said. "While I appreciate the need to address the needs of businesses that rely on deliveries," he added, "the primary goal of SBS must be to provide mass transit consumers with uninterrupted, speedy service along the First and Second Avenue corridors -- this should be the priority over all other small inconveniences."

With regards to separated bus lanes, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer didn't stake out a position but restated his belief that the current designs are not yet final, saying that he will be "working closely with members of the East Side Community Boards and the Department of Transportation" to keep communication open and guarantee that "the final proposal balances the needs of the community and the logistical realities of these two corridors." Stringer was not a signatory of December's letter calling for separated bus and bike lanes. 

City Council Member Jessica Lappin, also an Upper East Side representative, agreed that "the most important thing is that we move forward with Select Bus Service," while standing by her position that the corridor should receive separated lanes for both bikes and buses.

Lappin noted that in many parts of her district, subway construction would leave much of Second Avenue without any improvements. "I can understand that they don't want to put in infrastructure that they have to take out, but we need infrastructure that works," she said. "I don't want people thinking that they're in a free-for-all zone when the barriers suddenly end." She called on the MTA and DOT to develop a solution to ensure that, even in construction zones, First and Second Avenue cyclists and pedestrians are safe and buses move quickly. 

The MTA and DOT both said they'll take the response from electeds into account. "We're encouraged by the feedback we've received so far, and we look forward to receiving additional input as the design process moves forward," an MTA spokesman said.

"We're excited by the innovative proposal we presented last week and will take into account the feedback we received at that meeting -- where the plan was generally well-received," said a DOT spokesman. "We also look forward to getting additional community input at next month's board meetings."