Manhattan Community Board 7 approved a resolution Tuesday in support of protected bike lanes for the Upper West Side. According to Streetsblog readers who attended and the Westside Independent web site, a mostly positive discussion on the merits of such improvements -- in front of a packed house of residents wearing "Protected Bike Lanes Protect Everyone" stickers -- preceded a 28-7 vote. Here's the reso in full:

Protected bike lanes have brought measurable safety improvements to other neighborhoods in Manhattan.

Many members of the Upper West Side public, business community, and elected officials have all expressed support for protected bike lanes in petitions, surveys, letters, and public testimony.

Community Board 7 wishes to encourage safe responsible cycling in, to, and from this district.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT Community Board 7/Manhattan supports the Department of Transportation's initiative to create protected bike lanes and requests that DOT prepare a proposal for Class 1 protected bike lanes on Amsterdam Avenue and Columbus Avenue (including information on projected impacts on: bike safety, pedestrian safety, business operations and interests, parking, truck traffic etc.) that would be subject to review and comment by Community Board 7.

We also have word that Community Board 8 unanimously approved a "pro-bike" resolution last night. More details on this jarring development as they become available.

As was pointed out at the committee meeting, protected bike lanes not only benefit cyclists, but also help pedestrians by calming traffic, reducing crossing distances and giving bike riders a safer alternative to riding on the sidewalk. It was clear that the healthy public turnout had a positive impact on the committee's decision. A similar show of support is needed tonight. Here are the details:

WHAT: Manhattan Community Board 7 Full Board Meeting
WHEN: October 6, 6:30 p.m.
WHERE: Red Oak Apartments, 135 W. 106th St. (between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues)

In other business, the committee tabled a vote on a request that posts from old parking meters, rendered defunct by muni-meters, be converted to bike racks. During a reportedly heated discussion, at least one committee member expressed fears that such action would further delay the installation of new CityRacks, and questioned the aesthetic appeal of the converted meter poles.

The full board is set to take up the protected bike lane resolution on October 6.

CB 7's transportation committee will host DOT staffers to discuss future bike facilities on the Upper West Side -- specifically, potential locations for protected bike lanes. We're trying to confirm, but we have word that Manhattan Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione and bike coordinator Josh Benson will be there. [Update: Hayes Lord will be representing DOT.] Either way, this has the makings of an important opportunity to weigh in on UWS livable streets improvements. The DOT segment of tonight's meeting begins at around 8 p.m.

Across the park starting at 6:30, the CB 8 transpo committee will hold a "bike forum" that, based on its description, will focus mostly on cyclist behavior. Given CB 8's tendency to oppose bike infrastructure almost by default, Upper East Side cyclists may want to make their presence felt.

Update: The UWS Streets Renaissance Campaign has put together a white paper on the benefits of protected bike lanes for community board members. Here's the PDF.

Residents of all ages, electeds and planner-about-town Jan Gehl gathered at PS 87 last Thursday to mark the launch of "Blueprint for the Upper West Side: A Roadmap for Truly Livable Streets." A year-long community-based project of the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance campaign, the Blueprint [PDF], as its name implies, offers a detailed vision of street designs intended to improve safety, access and mobility for the car-free majority. Streetfilms' Robin Urban Smith was there and filed this report.

Streets designed for safe, accessible, and equitable use. That is the vision of the "Blueprint for the Upper West Side: A Roadmap for Truly Livable Streets," to be unveiled tonight by the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance Campaign. The product of one year of community-driven planning, in consultation with urbanist legends Jan Gehl and Donald Shoup, the 51-page Blueprint [PDF] is an expansive neighborhood-wide plan that would employ many livable streets concepts already in use by NYC DOT. 

Proposals include:

• Separated bike lanes and bike boxes on Broadway, Amsterdam and Columbus
  
• Bollard-protected pedestrian bulb-outs
  
• Leading Pedestrian Intervals
• Curb extensions to slow auto traffic and allow for garbage pick-up
• Bus bulbs with bike parking 
• Chicanes with reverse-angle parking on cross streets

The Blueprint was composed from input gathered via neighborhood surveys and citizen workshops in a community where drivers account for 10 percent of commutes but absorb 228 times more street space per capita, and where over 5,000 pedestrians and cyclists were injured or killed between 1995 and 2005.

Gehl will be on hand for tonight's reveal, as he was at the project's inception last November. The event is free and open to the public.

Where: P.S. 87, 160 W. 78th St. between Amsterdam and Columbus

When: 6:30 p.m.

RSVP here

Nevertheless, Mayor Bloomberg has come out in favor of the Costco, the Sun reports:

At a press conference yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg said bringing the big-box warehouse chain to the city would help New Yorkers weather a difficult economic downturn. "Costco has a reputation of selling in bulk at very low prices, and given the economy today and the public's desire to buy things in bulk and buy them cheaper, it seems to me we should welcome any store that wants to come here," he said.

In light of the Mayor's own congestion reduction efforts, the endorsement makes little sense:

A spokesman for the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, Richard Lipsky, said the Costco store would run counter to another administration priority: reducing traffic.

"It is incongruous for the mayor, who supported congestion pricing, to support one of the most auto-dependent retailers in the country," Mr. Lipsky said.

Photo of Costco parking lot in Brooklyn: MaxKalehoff/Flickr

I just received an automated call opposing congestion pricing.

I wasn't able to record or write down the message (I was in the middle of another call), but the gist was that the money from congestion pricing would go to the MTA, and "you know how trustworthy they are" (paraphrase from call). The script also cited the recent decision by the MTA to pull back on the $30 million in improvements that were promised with the fare hike as evidence that we shouldn't trust the MTA and, therefore, congestion pricing.

The call concluded by urging calls to "your Council member" to vote against congestion pricing. I did call my Council member in response, but urged her to vote FOR congestion pricing.

If you are the recipient of one of these automated calls, shoot an email to tips@streetsblog.org and give us whatever additional details you happen to catch.  

As a candidate for a livable streets makeover, Columbus Avenue is a no-brainer. A block from Central Park, it is home to the American Museum of Natural History and sports a string of active ground floor businesses, but the street itself is a classically car-oriented corridor: three moving lanes sandwiched between two parking lanes. The Columbus Avenue BID has been working with Project for Public Spaces to make the street itself more of a destination -- to create a walkable, transit-oriented "spine" running from the museum to Lincoln Center on Broadway.

The photo-simulation you see above, produced by the Open Planning Project, depicts the re-envisioned Columbus Avenue at the corner of 72nd Street (download the whole report). The main feature, on the left side of the street, is a physically separated bike-and-bus lane, which is accompanied by textured crosswalks, corner bump outs, and additional bike parking. Here's how this intersection looks today:

"We hope to become a model district for the city of New York," said Barbara Adler, executive director of the BID. "We've been trying to make Columbus Ave as environmentally-friendly and pedestrian-, worker-, and resident-friendly as possible. This report is a compendium of ideas that could happen if we lived in a perfect world."

How many of these ideas will actually happen? In the immediate future, generating higher parking turnover seems like a safe bet. "The first thing we'll see is parking meters switched out for Muni meters that accept credit cards," said Adler. "I think we'll see the cost of parking rise on Columbus Avenue, and on Broadway and Amsterdam as well."

Also fairly likely in the short-term, she said, are painted neckdowns, more bike racks, and leading pedestrian intervals.

As for the more ambitious infrastructure changes, Adler said her hopes for the immediate future have been "scaled back," even though she believes the BID's report fits well with the goals of PlaNYC. "We're waiting to hear from DOT," she said. "We had hoped to get a traffic-protected bike lane, but it doesn't appear that that's going to happen anytime soon. I do think that all of these things will eventually have to be implemented in New York City, but not as fast as we had hoped."

The BID will present the report to the transportation committee and green committee of Community Board 7 on Monday night. They will be seeking a letter of support, not a vote.

You can voice your support for a more livable Columbus Avenue to CB7, Monday the 24th at 7 p.m. The meeting is at 250 W 87th Street, on the second floor.

Photo and simulation: Carly Clark 

Streetfilms' Elizabeth Press was in attendance this week at the New York Historical Society where neighborhood activists, professional planners, and experienced advocates gathered to share their secrets on how New Yorkers can transform the public realm. The event was hosted by NYC Streets Renaissance and was moderated by Streetsblog editor Aaron Naparstek.

Panelists included:

• Christine Berthet (Clinton Hells Kitchen Coalition for Pedestrian Safety)
  
• Joshua David (Friends of the High Line)
  
• Penny Lee (Department of City Planning)
  
• Milton Puryear (Brooklyn Greenway Initiative)
  
• Paul Steely White (Transportation Alternatives)
  
• Robert Witherwax (Grand Army Plaza Coalition)
  
• Chauncy Young (Highbridge Community Life Center)

Here are some highlights.

The drive to create additional (free) parking for the benefit of New York City's auto-owning minority takes many shapes and forms. Today, I'd like to take aim at a particular form of curbside parking: "pull-in angle parking." I've seen this type of parking in a few areas of the city, but I'll contain my assessment to the street I live on -- W. 97th Street between Central Park West and Columbus.

Rather than the typical, curbside parallel parking, on my street cars park bumper-to-curb at a 45 degree angle to the sidewalk. On my extra-wide street, this has increased the total supply of parking spots by 30 to 40 percent.

In some sense, it seems to be a decent trade-off -- less space for through-traffic and more space for local residents and visitors to store their motor vehicles. West 97th Street could be a dangerous four-lane speedway if all of the available road space were used to move traffic. The angle parking is a way of putting this block on a road-diet, though, installing bike lanes, a dedicated bus lane, a planted median or wider sidewalks would have the same result.

From a cyclist's perspective, this stretch of 97th Street feels really dangerous because drivers have little visibility of the road as they back their vehicles out of their parking spaces. Twice biking down my street I have had to swerve out into traffic to avoid a motorist blindly backing out of his parking space. A couple of weeks ago, I had the experience of parking a friend's car in one of these spots and I couldn't comfortably pull-out without someone helping to let me know when the coast was clear.

After checking out CrashStat 2.0, the middle of this block does not have any more pedestrian or cyclist injuries than the average middle block. But CrashStat doesn't look at auto vs. auto crashes, which seems to be the more likely danger at this location because of the lack of visibility.

If angle parking is what we we really, truly want on this block (rather than bike lanes, bus lanes, wider sidewalks or a greener streetscape), there's a safer, better way to design this kind of parking. It's called "back-in / head-out angle parking." You can download a Nelson Nygaard report on it right here.

From the report, we find that:

This type of parking provides a safer environment for bicyclists using the roadways. The driver is able to see the cyclist easily when exiting the stall. Several cities where back-in angle parking has been implemented have seen a reduction in number of accidents compared to the number of accidents at regular parallel parking schemes. Matt Zoll at Tucson-Pima County Bicycle Advisory Committee says that after implementing the back-in/head-out angle parking scheme in Tucson they "went from an average of 3-4 bike/car accidents per month to no reported accidents for 4 years following implementation."

And furthermore, they cite the Salt Lake City Q&A about Back-in parking

As SLCTrans (2004) states, "one of the most common causes of accidents is people backing out of standard angled parking without being able to see on-coming traffic. Reverse angled parking removes this difficulty." It also improves safety for cyclists, and for loading/and unloading the trunk of the car. Similarly, the Urban Transportation Monitor's recent article on back-in angle parking reported reduced accidents and benefits for bicyclists in several communities. In all, back-in/head-out angle parking is a good choice when compared to conventional head-in angle/back-out parking and parallel parking.

Head-out angle parking is clearly the safer choice. For West 97th between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, I hope that the next road repaving will include a redesign. And while we're at it, a bike lane on 97th street from Central Park West to Riverside would be grand too!

If you're thinking about coming to tonight's Upper West Side workshop with Jan Gehl but you are having trouble picturing what a "Streets Renaissance" might look like, the video above was made for you. It consists of a series of photo simulations produced by New York City Streets Renaissance Creative Director Carly Clark.

Whipped into a StreetFilm by Clarence Eckerson and set to some bumpin' electronic dance music, the photo sims seek to answer questions like: What if Amsterdam Avenue were a "complete street" rather than a 5-lane highway, or a stretch of Broadway were turned over to pedestrians, or a neighborhood street were designed to accommodate community life rather than traffic throughput and automobile storage? Watch out. By the end of this one minute video you might be dancing.

You can find three more short Upper West Side StreetFilms and a bit more of Carly's photo sim work here:

• Redesigning Amsterdam Avenue for People Rather Than Speeding Traffic (1:03)
  
• The Perverse Allocation of Streets Space on the Upper West Side (1:24)
• Is SUV Storage the Best Use of Upper West Side Street Space? (1:02)
  

As we lead up to next Tuesday's big Upper West Side Streets Renaissance workshop with Jan Gehl (have you submitted your RSVP yet?) here is another StreetFilm delving in to the kinds of issues we hope to be talking about.

In this segment, Upper West Siders Mark Gorton and Lisa Sladkus briefly examine just how much of our city's valuable and limited public space has been dedicated to the storage and movement of motor vehicles and how diminished pedestrian spaces impact our sense of community.

Summing it up in terms that even the simplest hedge fund manager would understand, Gorton says, "We have a perverse allocation of public space on the Upper West Side and it needs to be changed."

It doesn't have to be this way, folks. Come out on Tuesday and work with your neighbors to envision and shape a new direction for New York City's streets and public spaces:

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007
The Jewish Community Center
334 Amsterdam Avenue at West 76th Street
5:30–7:00 Opening Reception
7:00–8:30 Presentation and Workshop

A Workshop With Jan Gehl, the World's Foremost Urban Designer
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007, 5:30-7:00 pm
The Jewish Community Center
334 Amsterdam Avenue at West 76th Street
Opening Reception, 7:00-8:30 Presentation

DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan will be there too. Admission is free. Seating is very limited and RSVP is required.

Over 200 Upper West Siders turned out last night to tell the DOT what they think of street conditions in their neighborhood.

Held at John Jay College Auditorium on 10th Avenue and 58th Street, the premiere "listening session" of the West Side Transportation Study attracted "one of the larger turnouts" for a kickoff meeting, said moderator Arnold Bloch, of DOT consultants Howard/Stein-Hudson Associates. Covering West 55th to 86th Streets from Central Park West to the Hudson, the study aims to assess existing and future conditions through 2016, and to "develop short term, medium term, and long term improvement measures in consultation with stakeholders."

Such abstractions were not what at least one resident had in mind. As Bloch outlined the night's agenda -- the crowd would be dispersed into groups for "breakout sessions," which would consist of even smaller groups discussing a particular street use issue -- an elderly woman said she had expected some direct face time with DOT. Once she was assured that her specific concerns could be addressed by one of the many DOT personnel on hand, and after obligatory appearances by elected officials (including Borough President Scott Stringer and Council Member Gale Brewer, who helped bring about the study), attendees were shuffled off to different rooms.

There were about 40 people in my group, the majority of them in their fifties or older. At least one was in a wheelchair, and one was sight-impaired. Our Howard/Stein-Hudson moderator explained that street use issues would be lumped into five discussion topics: congestion, curb space, safety, "travel challenges," and quality of life. As we were about to be broken up into groups (one for each topic), an elderly lady -- possibly the same one from the auditorium, but I don't think so -- incited a mini-revolt, insisting it would be better if DOT staff could hear each citizen out individually. This led to a bit of a clamor before our moderator convinced everyone that the breakout session method was the best way to have everyone's comments incorporated into the study.

I listened in on group discussions around the room. Here's some of what was on people's minds:

• intrusion of newsracks, phone booths, parking meters and other "sidewalk furniture"
• bike lanes (need more)
• jaywalking pedestrians (need fewer)
• staggering shift changes for cab drivers
• ADA compliance by the city, including disabled access to sidewalks, crosswalks and buses
• better sidewalk illumination
• signage at every intersection
• clearly indicated building numbers on all buildings
  
• noise from garbage trucks, fire trucks, buses and motorcycles
  
• pollution from buses
• horn-honking
  
• "no one knows what a fire lane is" anymore
  
• dominance of construction scaffolding
• drivers should leave addresses and phone numbers in car windows
• controlled truck entrances into Manhattan
  
• no SUV tax breaks
• parking for 100 percent of residents in new construction projects
  
• park-and-ride lots outside of Midtown, or in New Jersey
  
• angled parking on one side of residential streets to cut own on double-parking
  
• bike riding on sidewalks
• congestion
• community board participation in congestion pricing
• study should extend to 96th Street
  
• law enforcement
  
• are police overworked?
  
• abuse of parking placards by press, police and other government employees
  
• "One of the most wonderful things that could happen in this city is if the police actually obeyed the law."

According to study literature, representatives from DOT, City Planning, the NYC Economic Development Corporation, NYC Transit, MTA and the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council will comprise a technical advisory committee to help analyze area demographics; land use and zoning; auto traffic; pedestrian and bike volumes; five-year crash data; parking; transit; and commercial truck movement -- all of which will be used to formulate "improvement packages" for the study's final report.

Those who missed the meeting may submit comments here.

Streetsblog would like to hear from readers who attended. What were your impressions?

 
60 Minutes curmudgeon Andy Rooney is grumpy about a lot of things but using an expired press placard to park an S.U.V. in front of a fire hydrant doesn't seem to be one of them. It looks like Gawker scooped Uncivil Servants on this one:

Over the weekend, a correspondent came across a white BMW S.U.V. It was parked just off West End, around the corner from Zabar's, about four feet from a fire hydrant. Its user, 88-year-old Andy Rooney, was wearing a white short-sleeve shirt and tan pants with white sneakers. According to our spy, his belt was right under his armpits and his eyebrows needed trimming. Also? His press card, taped to the windshield, the presence of which presumably made him feel he could hydrant-park, was long-expired. (Shouldn't he have his press vehicle card on the car-isn't this his working press card, and doesn't it say "Not for parking purposes" on the back?) Good for you, grumpy old maybe-racist column man! In any event, you'll all be pleased to know his registration doesn't expire until 2009 and his emissions is good through '08. You may be alarmed to know he's on the road in a large car though.

A large-scale emergency situation on the Upper West Side, such as a significant fire, building collapse or terrorist attack, would require emergency personnel from throughout the city to access the area to provide medical and other relief services. With no point of entry at West 72nd Street, emergency response vehicles would need to exit the highway at West 56th Street and travel north on congested city streets, or exit at West 79th Street and travel south on equally congested routes to access any location in between.

An Upper West Side resident and commenter on the City Room site had similarly dire predictions for the outcome of the 72nd St. closing:

West End Avenue will now become a seven-lane superhighway, imposing increased noise, pollution, and danger to pedestrians. This was put through irregularly, without proper engineering and environmental studies, disregarding the will of the local community, and against the public interest. It shows municipal government being manipulated to serve private interests -- NY City as a classic banana republic!

But another commenter cites this study on the reallocation of road space to paint a much rosier scenario:

I'd be curious to see the traffic model or data set that Stringer is using to make his prediction of increased congestion. I doubt he'd be able to produce any data to back up his claim of increased congestion.

That's because the closing this off-ramp will, almost certainly, create a significant reduction in traffic on W. 72nd Street. After all, many of the vehicles currently using the street are driving to or from the off-ramp. Close the ramp and that traffic goes away. The traffic reduction would likely be felt on streets and avenues around the closed ramp as well.

Anyone know more about this project and care to speculate on how things will play out once the exit is permanently closed on Sunday?

Photo: Hiroko Masuike for the New York Times

O'Donnell represents the 69th Assembly District which includes Manhattan Valley, Morningside Heights, and the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Thank you for reaching out to my office. I find it valuable to gain awareness of the legislative issues my constituents are concerned with. I genuinely appreciate the effort you took to address your views on PlaNYC 2030.

I commend Mayor Michael Bloomberg's comprehensive approach to making New York City more environmentally sustainable. New York City has always been a leader in sustainable urban policy for the rest of the world's great cities and the proposed PlaNYC 2030 is a major example of that leadership. As of the moment, no detailed legislation has been presented to members of the New York State Legislature regarding the many programs under PlaNYC 2030. Until I can consider every detail of any proposed legislation and how it would affect the lives and families of my constituents, I cannot take a definite position.

Be assured of my commitment and longstanding support to improve environmental sustainability and public transportation in New York City. I am currently a sponsor of the "Bigger Better Bottle Bill", which expands the Returnable Container Act to non-carbonated beverages. I am also an advocate for developing a freight rail-tunnel in our city, which would go a long way in alleviating the traffic congestion that negatively affects our quality of life.

As the status of PlaNYC 2030 evolves in the State Assembly, please continue to contact my office with your concerns. I fully welcome any further comments you may have.

Very truly yours,
Daniel O'Donnell
Assembly Member

The MTA held a public hearing this week on the proposed $80 million overhaul of the 96th street subway station, one of the system's oldest stations. While the new subway station looks great, the plan includes the nibbling away of 8 feet of much-needed sidewalk space on either side of Broadway while adding an additional turning lane for motor vehicles.

Second Avenue Sagas reports:

The new structure will be fifty feet south of the current entrances and in the center of Broadway. The MTA claims that the two out of every three passengers who have to wait at a red light to cross Broadway will be delayed a whopping 26 seconds.

As a native of the Upper West Side, though, I'm much more concerned with the decrease in available sidewalk space. The new plans call for moving Broadway nine feet on either direction to compensate for the wider island in the center of Broadway. While the sidewalks would be 15 feet wide, that's a big decrease from their current width of 23 feet.

But the benefits of the station house should outweigh one shorter block. It will be easier and faster to enter one of the more crowded stations on the West Side. Meanwhile, above ground, the station will resemble the new structure at 72nd St. The same firm is signed on for this project, and the plans call for a wider median with a seating area at 96th St. leading to the station entrance in the middle of the block.

Check out Clarence Eckerson's StreetFilm, The Sidewalk Nibblers, so named for this Jane Jacobs quote:

"Erosion of cities by automobiles entails so familiar a series of events that they hardly need describing. The erosion proceeds as a kind of nibbling."

On Memorial Day, I had a chance to speak with Micah Kellner, the Democratic Party's candidate for the New York State Assembly seat left vacant by Pete Grannis who was such a strong environmental advocate Gov. Spitzer elevated him to the head of the Department of Environmental Conservation. I asked him to clarify the report in the New York Sun that he opposed Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan, despite supporting the plan "in concept." He said:

The purpose of congestion pricing is to reduce traffic and congestion, not just shift congestion to a different neighborhood. I believe having the border at 86th Street will be a disaster for the people living between 86th and 96th Streets. It will create gridlock there and turn the area into a parking lot. I think the border should be at 59th Street. I also want the mayor to commit to incentives for night deliveries and to support the cross-harbor freight tunnel, which he continually flip flops on.

When I challenged him on his vision of Carmmegedon in Yorkville and Carnegie Hill he responded with a few ancedotes of comments he's heard on the campaign trail: People looking for parking on 88th Street would not be able to look below 86th Street. People working near 86th street would exit the FDR at 96th street, park and walk the rest of the way.

I told Kellner that my greatest concern was that the bickering over where to draw the line would delay or sink the whole plan. He was not worried. "I think we will see congestion pricing of some type get implemented. There will be a vote and it will pass."