"(This) is an absolutely great idea," said Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing), chairman of the council's Transportation Committee. "We need to rediscover and utilize this tremendous natural transportation resource to overcome many of the challenges faced by a growing city."

Operating costs for the five borough ferry service could reach up to $100 million annually, according to Liu, and will require the city to combine them with debt service on capital expenditures, like building docks. But when compared with other mass transit expansions, he added, "this is a very manageable investment for the long term."

Sounds expensive.

The town hall-style meeting will focus on whether the permits, which would probably cost a small annual fee, could help alleviate curbside parking problems and traffic in Downtown. Council Members David Yassky, Laetitia James and Bill de Blasio have organized the event, which is expected to draw several hundred residents, and DOT commish Janette Sadik-Khan is scheduled to attend. Councilman de Blasio sees the forum as the first step in developing parking strategies for all of Brooklyn. "Lack of a coherent parking strategy has been an ongoing problem in Brooklyn," de Blasio told us. "I think this forum represents a step in the right direction, and I look forward to extending this conversation to communities throughout the borough."

As John Kaehny wrote on Streetsblog last month, bringing a different perspective to these events can change the tenor of the debate:

One person can make a big difference at these workshops.

At the first round of workshops held late last year, I was the only non-car owner at my table of eight at Harlem's Alhambra Ballroom. But me being there changed the discussion from one of endless demands for more free parking space -- which I heard at another table, as my group was being organized -- to a more considered discussion of the implications of DOT's proposed changes.

By the end, a majority of the motorists at my table supported DOT's suggested changes. More than half of the households in New York City do not have a car. But non-motorists should have a say in the parking changes that affect them as bicyclists, bus riders, pedestrians and people who breathe the air. Take a couple of hours and show up. Your voice will be heard.

Kaehny has worked on transportation and livable streets policy for two decades, laying the groundwork for many of the policy changes currently underway in New York City. He is a great source of knowledge and historical perspective on the issues we cover here. While I'm sad that I will no longer be slapping my name on his stories and looking like a genius because of it, the Streetsblog team is honored that John will now be listed as an official contributor.

Here are all of John Kaehny's Streetsblog contributions to date:

• March 2: The Iris Weinshall Legacy: Queens Boulevard
• April 9: Pedestrian Safety: London Shows How NYC Can Do Better
• April 16: The Parking Dysfunction Meter: Fines Are Five Times Revenue
• April 17: City and State Pedestrian Safety Numbers Don't Add Up
  
• April 30: Five Small Steps to a More Effective, Progressive DOT
• May 4: Gene Russianoff on the MTA's Day of Reckoning
• May 11: PlaNYC Quietly Introduces "Safe Routes to Transit"
• May 15: The Quick and Easy First Step to a "Greater, Greener New York"

Three mornings a week I ride past the South Brooklyn Casket Company on Union Street with my two-year-old son strapped to the back of my bicycle on our way to the nursery school. Though the Casket Company always has trucks parked and unloading all over the sidewalk (and someone, I assume it's the boss, likes to park his Mercedes right next to the building's front door), I've always had a real soft spot for the Casket Co.. It is one of the last functioning light industrial companies in the neighborhood. And I know that my block, the stretch of little townhouses on the south side of Union between 4th and 5th was once filled with Italian funeral parlors. Bearing the pre-gentrifcation name, "South Brooklyn," the Casket Company is one of the last genuine remnants of the old neighborhood.

So, it was doubly depressing to hear that a Casket Company truck driver blew through a red light and ran over and killed a 6-year-old boy in Sunset Park yesterday. It is triple depressing that guy doesn't even get charged with anything. What is going to make New Yorkers stop driving like careless, sociopathic maniacs when there is absolutely no enforcement, no penalty and not a peep from the Mayor or any other elected official -- even when a child is slaughtered by a trucker who told police he was trying to beat a red light? 

Here is Gothamist's coverage of the sad, disturbing story:

Yesterday afternoon, a 6 year old boy was fatally hit by a truck in Sunset Park. The boy, Andy Vega, apparently ran ahead of his babysitter when crossing Third Avenue and 46th Street, and a truck carrying empty coffins from Milso Industries struck him. The driver stayed at the scene.

Another pedestrian, Randolph Charles, who was crossing the street at the same time told the Post, "The boy was on the other side of the street. We were both crossing. The truck was coming, and all I heard was a big bang. The truck ran a red light. We had the walk sign. I told him, 'You know, you just hit the kid.' And he said, 'I thought I had the green light.' Then he grabbed his head, and you could see he was in shock."

Granted, it sounds like this whole thing was a horrible accident and the driver is shattered. But why, in New York City, do killer drivers consistently walk away from the scene of the crime with little more than a summons? How in the world is that O.K.? In the Spring of 2004 Transportation Alternatives Magazine ran a Q&A with veteran Brooklyn prosecutor Maureen McCormick, head of the Vehicular Crimes Bureau at the Brooklyn District Attorney's office. Here is what she said:

T.A. Executive Director John Kaehny: Let's say a mom is walking hand in hand with her young son across the street. They are coming back from a nice morning in the park, it's broad daylight, they are in the crosswalk and have the walk signal. Suddenly, a motorist runs the red light and kills them both. The motorist pulls over and is found to be sober. Would that motorist be charged with a crime?

A.D.A McCormick: Limited to those facts, that motorist would be summonsed for running a red light. A criminal prosecution requires showing that the motorist ran the red light because of more than carelessness or inadvertence. The driver's behavior at the time of running the light is usually the only way to prove the driver's state of mind. The state of a person's mind is a difficult thing to prove. They don't generally yell out "I'm going through this light on purpose."

Photo by Venus in Furs on Flickr. 

The death of Derek Lake, killed one month ago at age 23 when his bicycle tripped a metal plate on Houston Street, hints at a tragedy shared by all New Yorkers: City Hall’s continued insistence that the ultimate goal of a New York City street is to move as many cars and trucks each day as physically possible.

Houston Street, from its ramps onto East River Park to its flow into kayak launches at the Hudson, is undergoing a $30 million reconstruction project. When it ends by 2008, it will add five left-turn bays for cars and slightly widen a few sidewalks where street vendors work the edge of SoHo. Transportation spokesperson Chris Gilbride says the project will cut a lane of traffic from some blocks and not eliminate any pedestrian refuge areas.

But Livable Streets advocates say the DOT’s approach to the project misses a historic opportunity to transform Houston into a truly great urban boulevard, designed not just to move motor vehicles, but to create space for pedestrians, bikes, buses, cafe tables, merchants and the full diversity of New York City street life.

Community members and former city officials say the Department of Transportation alternated between bullying and ignoring neighborhood pleas for bike and pedestrian safety during the reconstruction project. "The community expressed outrage repeatedly," says Dirk McCall, who headed City Councilmember Alan J. Gerson’s staff during meetings on the Houston Street project in 2001. "They wanted more crosswalks."

Charle de Cafiero, a former member of Community Board 2 who lives near the busy corner of Houston and Lafayette, echoes this. He says his neighbors’ insistence that Houston Street serves as a local "Main Street" and not just a regional truck conduit met scorn from DOT officials, prompting them to deride the community’s ideas as "anti-car." De Cafiero says the non-collaborative atmosphere poisoned hopes for innovations that could have made Houston a model "Livable Street."

There’s no lack of vision or precedent for how a "Livable" Houston Street could look.

"I would try to eliminate any turning movement that we can live without and see if we can recapture more space for a different mode of transportation," says Andy Wiley-Schwartz, an executive with Project for Public Spaces. The land uses are pretty good, but it needs some help in terms of getting safer to walk or bike along."

De Cafiero cites a suite of low-cost improvements, from markings or colors on crosswalks to finding signs for confusing subway changes, which the city could have considered. Transportation Alternatives executive director Paul Steely White imagines a more energetic bus schedule, widened sidewalks and a physically-separated bike lane. DOT also could have considered traffic calming measures to discourage and slow traffic turning off of Houston Street onto local, neighborhood streets.

Instead, says de Cafiero, DOT officials "worked off a 1950’s traffic engineering model" and killed community input. "[Commissioner] Iris [Weinshall] compared [the addition of turning bays] to work she had done in her own neighborhood, and people tried to explain that Prospect Park is different from Houston Street" recalls McCall. "Alan and [current City Council speaker] Christine Quinn wrote a letter [expressing these concerns] and Weinshall wrote back probably the most offensive letter I’ve seen a commissioner write." McCall termed the project "a travesty."

Others describe it as a missed opportunity.

"The city has a big list of reconstruction projects, which are known years in advance," notes John Kaehny, former head of Transportation Alternatives. "Political jockeying goes on. As far back as 1993, it was known that Houston would be reconstructed. Yet the final design involves turning bays which are extremely negative for pedestrians. It’s a traffic capacity increase in two of the ZIP codes that have some of the lowest car ownership in the US."

This ad hoc, embittering story could infuse street reconstructions across the boroughs. To avoid future mistakes, White urges the mayor’s office to promulgate citywide street design standards that would make it "a matter of course" to widen pedestrian and bike paths in any makeover. Instead, he says, the city has a hodgepodge of approaches that ultimately tend to favor the movement of motor vehicles.

"What they did on Queens Boulevard in terms of safety provisions is not what they’re doing on Houston," notes White. "Safety standards should be non-negotiable, but DOT will defer to community boards when it suits their purpose. And right now their purpose is more cars and trucks."

White takes heart that the mayor’s office seems to be "asking the right questions" about how streets can absorb the million new residents New York expects. And de Cafiero trusts the mayor to "read the riot act" to commissioners who show reluctance to collaborate. Such steps could open a path out of gridlock. Even if they come too late for Houston Street.