Streetsblog New York City

South Bronx Unite and Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito rallied against deadly truck traffic in Mott Haven on Saturday. Photo: Stephen Miller

Early Saturday afternoon, about 25 people gathered at the corner of St. Annes Avenue and East 138th Street in the South Bronx, protesting heavy truck traffic and deadly driving in the Mott Haven neighborhood.

A series of pedestrian deaths in recent months and the lack of truck route enforcement from the 40th Precinct — as well as a city-subsidized Fresh Direct distribution center planned for the neighborhood — have many residents concerned about the safety of crossing the street.

On December 13, Ignacio Cubano, 69, was killed in crosswalk at 138th Street and St. Annes Avenue by a semi truck driver. On January 7, an elderly woman was critically injured crossing at the same location. Six days later, a taxi driver ran over a man at 138th Street and Brown Place. Most recently, on April 1, a hit-and-run SUV driver killed two pedestrians on Bruckner Boulevard at 138th Street. On Saturday afternoon, an elderly driver injured four people on the sidewalk near The Hub, a busy commercial area at the north edge of the neighborhood.

At the rally, convened by the environmental justice group South Bronx Unite, participants handed out fliers to people walking along the bustling commercial street. ”We walk these grounds with our feet — we hope that we can get safe streets!” the group chanted.

East 138th Street is designated as a local truck route, which means truck drivers should be heading to or from a destination in the neighborhood. But residents say many truck drivers use the street as a through route to Manhattan to avoid traffic on the Major Deegan and the Bruckner Expressway.

In 2012, officers from the 40th Precinct did not write a single ticket for truck route violations, while issuing 2,272 tickets for tinted windows over the same period [PDF]. Responding to a January letter from resident Monxo Lopez, the precinct’s commanding officer, Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack, said that citations are often issued for tinted windows because officers need to see inside a vehicle during car stops.

At a precinct community council meeting in January, after the two crashes at 138th Street and St. Annes Avenue, McCormack told residents that “most of the victims are elderly, and they are making mistakes,” according to the Mott Haven Herald. In an interview last week with DNAinfo, McCormack noted that some of the victims were not using crosswalks.

“He has a 1950s mentality,” Lopez said on Saturday. “He’s blaming the pedestrians for their own deaths.”

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Eight city council members have put a portion of their discretionary capital funds up for a vote as part of an exercise in participatory budgeting, which allows residents to decide how the money will be spent in their own neighborhoods. Votes in each district are approaching soon, and there’s an opportunity to support livable streets projects.

With participatory budgeting, residents of a City Council district have a say in how $1 million in discretionary capital funds are spent. Photo: Daniel Latorre/Flickr

The participating council members are David Greenfield, Brad Lander, Stephen Levin, and Jumaane D. Williams of Brooklyn; Dan Halloran, Eric Ulrich, and Mark Weprin of Queens; and Melissa Mark-Viverito of Manhattan. Each has put up $1 million in discretionary capital funds, with residents submitting ideas that will appear in early April on a final ballot, open to district residents age 16 and older.

In Lander’s district, stretching from Cobble Hill to Borough Park, there are five projects related to pedestrian safety and livable streets:

• A Safe Routes to School project at Yeshiva Torah Temimah, on Ocean Parkway near 18th Avenue [PDF];
• Extending an upcoming DOT capital project on Church Avenue by adding curb extensions at Coney Island and McDonald Avenues [PDF];
• Constructing a larger plaza space at the triangle intersection of Church Avenue, 14th Avenue, and 35th Street;
• Adding capital funds to an existing DOT project on Hicks Street, to gain concrete curb extensions and improve visibility at the intersection with Congress Street;
• Creation of a new concrete pedestrian plaza adjacent to a community garden at Van Brunt Street and Hamilton Avenue.

Lander is hosting a science fair-style expo where residents can learn more about the projects on the ballot, this Thursday from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Park Slope branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.

Council Member Stephen Levin’s office identified two projects that may be of interest in the district, stretching from Park Slope to Greenpoint along the East River waterfront:

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After the driver who killed six year-old Amar Diarrassouba on Thursday was let off with two summonses, for failure to yield to a pedestrian and not exercising due care, NYPD says its Accident Investigation Squad has concluded its investigation. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance refuses to comment.

Assembly Member Robert J. Rodriguez, Borough President Scott Stringer and Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito announce Stringer's letter to DOT. Photo: Stephen Miller

This afternoon, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer was joined by other elected officials and approximately a dozen community leaders on the sidewalk in front of Diarrassouba’s school, P.S. 155 in East Harlem, to show their outrage.

“We mourn, but we also are angry,” Stringer said. “We should never be standing at a press conference like this again demanding action.”

But instead of demanding action from the NYPD and the DA, Stringer announced that he is sending a letter to Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. “This is a shot across the bow to the Department of Transportation to take meaningful action,” Stringer said.

It’s a strange tactic, given that DOT is expected to continue its implementation of protected bike lanes and pedestrian refuges in East Harlem this year — a project that was, for a time, obstructed by Stringer appointees to Community Board 11.

Citing the significant safety gains of DOT’s Safe Routes to Schools program, Stringer’s letter calls for some worthy improvements, including bringing more Leading Pedestrian Interval signals to East Harlem (currently the neighborhood only has two, while there are 143 in the rest of Manhattan) and installing reduced-speed school zone signs at P.S. 155, which currently has none. But by focusing his critique solely on DOT, Stringer is letting law enforcement off the hook.

“We’re certainly going to defer to the police and the district attorney on these issues,” said Stringer, who is not sending a letter to the DA or NYPD. His specific policy recommendations to DOT, meanwhile, indicate that he has no problem telling less powerful agencies what to do.

Stringer’s letter doesn’t mention the street safety project that will bring bike lanes and pedestrian islands to First Avenue and has already redesigned a stretch of Second Avenue just west of P.S. 155. It also doesn’t mention that two of Stringer’s community board appointments, Erik Mayor and Frank Brija, delayed the project by claiming it would make asthma rates worse. In the end, the full community board voted to support the traffic calming plan not once but twice.

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This is the story about how East Harlem residents and street safety advocates — with leadership from Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito — banded together to win complete streets on First and Second Avenues. After the city backtracked on a plan to build protected bike lanes and pedestrian refuges up to 125th Street on the East Side of Manhattan, this coalition mobilized to put the project back on the table. Later, when the safety improvements came under attack from a few business owners, public health professionals joined Mark-Viverito and NYC DOT to combat misinformation about the redesign and see it through to implementation.

Former Streetsblog Reporter Noah Kazis covered the campaign for protected bike lanes in East Harlem and helps recount the story in this video.

Image: NYC DOT

Before cleaning his workspace yesterday and packing up for New Haven, Noah Kazis snagged one more piece of good news, which it is my pleasure to report: DOT will begin constructing a protected bike lane on Second Avenue in East Harlem at the end of August.

The first section to be built will stretch from 125th Street to 100th Street. (Second Avenue Subway construction will keep the redesign from extending further south for a few more years.) The construction timetable for the northbound lane on First Avenue will be available soon, according to a DOT spokesperson.

This project has been a long time coming — protected bike lanes up to 125th Street were first announced early in 2010 — and a lot of people helped bring it to this point. Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito steadfastly advocated for the project after City Hall walked back the initial timetable and when local restaurant owners temporarily eroded support from the local community board. Transportation Alternatives and local volunteers mobilized when the Bloomberg administration’s commitment to complete the redesign appeared to be flagging. And in the final round of community board meetings, the Department of Health helped DOT dispel the notion that the project would worsen asthma rates.

I also give Noah a lot of credit for highlighting the support for this project from Mark-Viverito and State Senator José Serrano when it seemed like it might continue to languish. Not long after that post last April, East Harlem’s protected bike lanes were officially “well on their way.”

Kids are more likely to be injured while walking or biking in East Harlem and the Lower East Side than the wealthier areas between them. Click to enlarge. Image: T.A.

Children growing up in Manhattan’s low-income communities are at significantly higher risk of being seriously injured or killed in traffic than their neighbors in wealthier districts, a new study from Transportation Alternatives finds [PDF]. Intersections near public housing appear to be particularly dangerous for children trying to cross the street.

In East Harlem and on the Lower East Side, the number of children younger than 18 who are killed or seriously injured while walking or riding their bikes is significantly higher than on the Upper East Side or in Gramercy and East Midtown, even though there are more total crashes with pedestrians in those wealthier neighborhoods.

The most dangerous intersection for kids on the East Side is Lexington and 125th, where 34 children were injured and one killed between 1995 and 2009.

The disparity can’t be explained by differences in population. In fact, the Upper East Side has the greatest share of residents under the age of 18 of the four areas studied. Rather, children are more at risk of getting hit by a car than adults in the low-income neighborhoods, while they are at lower risk in the high-income areas.

Transportation Alternatives hasn’t pinned down a cause, but they theorize that the design of public housing projects could be the culprit. Nine of the ten most dangerous East Side intersections for children were near public housing. The creation of large superblocks at many public housing developments could be encouraging children to cross mid-block, for example.

Twelve-year-old Dashane Santana, a resident of the East Village’s Jacob Riis Houses, was hit and killed last Friday while crossing Delancey at Clinton Street, across from NYCHA’s Seward Park Extension at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge.

Leaders from East Harlem and the Lower East Side have decried the unsafe conditions their children face. “My district contains the greatest concentration of public housing in the city and is located in an area of Manhattan where traffic can be quite heavy. That means the children of my district are at risk,” said City Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito. “We need immediate action to address dangerous driving habits and must improve traffic patterns in high risk areas. Bike lanes in East Harlem are certainly one part of the solution, but more can be done.”

“This map shows us an injustice, pure and simple,” said Damaris Reyes, the executive director of the neighborhood organization Good Old Lower East Side. “Our kids living in public housing on the Lower East Side, including my own children, deserve safe streets just as much as any other child in the city. The NYPD needs to get its priorities straight and crack down on dangerous driving.”

Patsy's Pizza owner Frank Brija, right, claimed at a CB 11 meeting that protected bike lanes in East Harlem would make asthma rates worse. Photo: Jeff Mays/DNAinfo

After a misinformation campaign by two local business owners, East Harlem’s Community Board 11 rescinded its vote in support of plans for protected bike lanes along First and Second Avenue Tuesday night. The board will soon vote again on the project, which has the backing of local Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito.

Community Board 11 has already voiced its support for the protected bike lanes twice. In 2010, the community board expressed outrage over being first promised a protected lane, then having the Bloomberg administration recant. Then, this September they voted 47-3 to support the construction of the protected lanes, setting the stage for construction as soon as the spring.

But, as DNAinfo first reported, after restaurant owners Frank Brija and Erik Mayor organized against the project, the board voted to take back its most recent endorsement. The community board will vote again on the bike lanes after considering the businessmen’s arguments and hearing a new presentation from the Department of Transportation.

“They’re ready to do Occupy Milk Burger.”

Community leaders, including Mark-Viverito and CB 11 chair Matthew Washington, support the bike lanes and promised to ensure that the board has accurate information about the project.

Brija and Mayor, the owners of Patsy’s Pizza and Milk Burger, respectively, gathered signatures from 61 business owners in East Harlem. Mayor claimed that the businesses had not been contacted about the project, though DNAinfo’s Jeff Mays reports that DOT Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione said her office contacted every business along First and Second Avenues, as did the board’s district manager and transportation committee chair.

The East Side project would bring protected bike lanes and new pedestrian refuges to a neighborhood with some of the most dangerous streets and severe asthma problems in the city. Mayor and Brija threw the kitchen sink at the proposal. In addition to arguing that the lanes would remove parking spaces and be underused, Mayor and Brija claimed that the bike lanes would increase congestion and actually worsen asthma rates in the neighborhood.

“There was a lot of confusion and misinformation provided that night,” Mark-Viverito said of Tuesday’s vote. She added that she’d personally be working with the board leadership to make sure that CB members get the best information possible about the effect of bike lanes.

“I don’t see this as any sort of slowing down of the process to get the protected bike lanes we want and need in East Harlem,” she said. “The vote was not to say no to the bike lanes.”

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DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan with City Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito (left) and Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs (background right). Photos: Brad Aaron

Joined by East Harlem seniors, advocates and City Council members, transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan today kicked off a program to provide new and improved sidewalk seating.

CityBench, a product of PlaNYC 2.0, will bring 1,000 shiny steel benches to locations across the five boroughs. The first two were installed outside the Leonard Covello Senior Center on E. 109th Street, where Sadik-Khan said the primary aim of the initiative is to make streets and sidewalks more accommodating to seniors and the mobility-impaired.

“CityBench brings a new design standard that elevates our streetscapes and simply makes it easier and more enjoyable for New Yorkers of every age to walk and take transit,” said Sadik-Khan. The benches will be sited strategically near bus stops, commercial districts and areas with large populations of seniors and the physically disabled. Members of the public may also recommend locations via 311.

“Not only will these benches allow seniors and other residents to sit down and rest, they will also enable them to chat with their neighbors about their day, their families, and the overall state of the community,” said Mark-Viverito, who was lauded by Sadik-Khan for her work in bringing separated bike lanes to First and Second Avenues. Council Member Jessica Lappin and Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs were also on hand.

The lion’s share of funding — 80 percent — for the $3 million CityBench program comes from the Federal Transit Administration, with New York State DOT covering another 10 percent.

After the crowd from the presser had for the most part dispersed, I spoke with bench designer Ignacio Ciocchini, who is director of design for Chelsea Improvement Company. Ciocchini said every facet of the bench was developed with the city in mind, from the powder-coated steel, designed to dissipate heat and shed snow, to the 26-inch seats, allowing for what Ciocchini described as “proper social space” and intended to leave room for whatever a pedestrian might be carrying, from a shopping bag to a small child.

“It fits all sizes,” said Covello Center executive director Suleika Cabrera. “It’s fantastic.”

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The full board of Community Board 11 voted to approve protected bike lanes on First and Second Avenues last night. The news was first reported by Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson over Twitter this morning.

When complete, the bike lanes and pedestrian refuge islands will run from 96th Street to 125th Street on both avenues. Construction will start on Second Avenue, where there is currently no bike infrastructure, and will not cover Second Avenue south of 100th Street until Second Avenue Subway construction is complete.

CB 11′s transportation committee approved the plans by a vote of 5-1-2 earlier this month. East Harlem residents and elected officials had been promised the lanes last year, but when revised plans had construction limited to below 34th Street, they fought hard to get the lanes built in their neighborhood.

Wolfson thanked City Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito for her support of the lanes. “Yeah!” she responded. “Protected bike lanes benefit all in our community.”

We’ll update this post with more information on last night’s vote as it becomes available.

Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito rallies for the completion of the First and Second Avenue bike lanes in November, with Sen. José Serrano to her left and Assm. Brian Kavanagh to her right. The lanes will only extend to 57th Street this year, not 125th Street, but Mark-Viverito suggested today that East Harlem might get safer streets next year. Photo: Noah Kazis.

Could complete streets finally be coming to East Harlem?

The neighborhood has been calling out for the city to keep its promise and build protected bike lanes along First and Second Avenues, bringing safer cycling and traffic calming to an area badly in need of both. Even at the peak of the bikelash last year, City Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito and State Senator José Serrano rallied for the completion of the lanes while community board members pressed DOT’s representatives to put their neighborhood first for a change.

Now, it seems that the city could bring safer designs to First and Second Avenue in East Harlem next year. Mark-Viverito tweeted out the news this morning in response to a conversation between frequent Streetsblog commenter BicyclesOnly and Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson about transportation equity and bike planning.

Wrote Mark-Viverito: “Ext. of 1st/2nd Ave. #bikenyc paths 2 #EastHarlem are well on their way as confirmed by DOT. Very excited!”

Mark-Viverito may have broken the news ahead of schedule. A DOT spokesperson would say only: “We continue to discuss this with the community but no determination has been made at this time.” Mark-Viverito’s office did not respond to a Streetsblog request for more information.