Streetsblog New York City

The Post is reporting that a Williamsburg man was killed this morning as he crossed Borinquen Place near Keap Street. The victim, 57-year-old Lepoldo Hernandez, was walking to meet a friend to carpool to work when he was struck by two drivers in succession. The first driver was traveling eastbound, and the second driver struck Hernandez as he lay in the street.

While police, as usual, are already telling the press that they “suspect no criminality,” Gothamist’s John del Signore cites a report from a local resident at the scene who was told that the first car was “going like 50″:

There was a crowd of onlookers and I saw the sheet over the body in the street. I did not see any vehicles around that looked damaged or anyone speaking with police, but witnesses said both drivers stayed at the scene. Motorists speed like crazy down this street to get on the Williamsburg Bridge. I watch them run the light, pass in the bike lane, and speed like it’s a free for all.

This fatal crash occurred in the 90th Precinct, which will hold its monthly precinct community council meeting tonight. To voice your concerns about neighborhood traffic safety directly to Deputy Inspector Michael M. Kemper, the commanding officer, head out to tonight’s meeting. The 90th precinct meetings happen at 7:30 p.m. on the second Wednesday of each month, at 30 Montrose Avenue. A detective at the precinct confirmed that tonight’s meeting is set to happen as scheduled.

A flatbed truck driver struck and killed a cyclist in East Williamsburg shortly after midnight last night.

As first reported by Gothamist, the 30-year-old male victim was riding to the right of the truck while traveling southbound along Morgan Avenue, according to NYPD. The driver turned right at Meserole Street, striking the cyclist, who was dead by the time an ambulance arrived three minutes later.

Police say the driver did not stay at the scene, but the truck was found legally parked one block away. An NYPD spokesperson said the department might pursue charges but would not do so until the driver is located.

Two months ago, Erica Abbott, a professional dancer, was killed in a traffic crash while riding her bike on Bushwick Avenue a few blocks away. Last year, a garbage truck driver hit and killed a cyclist while turning from Varick Street onto Meserole.

A 29-year-old woman was killed Tuesday night while riding her bike in Brooklyn.

Erica Abbott was traveling southbound on Bushwick Avenue at Powers Street when, according to police and media reports, she fell into traffic and was run over by the driver of a Mercedes.

The Daily News says Abbott was riding near a construction site when she “suddenly lost her balance near a pile of loose wood on the street after a car horn honked and she turned her head.” An NYPD summary of the crash simply states that Abbott “fell off of her bicycle.” The driver, an unnamed 34-year-old woman, was traveling in the same direction. She remained at the scene.

Abbott was pronounced dead on arrival at Woodhull Hospital. According to NYPD, “There is no apparent criminality and the investigation is ongoing.”

Gothamist reports that Abbott was a dancer with an MFA from SUNY Purchase. She was the third known city cyclist killed this month. On August 2, Chris Doyle was hit by a truck driver less than a mile away from the Abbott crash site. Jeffrey Axelrod was run over by a cement truck at Chrystie and Delancey Streets in Manhattan on August 18. No charges were filed in the deaths of Doyle or Axelrod.

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A truck driver ran over and killed a 29-year-old male cyclist in Brooklyn this morning, the Daily News reports. According to the write-up, the driver turned right from Metropolitan Avenue onto Gardner Avenue, crushing the unidentified cyclist as he tried to pass on the right side of the truck. The driver did not realize he’d struck someone and had to be flagged down by another truck driver. Police have reviewed surveillance video and will not file charges against him.

The News presents the NYPD’s reasoning like so:

“The bicyclist was at fault,” a police source said. “He should have seen the driver was about to turn. The bicyclist tried to rush by and you can’t do that. The driver had to be going about 5 m.p.h.”

While we soon learn that the cyclist was wearing a helmet, the piece does not inform readers whether the truck driver signaled his turn, whether the truck was equipped with the proper mirrors, or whether the driver should have been able to see the victim before turning into him and crushing his skull.

To cap it off, the Daily News included this poll:

So I guess that’s how to settle the question of what causes crashes. If only there was some rigorous data and analysis the Daily News could get its hands on instead.

The New Domino development slated for the Williamsburg waterfront passed the City Council's land use committee yesterday in a unanimous vote, thanks to a last-minute deal between the developer and project critics. Under that agreement, the project's tallest towers will shrink from 40 stories to 34, though the total number of units will remain the same. The project is now expected to sail through the remainder of the approval process.

In terms of transportation, the developer has now promised to provide shuttle buses to nearby subway stations. With room for 1,428 cars, the project is far from a model of sustainable planning, but with the fight over New Domino now at a close, it's worth remembering that livable streets advocates won some real improvements during the land use review process: the shuttle buses and last month's reduction in off-street parking.

The bottom line remains, however, that with 1,428 parking spaces, this is an auto-oriented development. "The transportation plan hinges on bringing more cars into the neighborhood," said Ryan Kuonen, an organizer with Neighbors Allied for Good Growth, a local community organization. Still, she said, "It could have been worse -- the plan used to be worse."

With both Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn strongly supporting the project, final approval was all but guaranteed. "This thing was going to get passed," said Kuonen. The only question was how the New Domino would change on the way to approval, and the adjustments that unfolded were almost uniformly towards more livable streets.

The changes were "pretty much as good as you were going to get on these issues," said Rachel Weinberger, a parking expert and professor of transportation planning at UPenn. "If this is what we get when the system is working how it's supposed to, we need to rethink the system."

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As the City Council considers the parking-laden New Domino mega-development, sustainability-minded representatives have the power to ensure that the project doesn't put thousands of new cars onto Williamsburg's streets. All council members have to do is to request reductions in the amount of off-street parking included at the site, currently 1,428 spots. The developer's only stated objection to reducing the amount of parking is that compliance with environmental law requires it. That's not a concern that need constrain the City Council. 

As we reported in April, the developer, CPC Resources, decided how much parking to include at New Domino by using formulas prescribed by the environmental review process. "We don't want to include parking for parking's sake," said CPC Resources senior vice president Susan Pollock. She claimed her hands were tied. 

Of course, since then, the amount of parking at New Domino has been reduced by 266 spaces, so there's clearly some flexibility. It is true that the poorly designed formulas used in environmental reviews indeed lead to outsized parking lots, but not because developers are required, per se, to construct them. "CEQR is a disclosure process," said Tom Angotti, a professor of planning at Hunter College. "It doesn't require anything." According to Angotti, the developers were trying to avoid an "unmitigated impact" on the neighborhood parking situation, in which those New Domino residents whom the environmental review designates as drivers would take street parking from current residents. "They don't have to mitigate that if they don't want to," said Angotti.

In fact, the New Domino is in a part of town where having too little parking, as defined by environmental review, can safely be ignored. Read more...

How few parking spaces should be attached to new developments to make New York a more sustainable city?

That's the big question for developments like Brooklyn's New Domino, the huge project slated for the Williamsburg waterfront where developers originally proposed 1,694 parking spaces for about 2,400 residences. Neighborhood activists recently won a 266-space reduction in the amount of parking but still face an onslaught of new automobiles.

Last week, the City Planning Commission approved the New Domino in a unanimous vote. One of the only changes the commission demanded from the project's developers was to eliminate one parking lot, reducing the number of parking spaces from 1,694 to 1,428. The 266-space reduction was not based on studies or research. It came straight from a request by Borough President Marty Markowitz.

While the reduction was a victory for livable streets, the fact that more than 1,400 parking spaces remain highlights the immense disconnect between the developer's initial proposal and goals like reducing traffic or encouraging sustainable transportation. To make the Williamsburg waterfront a real beacon of sustainable planning, it's clear that the New Domino would have to include substantially fewer than 1,428 spaces.

"It's still going to be an auto-oriented development," said David King, a professor of planning at Columbia University who specializes in parking. "1,400 is just a lot of parking spaces, however you cut it."

"In the Department of City Planning, there's a group that thinks New York City will collapse on itself if you stop attracting families with cars."

The local community board and Council Member Stephen Levin had asked for even larger reductions in parking. When Community Board 1 requested fewer parking spaces, their resolution called for "a level significantly less than the maximum allowed under zoning," or 1,541 spaces, according to land use committee chair Ward Dennis. Dennis wouldn't speak for the board as to whether 1,428 was "significantly" less than 1,541.

So how, at New Domino or in any big project down the line, would you figure out the right amount of parking? 

"That's a community decision," argued Rachel Weinberger, UPenn professor and parking policy expert. "It's a vision thing." According to Weinberger, the transportation effects of off-street parking are fairly well-documented, so setting parking levels is a matter of deciding which outcomes you want.

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In an unusual turn of events, two Brooklyn politicians and one community board are pushing for less off-street parking at the New Domino development proposed for the Williamsburg waterfront. City Council Member Steve Levin and Borough President Marty Markowitz have recently bolstered a resolution from CB 1 calling for hundreds of fewer parking spaces. 

The New Domino is a massive redevelopment of 11.2 industrial acres just north of the Williamsburg Bridge. Developer CPC Resources has proposed building 2,200 residences, along with office and retail space. Current plans call for 1,694 parking spaces, even more than what's required by city parking minimums. 

The City Council has final say on the project's approval, making Levin's position especially important, since the council usually defers to the local member's opinion. Levin has said that his support for the project depends on reducing the project's size, increasing the number of affordable units, and cutting parking spaces by half. "Every parking space they provide is another car that will be congesting our streets," said Hope Reichbach, Levin's communications director. Levin wants to cut the project down to 1,600 residences, according to the Post, so in tandem with his call to halve parking, his demands would decrease the parking ratio at the project. 

Markowitz -- not known for opposing provisions for cars -- also recommended cutting parking. The borough president gave his support for the overall project, but not to one of its four underground lots -- which would trim at least 266 parking spaces.

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The New Domino development proposed for the Williamsburg waterfront made headlines last week when a Brooklyn Community Board 1 committee voted against enabling its construction. This privately financed project is worth a close look because it exemplifies how developers can embrace certain livable streets goals while ignoring the big picture of traffic. It's the kind of development the city will have to guide with a firmer hand in order to meet the sustainability goals of PlaNYC.

The New Domino's 2,200 residences would transform 11.2 acres just north of the Williamsburg Bridge, at a former sugar refinery about three-quarters of a mile from the two nearest subway stations. It fronts the Kent Avenue bike lane and the future path of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway. At a site so large and so integral to the city's bike network, but with mediocre transit access, the developer's transportation decisions are critically important. 

Determining how much parking to construct is one such transportation decision, and on that score the New Domino abandons good planning.

The development's 1,694 off-street parking spaces would bring a flood of new motorists to Williamsburg. This is, in a way, intentional. The developer is attempting to match current car ownership rates in the area, according to Martin Hopp, who's overseeing the project design for Rafael Viñoly Architects. "We felt that it was important to accommodate the anticipated parking need on-site," said Hopp, "rather than to substantially increase vehicles circling the neighborhood for the already limited on-street spaces."

Building so many parking spaces will induce New Domino residents to drive. Research indicates that free parking spaces at home encourage New Yorkers to commute by car. "The amount of parking infrastructure to provide should be based on the neighborhood's and the city's street capacity, the city's goals in terms of carbon reduction, traffic flow, pedestrian safety and so forth," said UPenn professor Rachel Weinberger, co-author of the study "Guaranteed Parking -- Guaranteed Driving" [PDF]. "Deciding how many parking spaces to provide on the basis of what is profitable and/or on the rate of car ownership in the surrounding area is completely inappropriate and represents the city's abdication of its responsibility to protect the public health and welfare."

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The seemingly perpetual conflict in Williamsburg over bike lanes has seen a lot of twists and turns the last few years. The issue has surfaced in City Council elections, on the local community board, and in proposed direct actions -- from a topless bike ride to intentionally blocking cyclists with school buses. Last night, each side took it inside for a debate hosted by Pete's Candy Store. 

The event pitted Isaac Abraham, an activist in the Williamsburg Hasidic community and a former candidate for City Council, against four debaters in favor of bike safety: Lyla Durden and Heather Loop, who planned the snowed-out topless ride, Baruch Herzfeld, who runs a bike repair shop in Williamsburg targeted at the Jewish community and has emerged as something of a bike-friendly ambassador to the Hasidim, and Caroline Samponaro, Transportation Alternatives' director of bicycle advocacy. With only around five Hasidim in the packed house, Abraham called himself "a sheep in a lion's den," though the evening stayed generally cordial. Durden, Herzfeld, and the evening's moderator, James Hook (also a cyclist), all wore "Isaac Abraham for City Council" baseball caps for much of the debate.

To the surprise of no one, the night did not end with a formal agreement on resolving the conflict. When it was over, Abraham still insisted that a bike lane on Bedford Avenue is "never going to sell. Not ever." Even so, the discussion seemed to have progressed somewhat from the point where bike lane opponents were objecting to cyclists' very right to the road. "What we're talking about here is baby steps," said Samponaro. For more on the blow-by-blow, you can check out the write-ups on Gothamist, Gawker, and Voz iz Neias.

As for those baby steps, the debate did raise a number of possible ways to address safety on Bedford Avenue, without necessarily re-striping the bike lane:

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