Streetsblog New York City

Following a series of public workshops going back to 2008, DOT has put forward some big plans for Manhattan’s traffic-clogged 181st Street. Over the next few months, the department will choose one of three options to ease traffic and improve safety on the street. While every option offers some significant benefits for Washington Heights pedestrians, one keeps traffic patterns largely unchanged while the other two would truly transform the corridor.

At a public meeting on the project held last night, the testimony tended to support only the smallest changes and raise concerns about the effects of prioritizing transit or cycling on the area’s motorists. But Upper Manhattan residents who want to see significant improvements for walking, biking, and transit seem to have an ally in local Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, who called on the community to embrace big changes.

181st Street needs a reboot. With one lane in each direction, it is clogged with traffic between the un-tolled Washington Bridge to the east and the George Washington Bridge to the west. Five bus lines carry riders to and from the Bronx, two subway stations disgorge straphangers, and the sidewalks are crowded with pedestrians on the busy commercial strip. The street lacks loading zones, making double-parking a constant problem. And the only entrance to the Hudson River Greenway for blocks is at 181st Street.

On the four blocks between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway, the differences in how DOT’s three options balance all these demands are substantial. (You can see the details in this PDF from June; the designs haven’t changed since then.) Alternative 1 only makes small changes to the status quo, most prominently by adding left turn lanes along 181st. In addition, medians in a few locations and restricted turning regulations would significantly improve pedestrian safety at the most dangerous locations, according to Atma Sookram, a consultant working on the project.

In contrast, the other two choices prioritize the majority of residents who don’t drive.

Read more…

Five candidates vying to become Upper Manhattan’s next state senator met in the 168th Street Armory last night to make their case to the car-free voters of Riverdale, Inwood, Washington Heights, West Harlem, and the Upper West Side. At a debate sponsored by Transportation Alternatives and WE ACT for Environmental Justice, important differences emerged over how best to solve the MTA’s budget crisis and make streets safe for pedestrians and cyclists.

Democrats Adriano Espaillat, Miosotis Muñoz, Mark Levine, and Anna Lewis were joined last night by Green Party candidate Ann Roos. Whoever wins, the victor’s first term will be dominated by the ongoing budget crisis afflicting the state of New York, which affects transit quite directly. State legislators made the MTA’s funding crisis even worse last December by stealing more than $100 million in dedicated transit taxes to plug gaps in the general fund. The debate began with a revealing discussion of how each candidate would secure adequate funding for transit given the current fiscal climate.

Assembly Member Espaillat, considered the front-runner due to an advantage in name recognition, strong fund-raising and prominent endorsements, began with a warning: “It would be irresponsible of me to say there’s not a deficit that’s going to hit across the board,” he said. Without new revenue, the legislature will be forced to make impossible choices between priorities like education, health care, and transportation.

Though he didn’t make a specific revenue proposal during the debate, afterwards Espaillat told me that “congestion pricing is certainly something that we must bring back to the table.” He argued against cobbling together a piecemeal funding scheme for transit, saying that “the main engine of economic development in our community” needs a “solid revenue stream.” Even so, he maintained his opposition to any tolls over the Harlem River bridges, which carry torrents of toll-shopping drivers through the district.

Mark Levine, considered to be a close second to Espaillat, also argued that congestion pricing would be the best solution. “I also support, short of that, a plan to toll the East River bridges,” he explained. Harlem River bridge tolls were conspicuously absent, however, a stance that he earlier explained to Streetsblog by characterizing those bridges as essentially local streets.

The other two Democrats, Muñoz and Lewis, each suggested reinstating the commuter tax to raise revenue.

Read more…

Labor Day and the Jewish high holidays make this an abbreviated week, but with the critical primary elections just seven days away, the state’s political world is going full-tilt. Tonight, at least three of the four candidates running to replace Eric Schneiderman in the State Senate will meet at a debate co-sponsored by Transportation Alternatives, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, and the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance to talk about how they plan to provide for the transportation needs of the Upper West Side, West Harlem, Washington Heights, Inwood, and Riverdale.

Whoever wins the seat will be replacing one of the more pro-transit members of the State Senate. Before entering the Senate, Schneiderman represented the Straphangers Campaign as a private attorney, and in office he publicly embraced PlaNYC. However, even Schneiderman remained out of sight during the most recent fights over MTA financing.

The three candidates expected to show up tonight are Adriano Espaillat, Miosotis Muñoz, and Mark Levine. Espaillat currently serves in the Assembly representing an overlapping district; Muñoz was an aide to Congressman Charlie Rangel and Manhattan borough presidents C. Virginia Fields and Ruth Messinger; Levine was chair of Community Board 12′s transportation committee and founded a credit union for low-income Upper Manhattanites. A fourth candidate, Anna Lewis, has not yet confirmed whether she will attend, according to a DNAinfo report.

Streetsblog last looked at the race in June, noting that while each of the candidates to represent this largely car-free constituency expressed strong support for transit, none would support tolling the free Harlem River bridges that run through the district. Plenty of other revenue sources got the thumbs up: Espaillat was a vocal congestion pricing supporter, Muñoz wanted to reinstate the commuter tax, and Levine was even willing to toll the East River bridges on top of a commuter tax. But when it comes to new tolls inside the district, these candidates seemed to draw the line.

To find out where they stand on transit funding, what they’d do to improve pedestrian and cyclist safety, or to pose your own question, show up tonight at 7:00 p.m. at the Armory Foundation, located at 216 Ft. Washington Ave., between 168th and 169th Streets. The debate will be moderated by West Side Spirit reporter Dan Rivoli and Columbia urban planning prof David King.

At a Monday night meeting with the transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 12, DOT rolled out a slew of much-needed street improvements for Washington Heights and Inwood. Several are still in the preliminary stage, but one major intersection in the Heights is slated for an overhaul this fall.

The crossing of St. Nicholas and Amsterdam Avenues, at W. 162nd Street, is a hub of neighborhood activity, with access to the C train, four bus lines, a grocery store and other retailers, as well as the Morris-Jumel Mansion. It's also a confusing, hazardous mess. From 2006 to 2009, according to DOT, 23 pedestrians were injured there, while CrashStat shows scores of collisions and one pedestrian fatality between 1995 and 2005.

DOT plans to clean up the area [PDF], replacing asphalt with green space, shortening crosswalks, adding a protected bike lane segment, shifting bus boarding areas, and improving commercial loading access.

Specifically, an existing Greenstreets triangle at W. 161st Street will be expanded into what are now auto lanes, and will stretch to W. 162nd Street. Northbound cyclists in the adjacent bike lane on St. Nicholas will have to contend with only one lane of drivers between W. 160th and W. 162nd. After a dogleg through the intersection, the lane picks up on the north side of 162nd as a parking-protected segment for one block. As Brad Conover of Inwood and Washington Heights Livable Streets points out, while southbound cyclists should benefit from the replacement of northbound car traffic with back-in angled parking on the 162-163 block, only northbound cyclists will have a protected bike lane.

"I am happy that DOT is redesigning this dangerous intersection and is including a protected lane," Conover told Streetsblog, "but my preference would be for protected bike lanes running north and south for the entire length of either St. Nick or Amsterdam so that a biker could ride safely from Inwood or Washington Heights to the Upper West Side or Central Park."

Read more...

It's about a year-and-a-half behind the schedule announced in 2007, but the rehabilitation of the High Bridge, a pedestrian and cyclist link between Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, is off the ground.

Per an email from project coordinator Ellen Macnow of the Parks Department, via Inwood and Washington Heights Livable Streets: 

A contract has been signed with the firm Lichtenstein Consulting Engineers, and they will start work soon. Lichtenstein is charged with producing designs for the bridge, including structural improvements, new ramp access and new protective fencing. Their work will result in a contract to be bid out for construction, which is funded by Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC program.

Public comment meetings will be scheduled in the spring.

Macnow says the High Bridge Coalition "will be working hard this year to engage the local and advocacy communities in the design." (Parks has already conducted at least one round of public input, in August of '07.) There was also concern upon the project's announcement nearly three years ago that access would be limited to daytime weekend hours, a fear Macnow tried to mitigate. "We want everybody who wants to use the bridge to use the bridge," she said.

Built as part of the Croton Aqueduct in 1848, the High Bridge spans the Harlem River to connect Washington Heights with the High Bridge neighborhood. It stopped carrying water in 1958, and was closed to the public completely in 1970.

About a week before the Tri-State Transportation Campaign issued a report revealing that eight pedestrians were killed on the streets of Washington Heights and Inwood between 2006 and 2008, newly-elected Upper Manhattan City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez attended a protest calling for justice. NYPD, it seems, is regularly ticketing drivers for blocking intersections on traffic-choked W. 181st Street, and Rodriguez wants it to stop.

The December 28 rally, the Manhattan Times reports, was organized by Fundación Minerva Mirabal, and was heavily attended -- to the extent that it was attended at all -- by representatives of livery cab companies, whose ubiquitous black Town Cars are the uptown counterpart of the yellow cab. The Times explains the problem as Rodriguez and his co-complainants see it:

As vehicles stack up at lights, drivers, hoping the line will inch up before the light turns red, inevitably get stuck in the intersection and are ticketed.

"If you drive 125th Street there's a team of one to two traffic agents moving traffic," Rodriguez said. Ticketing drivers instead of helping move traffic on the street amounts to harassment, he said.

Rodriguez has put calls into the head of traffic enforcement to hopefully find a solution to the problem.

One solution that must not have occurred to the council member is for drivers to obey the law. Clogged intersections are a major contributor to the gridlock that so offends Rodriguez, and crosswalk violations pose a significant safety risk to people on foot. For these reasons, city traffic law is fairly unambiguous when it comes to proper motorist protocol:

Read more...

At October's Walk21 Conference, I got the chance to tour the High Bridge, a viaduct connecting Manhattan and the Bronx which has been closed to the public for nearly 40 years.

Opening the High Bridge to pedestrians and cyclists has been a long-held goal for many New Yorkers. (I remember reading about this effort back in 1998, during a postcard campaign directed at then-Parks Commissioner Henry Stern.) Many community groups, non-profits, and public agencies have advocated for its restoration, including the City Parks Foundation, The High Bridge Coalition, and C.L.I.M.B.

Over the years, many target opening dates have been announced, but recently momentum has really picked up. Very early in 2010, community input and design will finally begin. Then, if all goes well, it shouldn't be long until we can all walk and bike across this magnificent structure.

This was the scene in Washington Heights Friday evening, after this guy, along with two others, parked their gigantic rental truck directly in front of a trio of elderly people waiting for the M4 at W. 187th Street and Fort Washington Avenue. Rather than sit passively with the spewing behemoth a few feet from their faces, one of them, a woman shown after the jump, took out her cellphone and began taking pictures.

Since he didn't see a bus coming, the gentleman in the picture above sincerely couldn't understand what the problem was. But his co-worker, also pictured below, was incensed, screaming at the woman and, indirectly, at me, for taking photos. He was angry and aggressive enough that the guy above asked him several times to calm down.

After about 10 minutes, the third man returned (they had stopped so he could use an ATM), and they drove off, honking as they went.

Read more...

There are two opportunities tonight to get behind livable streets efforts in Manhattan.

Among the items on Community Board 8's October agenda is a resolution in support of protected bike lanes on the Upper East Side. As we heard from Transportation Alternatives yesterday, neighborhood involvement has propelled this once-unlikely measure to this point, and friendly voices will be needed to bring it home. The CB 8 meeting starts at 6:30 at the Ramaz School Auditorium, 125 E. 85th Street.

Tonight in Upper Manhattan, Inwood and Washington Heights Livable Streets will hold a regular meeting to discuss, along with other topics, the proposed Dyckman Street Greenway Connector. Thanks to the consistent work of its core members, this group is starting to get attention from local electeds. A good showing tonight can only help build momentum. Meeting details and other discussions can be found on the IWHLS Livable Streets Community page.

Months after Community Board 12 killed plans for a Washington Heights Greenmarket over concerns about parking, a scaled-down market is set to open at a location further south. But not before the board could reiterate its unwavering deference to Upper Manhattan motorists.

The new market is planned for W. 168th Street and Fort Washington Avenue, near New York Presbyterian Hospital. The initial proposal, originated by a Washington Heights resident, would have sited a market on W. 185th Street, adjacent to Bennett Park. CB 12, however, decided that the loss of 19 parking spots for a few hours a week was too great a sacrifice.

The new market will occupy about five street spaces, but in its coverage of a recent committee meeting, the Manhattan Times finds that the board remains preoccupied with motorist convenience.

Committee members and other board members in attendance expressed concern about aggravating the already terrible traffic around the hospital.

"That's something you have to look at very closely," Board Member Emilia Cardona said.

"The north-south traffic is horrible already," added committee member George Preston.

It's true: The hospital area is a traffic sewer. And the best way to ensure it stays that way is to shoot down and nitpick any proposal that would enable pedestrians to repurpose their streets. Lest anyone mistake CB 12's motives with an actual desire for equity among street users, this is the board that overruled the wishes of over 1,000 Greenmarket supporters based on the testimony of three -- three -- who preferred the auto-centric status quo.

In other news, one of the drivers CB 12 members are tripping over themselves to accommodate flipped his car last night near the pedestrian-heavy intersection of W. 207th Street and Broadway in Inwood. Fortunately, no parking spaces were harmed.