Photos: Liz Patek

Streetsblog reader Liz Patek sent in these photos of the aftermath of a Tuesday afternoon crash at 68th Street and Broadway, in front of the Loews Lincoln Square movie theater. Liz writes:

Police were still on the scene. From talking to people, it appears that the cab backed up at a high speed around the corner from 68th to Broadway in order to get a parking spot. One of the people I spoke to was hit by the cab. She was OK. Two other pedestrians were injured and taken away in ambulances before I arrived. According to another witness, one of the other pedestrians who was hit got pulled under the cab and dragged for several feet. The driver also took out the street light.

NYPD had no information on the crash, and we could find no media reports. All of which is a pretty good indicator of how common these non-fatal crashes with injuries are. For every fatality that is written up somewhere there are dozens of “minor” crashes like this one. If you saw what happened here or have any info, let us know in the comments.

This crash occurred in the 20th Precinct. The commanding officer there is Deputy Inspector Brian A. McGinn. To voice your concerns about neighborhood traffic safety directly to McGinn or other precinct higher-ups, drop in on the next community council meeting. The 20th Precinct council “usually” meets on the fourth Monday of each month, except in July and August, at the 20th Precinct station house, 120 W. 82nd Street, at 7:00 p.m. Call ahead (212-580-6428) to confirm meeting dates and times.

Singer Daniela D'Ercole was struck by a car on the Upper West Side last Thursday and pronounced dead at St. Luke's Hospital. Photo: DNAinfo/David Torres

Last Thursday night, Daniela D’Ercole was struck and killed by the driver of a Mercury SUV while she crossed the street on the Upper West Side, multiple outlets reported over the weekend.

The 32-year-old jazz singer, who had moved to New York City from Italy last September, was reportedly hit after exiting a taxi at Broadway and 106th Street. According to the NYPD, she was crossing Broadway westbound against the light when the motorist, heading northbound, hit her.

The SUV driver stayed at the scene of the crash and police said that no criminality was suspected.

A video of the crash cited by the New York Post reportedly shows the collision sending D’Ercole flying across multiple lanes of traffic, suggesting that evidence is available to judge the driver’s speed at the time. When asked whether the driver might have been speeding, an NYPD press officer repeated that there was no criminality suspected and said he did not have any information about video evidence.

If you have any information on what happened here, please leave it in the comments or send us an e-mail.

If you would like to discuss the case and traffic safety in the neighborhood with local police, the next meeting of the 24th Precinct community council is this Wednesday, the 16th, at 7:00 p.m.

Again: If an unlicensed driver going the wrong way on a city street is not prosecutable for killing or injuring a pedestrian, who is? Photo: Daily News

For at least the second time this year, an unlicensed driver will be punished with no more than a token fine for killing a Manhattan pedestrian.

On June 30, Yolanda Casal, 78, and her 41-year-old daughter Anais Emmanuel were crossing Amsterdam Avenue near West 98th Street when Edwin Carrasco, 38, of Paterson, New Jersey, drove his Ford Explorer into them while backing up in pursuit of a parking spot. Casal was later pronounced dead at St. Luke’s Hospital; Emmanuel was hospitalized with injuries.

Reports indicated that Carrasco, who has a history of license suspensions and reckless driving, was initially charged by NYPD with driving with a suspended license, unsafe backing and failure to exercise due care. Though Carrasco was reportedly breaking at least two laws at the time of the crash, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance levied no charges related to the death or injuries caused by Carrasco’s negligence.

According to the online database of the New York State Unified Court System, Carrasco pled guilty in Manhattan Criminal Court on September 22 to a top charge of aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle in the third degree, a misdemeanor that stipulates that Carrasco drove without a license when he knew or should have known that he didn’t have a license. He is due to pay a $500 fine in December.

Days after Casal was killed, the unlicensed dump truck driver who ran down Upper East Side pedestrian Laurence Renard pled guilty to aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle in the third degree and, like Carrasco, was fined $500.

As a DA candidate, Vance pledged to hold dangerous drivers accountable for their actions. In July, responding to a query regarding the investigation of Casal’s death, a Vance spokesperson told Streetsblog: “When we prosecute a case we look at the elements of the law and the facts of our case to determine whether we can go forward with the case. If we find that the facts of a case fit criminally negligent homicide, we will not hesitate to charge them.”

Pedestrians at the complex intersection of 71st, Broadway and Amsterdam enjoy shorter crossing distances and more space at the northern end of the intersection, next to a subway entrance. Photos: Noah Kazis

DOT has largely completed an overhaul of the complicated intersection of Broadway, Amsterdam and 71st Street, a year after presenting the plan to Community Board 7 (hat tip to the West Side Rag, which noted the new infrastructure last Thursday).

Dubbed the “bowtie of death” by Borough President Scott Stringer and Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, who pressed DOT to take action last August and again this July, the intersection has long been one of the most dangerous places in Manhattan for pedestrians. According to Stringer’s office, there have been 34 traffic crashes here in the last two years.

Installation of the safety improvements began this August. Now pedestrians should have a far easier time making it across the tangle of streets. Using planters, granite blocks, and new surfacing flush with the roadbed, DOT has expanded sidewalks and medians, cutting crossing distances significantly. Abundant new crosswalks allow people to walk safely and legally where they’d previously been taking shortcuts without walk signals or a designated right-of-way. Along two blocks of Broadway, one southbound travel lane was removed to help calm traffic.

More pictures of the new safety features below the fold:

A number of new crosswalks make it easy, safe, and legal to cross the complex intersection in any direction. Before, pedestrians frequently cut from island to island without any official routes or signals for walking.

Looking south from the former "bowtie of death," new pedestrian space juts into Broadway on both sides of the intersection. On the left side of Broadway, the traffic lane was removed along this block.

More than 55 percent of pedestrians surveyed on the Upper West Side thought the Columbus Avenue bike lane improved safety. Image: Office of Gale Brewer

The Columbus Avenue bike lane is both safe and popular, according to two assessments released at a meeting of Community Board 7 last night. Representatives from the Department of Transportation presented data showing that the street redesign reduced the number of crashes on the street by 34 percent, while 73 percent of Upper West Siders surveyed by City Council Member Gale Brewer said they think the bike lane and pedestrian refuge islands improved the street.

The bike lane on Columbus was installed last year between 77th Street and 96th Street following a vote of approval from CB 7. When some merchants complained about parking and loading issues after the lane was installed, a task force made up of local elected officials and community leaders put forward a series of tweaks to the design.

Along that mile of the Upper West Side, safety has greatly improved, according to a new evaluation of the redesign’s effects from DOT [PDF]. Crashes have decreased by 34 percent where the bike lane was installed, and total traffic injuries are down 27 percent. On the blocks of Columbus Avenue to the north and south of the bike lane, 29 percent of motor vehicles were clocked speeding, but only between eight and 17 percent of vehicles on the stretch of Columbus with the bike lane were measured going faster than 30 miles per hour.

In addition to improving safety, installing the bike lane has also encouraged cycling on Columbus Avenue. Bike counts are up by 56 percent on weekdays, while sidewalk riding has plummeted. Double-parking, too, is way down.

The safety benefits of the bike lane have not gone unnoticed. Of the 908 people surveyed by Brewer, 40 percent said the current design works for all users, 33 percent said it was a good start but needed some changes to work better, and only 27 percent said it doesn’t work well. Around 45 percent of those surveyed thought the redesign made it safer to cross Columbus, while 27 percent felt less safe.

Brewer’s survey isn’t a scientific poll of the neighborhood, but did reach a broad segment of the population. Her office put the poll online and publicized it to senior centers, merchants, local business associations, AAA, and delivery cyclists.

While every group surveyed said that the redesign made them feel safer, opinions varied based on the way respondents normally got around. Pedestrians said, by a margin of 56-32, that it increases pedestrian safety, while drivers said it increased driver safety by a slimmer margin of 48-36. More than 90 percent of cyclists said the bike lane made their trips safer.

Based on the survey, Brewer called for a few additional tweaks to the lane, including additional signage promoting safe behavior by all street users and better enforcement of parking rules by the police.

“We all know that change is hard,” said Council Member Brewer, “but 70 percent of our respondents think that the bike lane is going in the right direction.”

Photo: Civitas

Now that the lane, which runs from 77th to 96th Street, is a year old and residents have had some time to get used to it, City Council Member Gale Brewer has launched a survey to gauge the neighborhood’s reaction. Brewer supports the lane but wants to see if there are ways to improve the street further.

If you live, work, shop or otherwise travel on the Upper West Side, you can fill out Brewer’s survey here. It only takes a few minutes. The questions ask how the bike lane has affected safety, lawfulness, activity and comfort among all street users. It offers space for open-ended remarks on what works well and what ought to be changed.

Given the Columbus Avenue lane’s relative isolation — it has no north-south connections at either end and doesn’t have a protected northbound pair — it’s important to expand this safe cycling design and integrate it into the city’s network of protected bikeways. Filling out this survey can help move that process along.

Photos: Liz Patek

Thanks to reader Liz Patek for these shots of DOT crews getting to work this morning at Broadway and Amsterdam at W. 71st Street. Dubbed the “bowtie of death” by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, the foreboding expanse of asphalt has seen dozens of crashes over the last two years, and has been named by Transportation Alternatives as the most dangerous intersection on the Upper West Side.

The city promised a number of safety improvements just under a year ago, and in July Rosenthal and Stringer again called for their implementation. We’ll keep you posted now that construction has begun.

Update Sep. 2: NYC DOT sent along a more recent project rendering than the one we originally posted. See it after the jump.

A reader sends along this shot from the Hudson River Greenway exit at W. 72nd Street. Cyclists are apparently no longer required to dismount on the shared path that connects the greenway and Riverside Drive, a ham-handed directive issued by the Parks Department last summer. Our tipster says the new signs have replaced dismount instructions, which were reportedly backed up by threats of summonses.

Good to see Parks acknowledge the value of this link to cyclists with an eye toward safety for all users.

The first two shared bike/ped paths across Central Park are set to open in early September. At 96th Street, the path will run south of the transverse rather than north of it (both are shown on this map). Image:New York Times

Those paths will be clearly marked with new signage and painted diamonds on the pavement, as on the park’s only current bike/ped path, which connects West 106th Street to the loop drive. The paths won’t be divided into separate lanes for those on foot and those on two wheels, said Greenleaf, but the diamonds will be off to one side of the path.

What those signs should say was a point of contention. Greenleaf said they are likely to urge cyclists to go at “walking speed,” but many members of the CB 7 Parks and Transportation Committees found that overly restrictive.

The co-chairs of the Parks Committee, Klari Neuwelt and Elizabeth Starkey, pointed out that they had sent a letter to the Parks Department months ago recommending that shared paths in Central and Riverside Parks use language like “yield to pedestrians” or “go slow,” rather than speed limits that did not leave room for discretion. “It was not intended to have cyclists go so slowly they fall off their bikes,” said Neuwelt.

At one point, the restrictions on the paths may be more stringent still. Where the 96th Street route, which will run just south of the transverse road on a little-used path, crosses the East Drive, said Greenleaf, a dismount zone is under consideration. “There are issues about whether it’s actually safe to cross the drives on your bicycle,” she said, adding that those issues were exacerbated at that crossing by a hairpin turn just east of the loop.

A number of community board members pointed out how much more smoothly these paths could be implemented if cars were taken off the Central Park loop drives altogether. “It sounds like a lot of this is the result of avoiding automobile traffic,” said board chair Mel Wymore. The community board endorsed a car-free park trial by a vote of 32-1 in June.

The two board members who spoke against the shared paths, though, also cited the board’s support for a car-free Central Park to make their case. “The request is not by park users,” said Tom Vitullo-Martin in an argument echoed by Transportation Committee co-chair Dan Zweig. “It’s for roads to be cut across the park for bicycles.”

Even so, the bulk of community board members and neighborhood residents in attendance spoke in support of trying out the plan. No vote was taken, as Wymore wanted the board to speak up on the plan after the trial was underway.

Wymore also urged the Conservancy to generate hard data on which to evaluate the plan. Greenleaf said that the Conservancy is currently planning to have staff and volunteers qualitatively observing the way the lanes are used and gathering feedback from park users.

Borough President Scott Stringer and Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal press the DOT to install promised safety improvements at the dangerous intersection of Broadway, Amsterdam, and 71st Street on the Upper West Side. Behind them are neighborhood residents and members of Community Board 7. Photo: Noah Kazis

One year ago, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal stood on a traffic island in the middle of the intersection of Amsterdam Avenue, Broadway, and 71st Street to urge the Department of Transportation to install a slew of safety features at what they called “the bowtie of death.” That September, DOT put out a plan to expand sidewalks, add crosswalks and remove traffic lanes from both Broadway and Amsterdam.

This afternoon, Stringer and Rosenthal stood with Upper West Side community leaders on that same traffic island, urging DOT to finally put that safety plan into place. “Not next year, not during the fall, but now,” said Stringer.

Over the last two years, there have been 34 crashes at the intersection, according to Stringer’s office.

DOT had promised to make the safety improvements by this spring, Stringer said. The only change that’s been made so far are the installation of countdown timers on the walk signals. Knowing how much time you have to cross, he said, “is not the same as actually having more time.” Stringer explicitly called for each piece of the DOT safety plan to be installed, including the curb extensions, crosswalks, and the removal of traffic lanes.

“We shouldn’t be standing here today,” said Rosenthal. She’s been pushing for a safety fix for the intersection since 2007, when her office released a report on senior pedestrian safety in the neighborhood with Transportation Alternatives. The dangers of the crossing are so glaring that the Los Angeles Times led off a story on unsafe streets for the elderly with a discussion of that very corner, Rosenthal pointed out.

Rosenthal also named 96th Street, Riverside Boulevard, and the intersection of 79th Street and Riverside Drive as in need of pedestrian safety improvements.

Stringer said that while he’s met with DOT to discuss the intersection, he has gotten no firm commitment on when the safety fixes would be installed. The DOT press office did not reply to Streetsblog’s inquiry about what has held up the promised improvements.

Stringer was careful to state that the press conference was not an attack on the department or on Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. But, he said, “we’re not looking to come out here when somebody dies.”

Update: “Work will begin next month now that we’ve resolved the major challenges of building atop a major, active subway station,” DOT spokesperson Seth Solomonow told Streetsblog after the publication of this story.

DOT's plan for the intersection will, when installed, remove traffic lanes and add major sidewalk extensions and crosswalks

The driver of this SUV killed Yolanda Casal and injured her daughter when he went after a parking spot. Photo: New York Times

Anais Emmanuel and her mother, 78-year-old Yolanda Casal, were crossing Amsterdam Avenue near West 98th Street around 5 p.m. when Edwin Carrasco, 38, backed his Ford Explorer into them while gunning for a parking spot. Casal was reportedly thrown into the air upon impact and suffered massive head injuries. The victims were taken to St. Luke’s Hospital where Casal was pronounced dead. Emmanuel, 41, was reported to be in stable condition with broken ribs.

Carrasco, of Paterson, New Jersey, was initially charged with driving with a suspended license, unsafe backing and failure to exercise due care. A spokesperson from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance told Streetsblog Carrasco will be arraigned today, but could not confirm prior to arraignment what charge or charges were issued.

Northjersey.com reports that Carrasco has a history of license suspensions and reckless driving:

Carrasco’s New Jersey license had been suspended 23 times between 1992 and 1999, according to Motor Vehicle Commission records. The majority of the suspensions were for not paying fines and for being a persistent violator, agency spokesman Mike Horan said.

He has been in good standing since 1999, getting points off his license every year since then, Horan said. Before Friday’s charges, the last violation he received was for talking on a cell phone in January.

According to attorney Steve Vaccaro of Rankin & Taylor, potential charges range from a violation of VTL 1146 — the enforcement mechanism behind Hayley and Diego’s Law and Elle’s Law (pre-schooler Elle Vandenberghe suffered brain damage when she was hit by a driver backing up in pursuit of a parking spot) — to second degree murder, if the driver in fact heard and understood a warning shouted to him. Vaccaro believes criminally negligent homicide is “the highest charge that might actually be applied.” (Disclosure: Streetsblog has retained Vaccaro for legal services to expedite freedom of information requests.)

“The ‘rule of two’ is met here because driver was backing up unsafely (violation number one) and driving with a suspended license (violation number two),” says Vaccaro. “Alternatively, the court looks to whether the driver created a risk as opposed to failing to perceive one. Here, one can say the driver created the risk by backing up quickly in the direction opposite the flow of traffic.”

The so-called “rule of two” is an arbitrary precedent that, when adhered to, requires a driver be suspected of two simultaneous offenses in order to be considered negligent. As a candidate for district attorney in 2009, Vance stated that he was ready to challenge that standard.

A witness told DNAinfo that “the SUV was moving fast” and that Casal and Emmanuel “had the right of way.”

Something about the street design at this intersection appears to be creating unsafe conditions for everyone using the street, from drivers to pedestrians to the cyclists whose protected lane ended five blocks uptown.

Another day, another motorist barreling onto a New York City sidewalk. Reader Liz Patek sends this shot of the crash aftermath at Columbus and 72nd Street yesterday evening, where a van driver, apparently heading east, jumped the curb and crashed into a light pole. The tally on CrashStat reveals that 20 pedestrians and eight cyclists were injured in traffic crashes at this intersection between 1995 and 2005.

According to one account from the scene, a pedestrian was injured in this crash, but the extent of the harm incurred is uncertain. NYPD’s press office had no information about the incident.

Speaking of which, are you anxious to get more up-to-date information on traffic safety in your neighborhood from city government? The Saving Lives Through Better Information bill requires NYPD to post information on traffic crashes and injuries in each precinct, searchable by intersection, every month. It was signed into law on February 22, setting off a 120-day clock before the reporting requirements go into effect. So we’ve got a little bit more than a month before we should start to see these stats regularly updated online.

Everyone from members of the City Council to legendary Parks Commissioner Thomas Hoving has said that Mayor Bloomberg has the power to make Central Park car-free overnight.

In 2008, students marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and wrote 10,000 letters supporting a car-free Prospect Park. Current campaigns to make NYC's flagship parks car-free haven't seen the same level of local organizing. Photo: Ben Fried

Unfortunately, Bloomberg doesn’t appear disposed to do so any time soon. “If you did not allow cars in the park during rush hour,” the mayor said in March, “the rest of the city streets would be overloaded and it would create an awful lot of traffic.”

So the pressure to keep cars out of parks will have to come from the local level in the communities surrounding Central Park or Prospect Park. The CB 7 votes in favor of a summer pilot are an important step forward on that front; while the full board still needs to pass the resolution, it is likely to do so with that kind of committee vote.

This year, the City Council has become another arena for advancing car-free parks proposals. Upper West Side rep Gale Brewer recently introduced legislation to make Central and Prospect Parks car-free.

But Brewer’s efforts in the Council haven’t gained traction. Only four of her colleagues — Fernando Cabrera, Letitia James, Melissa Mark-Viverito and Daniel Dromm — signed onto the bill. Last month, Brewer decided to drop Prospect Park from her bill in the wake of opposition from Brooklyn officials.

At the community board level, much work remains to be done to build the momentum necessary to make change happen. Ken Coughlin, a long-time leader in the fight for a car-free Central Park, was enthused by CB 7′s support but said he wasn’t aware of any parallel effort in the other community boards surrounding the park.

The Upper West Side appears to be the epicenter of the movement for car-free parks. But for the campaign to succeed, more neighborhoods will have to join the fight.

Weekend cyclists in Central Park. Photo: Ed Yourdon/Flickr.

Upper West Side residents want to make Central Park once again a welcoming place for recreational cyclists, based on the near-unanimous position of Community Board 7′s parks and transportation committees at a joint meeting last night. But with the NYPD intransigently committed to its ticketing blitz and DOT unwilling to pay for changes to the traffic signals in the park, it’s not clear how to move forward. Some bright news is on the horizon for cyclists hoping to use Central Park for transportation, however: Two east-west routes through the northern end of the park should open this summer.

As of mid-March, the Central Park Precinct had handed out 230 tickets to cyclists in 2011. In comparison, they issued only 160 speeding tickets to motor vehicle drivers in all of 2010. The members of the two committees all agreed that the crackdown was negatively affecting Central Park. The central concern of the discussion, as presented by parks committee co-chair Klari Neuwelt, is that “there seems to have been a substantial decrease in the number of cyclists using Central Park for exercise.”

The NYPD’s new bike enforcement policy was uniformly perceived as excessive. Transportation committee co-chair Dan Zweig voiced the least critical view, thanking police for enforcing traffic laws against cyclists but adding, “I wish they had picked a better place than Central Park to start doing it.”

The widespread agreement, however, didn’t extend to the question of how to best facilitate cycling during car-free hours. The problem is that there isn’t an easy fix within reach.

The simplest solution would be for the police to return to the former status quo and stop making cyclists running red lights a top priority. Unfortunately, said Neuwelt, “we came to a dead end in that discussion. We’ve got nowhere to go with the police.”

If you can’t change the way the law is enforced, the community board thought next, change the law itself. The most popular position seemed to be a plan to change the lights to blinking yellows during off-peak hours, with push-buttons for pedestrians to request a red light if needed. “That’s the answer,” said transportation committee co-chair Andrew Albert. “Don’t stop if there’s nobody there.”

City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez introduced legislation last week that would require traffic lights in parks to be blinking yellows during car-free hours. It currently has the support of Council members Gale Brewer, Vincent Gentile, and Brad Lander.

Blinking yellows, however, also are opposed by the city. According to Neuwelt, DOT thinks that blinking yellows would be too dangerous for pedestrians and, given the old traffic signal technology in the park, be prohibitively expensive.

Community members presented other ideas as well, each with its own set of drawbacks. Board member Suzanne Robotti, for example, proposed retiming the traffic lights to the speed of cyclists rather than cars as a way of allowing cyclists to ride without stopping while still keeping red lights so pedestrians can cross. There was a lot of enthusiasm for the concept until it was pointed out that cyclists travel at very different speeds.

Similarly, Upper West Side resident Jim Zisfein’s proposal to add signage urging cyclists to stop for pedestrians ran into questions about what would happen when the signs’ instructions conflicted with the message of a red or green light.

Ultimately, the community board did not endorse any specific plan. Instead, the next step will be a meeting of all the stakeholders organized by Council Member Gale Brewer, who was in attendance at last night’s meeting.

More concrete progress was announce on plans to allow cyclists to cross the park from east to west. The Central Park Conservancy’s Caroline Greenleaf announced that the first two crosstown routes would be open early this summer: one along roughly 102nd Street and one along 96th. The park is still working with DOT on configuring the entrances and exits for the 102nd Street path.

“If these two paths turn out to work well for everybody,” said Greenleaf, “we’re looking to expand them southwards.” One future location would go along the north side of the Great Lawn, at roughly 86th Street. Below that, it’s not clear where any additional routes would go. Higher pedestrian volumes at the southern end of the park and automobile traffic along 72nd Street present challenges, according to Greenleaf.

The paths are likely to have strict rules limiting bicycles. “There will be some sort of speed limit,” said Greenleaf, likely either 5 miles per hour or “walking speed.” “These paths are so heavily used,” she explained.

The community board did not offer a formal resolution on the east-west bike routes, but seemed very supportive. Board members uniformly spent their time suggesting possible low-conflict routes for the southern end of the park, not critiquing the proposal.

Upper West Side leaders presenting their recommendations to tweak the Columbus Avenue bike lane. Photo: Noah Kazis

Since Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has promised to take his approach to street redesigns, first put into place by the Columbus Avenue working group, borough-wide, Streetsblog decided to check in with him to see just what this process would look like.

The details are still being worked out. Stringer wasn’t yet sure, for example, whether future working groups would limit their surveys to businesses along the same side of the street as the bike lane, as was done on Columbus, or branch out to groups like residents or pedestrians visiting the area. Stringer did say he’d like to bring working groups in from the very beginning of the process rather than solely using them to troubleshoot already implemented redesigns.

Stringer argued this would ultimately enhance the transformation of the city’s streets, not slow it down. On Columbus Avenue, he said, only two of the businesses surveyed said they were opposed to the new protected bike lane. “There’s a real opportunity here to tone down some of the rhetoric and get things done,” said Stringer. “Having dialogue and even disagreements with communities about street design in the short run may be a big pain for the bureaucrats, but in the long run it’s going to mean a lot to evolving the street design of the city.”

Stringer called the DOT’s current approach too domineering. “The DOT philosophy has been it’s either my way or the highway,” he said. “It’s a system that has been too top-down, too in your face.”

When pressed on the fact that the Columbus Avenue bike lane had been the subject of public discussion since 2008 and community board debate since 2009, Stringer walked back his comments somewhat. “I think that the Columbus Avenue bike lane process has from the beginning been really positive,” he said. Stringer said that the Columbus Avenue process was better than others because of the shared outlook of the community and DOT. “They put DOT in a more comfortable position, because at the end of the day the goals were the same,” he argued.

Even so, said Stringer, “there wasn’t always transparency.” He said that DOT wanted to keep the results of the working group’s survey private, for example. “If you think for a second that they’ve been collaborating with people around the city, that’s just not true.”

With the exception of the first segment on Ninth Avenue, however, the city’s new protected bike lanes have all received community board votes in favor. In the cases of Columbus Avenue, the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway, and Prospect Park West, the agency was responding to community-based campaigns for safer streets.

Stringer believes the process went awry, for example, with the way pedestrian refuge islands were built along Columbus — DOT added most of them after the community board vote, once new funding became available to do so. “The islands are terrific,” said Stringer, who agreed that they had been popular at the community board when a smaller number were proposed. But, he said, the community shouldn’t have found out about the extra islands only after they had been installed.

“You tell people what’s going on,” he said. “If it’s good news, I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to tell people.” Not doing so, he argued, feeds “a public perception that you’re not transparent or forthcoming, real or imagined.”

Upper West Side leaders present their recommendations to tweak the Columbus Avenue bike lane. Photo: Noah Kazis

While the new protected bike lane on Columbus Avenue received community support throughout the process, once installed many local businesses along the corridor began to complain that the design was making it harder to park or make deliveries along the east side of the street. In response, elected officials and the community board developed a working group, surveyed those businesses and developed a set of tweaks intended to make the street design work better, which DOT has quickly accepted. That collaborative process has now set the scene for a continued expansion of the bike network on the Upper West Side.

The Columbus Avenue Working Group, made up of Community Board 7, the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance, and the offices of Borough President Scott Stringer, State Senator Thomas Duane, Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, and Council Member Gale Brewer, canvassed the blocks of Columbus between 77th and 96th streets, asking those businesses on the east side of the street what they thought of the bike lane. They announced the results of that survey at a press conference yesterday.

Of the 65 businesses they surveyed, 36 responded. And while that wasn’t a random sample, the results were pretty clear: 72 percent said the redesign had been bad for business. Of those negative responses, 86 percent identified reduced space for parking or loading as a concern and 53 percent said they’d had issues receiving deliveries.

No member of the working group, however, blamed the bike lane or called for a return to the more dangerous Columbus Avenue of the past. When asked by one reporter where things went wrong, Stringer answered, “I don’t think that things went wrong.” The only disconnect, he said, was that community consultation needed to be ongoing.

“You need bike lanes, but you need input,” agreed Brewer.

That input turned into a set of modest recommendations (the full document listing them is up at Transportation Nation). It calls for left turn lanes to be shortened, where possible, to restore a few parking spaces; for DOT to work with businesses to calibrate the parking/loading balance on their block; and to reprogram Munimeters so that they can’t issue permits during loading-only hours.

When they examined the street themselves, working group members found that the lack of loading space wasn’t due to an inadequate number of loading zones, but to inadequate enforcement of those loading zones, which filled up with parked cars. They therefore urge the NYPD to crack down on misuse of the loading zones — particularly parking placard abuse and double parking. They also recommend more enforcement of cyclist infractions in the bike lane.

Those recommendations earned the support of the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance. Columbus Avenue will now be a street “designed for everyone, with input from everyone,” said Tila Duhaime of the UWSSR.

During yesterday’s press conference, Stringer offered an additional recommendation that wasn’t included in the working group report. The borough president complained that the community board had voted on a plan with six pedestrian refuge islands but found 28 installed. When he said they should get rid of some of those islands, however, Brewer and Wymore instantly objected, saying they liked them.

In a letter sent yesterday, DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan agreed to comply with most of the working group’s requests and to study or collaborate with other city agencies on the rest. Stringer took a few jabs at DOT during the press conference, but ultimately praised DOT for their quick and supportive response.

Stringer was impressed enough with the results that he wants to make the working group a model. “I want to go to Grand Street,” he said. “I want to go around the borough.”

Rosenthal said the Columbus Avenue model could be a way of bringing people together and cementing support for important street redesigns. “Everybody has an interest in realizing a safe and friendly pedestrian, motorist, bike lane city,” she said. “We want it to work: bike lanes have gotten some bad publicity lately.”

That theory may already be working. Wymore said that the community board is now “looking for ways to connect what we’ve already accomplished here on Columbus Avenue to other bike lanes throughout the city. The goals is to have a network of bike lanes that work and really allow people to get from place to place. Hopefully we’ll be working very closely with DOT to accomplish that.”

The originally-requested northbound pair on Amsterdam may be a harder lift, however. Wymore said that because Amsterdam is less wide and carries more motor vehicle traffic than Columbus, it needs to be considered as part of a neighborhood-wide analysis.

Efforts to replace these dismount signs in Riverside Park are stalling, but Manhattan CB 7 is keeping up the pressure on the Parks Department.

The parks committee of Manhattan Community Board 7 restated its support for shared bike/pedestrian paths through Riverside Park and Central Park last night. In Central Park, the shared paths would create new east-west routes through the park, while in Riverside, the community board is fighting against the Parks Department’s surprise imposition of dismount signs on what was once a part of the greenway system.

In Central Park, progress is continuing apace, reported committee co-chair Klari Neuwelt. She said that Doug Blonsky, the head of the Central Park Conservancy, had told her that plans to allow bikes on certain east-west pedestrian paths through the park were moving forward around 102nd Street, 97th Street, and in the 80s. “You’ll have options in Central Park,” promised Neuwelt.

She added, however, that the plan to allow bikes to take the 72nd Street Cross Drive across the park is moving more slowly through the Department of Transportation than hoped.

In Riverside Park, however, a victory that seemed to be in hand remains elusive. Neuwelt said that she had been informed that the dismount signs in Riverside Park were to be replaced with signs urging bikes to ride slowly and share the space with pedestrians. Then, however, the Parks Committee received what Neuwelt called “a pretty weasely e-mail back from John Herrold,” the administrator of Riverside Park, shying away from any such commitment.

The Parks Committee promised to keep on top of Riverside Park to see that the dismount signs are removed. “We’re working on it,” said Neuwelt. “We’re not about to be taken for patsies either.”

In the long term, engineering efforts to take some pressure off the 72nd Street entrance to Riverside Park are still being pursued. CB 7 chair Mel Wymore noted that as part of the Riverside Center negotiations, funding was allocated to create a new ramp from 72nd Street to the greenway, so cyclists will go from road to greenway without passing through the park. The committee also pledged to continue pursuing the plan to create bike access from the 79th Street boat basin to the greenway.

In the short term, though, they said that getting rid of the dismount signs is the top priority. “There’s always going to be a need for bikers to enter at 72nd,” said Neuwelt.

From behind the wheel of “Mobile 2,” Aiello, in full-on Ted Baxter mode, informs viewers that the Columbus Avenue bike lane is playing havoc with commerce on the Upper West Side. Though its design maintains five lanes for cars, Aiello claims the lane is putting the squeeze on businesses, as delivery drivers are now forced to double- or triple-park.

Cue Andy Besch of West Side Wine, one of two business people Aiello talks to on-camera. Besch is appalled that city workers cleared the bike lane with shovels during last week’s snow storm, and describes Columbus as “a major truck route destroyed.” The story’s other source is grocer Richie Zingone, in a recurring role, who dismisses the lane as “not practical” and pretty much just wants it to go away.

Aiello’s Exhibit B is a totally unsubstantiated complaint that businesses are at risk because drivers are no longer “comfortable” stopping in for purchases, what with parking shifted a few feet off the curb, as if drive-through traffic is the key to viability in one of the most walkable neighborhoods in America.

The nut of Aiello’s piece, it seems, is that Community Board 7 is following up with business owners about the lane. But while Aiello implies that the CB 7 survey — he calls it an “investigation” — was sparked by a groundswell of anti-bike outrage, board chair Mel Wymore, whom Aiello also spoke with, told DNAinfo that its purpose is to clear up confusion and misinformation. You know, the kind of confusion and misinformation that thrives thanks to half-baked hit pieces on the TV.

Instead of pretending that empty curb space was abundant on Columbus prior to the installation of the bike lane, that delivery drivers who now at least have designated loading zones weren’t previously forced to double-park, and that drivers of private vehicles were once able to whip into open spots a la Kojak, it would be refreshing to see Tony Aiello and other New York journos follow the lead of their counterparts in Washington, who have demonstrated that there’s more to livable streets coverage than gravitating to the loudest complainers.

Photo: Lisa Sladkus.

A taxi driver plowed onto the sidewalk at the corner of 72nd Street and Columbus Avenue this morning, knocking into a signpole marking a stop for the crosstown bus. Lisa Sladkus of the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance was there and snapped this picture.

The NYPD press office didn’t have any information about the crash, suggesting that, luckily, there weren’t any serious injuries.