Streetsblog New York City

Bureaucrat of the Year: In just a year-and-a-half, Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan has transformed New York City's Department of Transportation into the envy of city transportation agency officials across the country (OK, maybe Portland, Oregon where the former DOT commissioner was elected mayor isn't envious). In this Streetfilm, Sadik-Khan shows off and explains some of the most recent developments...

Activist of the Year: With so many outstanding livable streets advocacy projects popping up across New York City, it's hard to single out just one community activist for praise. Transportation Alternatives' Queens Committee Chair Mike Heffron did a great job in 2008 organizing activities and drumming up support for livable streets in a borough where it can often be tough to find allies.

Teresa Toro wins a big honorable mention for helping to organize this summer's Williamsburg Walks event, for winning approval for Community Board DOT's Kent Avenue bike lanes and for her years of hard work as chair of CB1's transportation committee. Working on a Community Board can be a thankless task and Teresa did it well.

This year's winner is Florent Morellet. Proprietor of the recently closed Meatpacking District restaurant that bore his name, Florent was a key instigator and steward of the Gansevoort Plaza project, a leading voice for the protected bike paths on 8th and 9th Avenues, an eloquent defender of the Grand Street bike lane and an important behind-the-scenes political player, in general. Even as he was being priced out of his restaurant of 23 years (rent was going to jump from $6,000/month to $50,000!), Florent continued to work to make his neighborhood and his city better for pedestrians, cyclists and, unfortunately, landlords too.

Favorite Streetsblog Commenter: There's a real glut of worthy candidates for this honor, but we're giving it to "Marty Barfowitz." The deciding factor? It could be the consistently insightful, pull-no-punches mini-essays on topics such as NIMBY opposition to bike lanes and the State Assembly's culpability for killing congestion pricing. Or it could be the pseudonym that appeals to both our outer political cynic and our inner eight-year-old.

Most Effective LSN Member: Honorable mention goes to Dave "Paco" Abraham, whose achievements in 2008 included a successful one-man lobbying effort to sell Duane Reade on the benefits of bike racks. The top spot belongs to Susan Donovan (below), who could be spotted drumming up support for Amtrak funding in a widely read Daily Kos diary, and, in an impressive media coup, leading NY1 through the automobile-clogged sidewalks near Yankee Stadium on game day -- proof that livable streets advocacy and local TV news are a great match.

Best Lenswork: Goes to Jacob-uptown for his photographic documentation of conditions on New York City sidewalks, bike lanes, and bus routes, the best of a bumper crop submitted to the Streetsblog Flickr pool this year.

Best LSN Group: With 47 members, LSN's Inwood and Washington Heights Livable Streets group is doing a great job of making use of our online organizing tools. Let's hope that 2009 brings a redesigned Dyckman Street and some new Community Board members to northern Manhattan.

Most Weirdly Effective and Totally Accidental Online Advocacy Effort: State Farm pulled one of its TV advertisements from the air after a Streetsblog-incited Internet mob told them that their attitude towards bike commuting needed a major adjustment. Here's a description of the ad. And here's State Farm's response. 

Best Advocacy Campaign: Michael O'Loughlin and the crew at M+R win a huge honorable mention for the Campaign for New York's Future. Though they weren't able to bring congestion pricing across the finish line in Albany, the Campaign put together an unprecedented coalition of business, labor, environmental, public health, religious and community groups and won approval for congestion pricing in City Council, something that many said would be impossible.

Honorable mention also goes to Joan Byron and Brad Lander at the Pratt Center for Community Development for their Transportation Equity Project. The idea of bringing together lower income communities to advocate for better bus service is an absolute no-brainer. But no one was doing it until Joan and Brad stepped in to fill the void.

The winners are the Prospect Park Youth Advocates because no other advocacy campaign employed the Brooklyn Steppers Marching Band to such great effect.

Best Livable Streets Education Initiative: After fifth grader Michael Needham, Jr. was killed by a reckless, speeding motorist while riding his bicycle, P.S. 76 in the Bronx might have decided to discourage students from riding bikes (like this New Jersey high school principal did in May). Instead, P.S. 76 began working bike safety, skills and street awareness into its curriculum. With the help of Bike New York, P.S. 76 implemented a month-long, bike-oriented physical education program for students and their parents and even raffled off a brand new bicycle to one student -- a bold move for school administrators and a fitting tribute to Michael.

Best Celebrity Livable Streets Endorsement: Step aside David Byrne. It's Jay-Z.

Best Out-of-the-Box Transportation Policy Thinking: With regrets to Councilman Lew Fidler and his 9 CARAT STONE Plan, we're going to have to give the award to Charles Komanoff for the Kheel Plan and his Balanced Transportation Analyzer. Honorable mention goes to TOPP's own Mark Gorton, for his four-part Smart Para-Transit opus.

The Old College Try Award: Goes to Paul Newell for running a Democratic primary campaign challenge against State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. If nothing else, it forced Shelly to campaign for the first time in ages, and may have provided the nudge that pushed the Speaker to stop obstructing the traffic-reducing Gansevoort Waste Transfer Station. It'd be great to see a dozen Paul Newell's taking on State Assembly Democrats come 2010.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver presumably cruised to another term in yesterday's Democratic primary, racking up almost 68 percent of the Lower Manhattan vote against challengers Paul Newell and Luke Henry. He will face Republican Danniel Maio in the general election.

Newell pulled 23 percent of the vote, Henry nine percent. Though the vote tally wasn't close, some pundits are speculating that in mounting the first serious challenge to Silver in years -- reducing him to knocking on doors, of all things -- the Newell campaign may affect the way the speaker conducts business in Albany. That remains to be seen, of course, but Newell had this to say to the Observer early this week:

"I'm running to get the most votes in this election. That said, there's no question we've already brought change. We've already taken on Albany. There's no question about that. And people are scared."

Those scared people, Newell said, are thinking, "Wow, a 33-year-old community organizer can put together a campaign that is going to rock Sheldon Silver with his $3 million in his account, and $8 million in his Speaker's P.A.C. or whatever it is that he's got."

"If we're successful, you're going to see forty or fifty challengers to incumbents in 2010, in both parties," Newell said, adding, "I don't think there's any doubt we had a role in that."

Silver's last primary challenge was in 1986, when John Bal got 20 percent of the vote.  

In the Senate, the talk of the day locally was the defeat of Martin Connor, the 30-year incumbent upended by 28-year-old Daniel Squadron. As Streetsblog readers know, Connor was one of many Albany lawmakers to hold their tongues as congestion pricing went down in April, for which Squadron took him to task during the campaign. What impact pricing had on the race is open to debate, particularly since Connor's Senate District 25 encompasses Assembly District 64 -- home to Sheldon Silver.

In other results, vocal pricing backer Adriano Espaillat held off City Council Member Miguel Martinez in Assembly District 72, which covers Upper Manhattan.

Photo: New York Observer

It's primary day, and when it comes to local elections in New York, that means the next few hours bear more significance than what happens in November. Gotham Gazette has the most comprehensive guide to all the contested primaries in the city. From a livable streets perspective, the three Manhattan races stand out.

In the 64th Assembly district, Paul Newell is riding a wave of endorsements from the three major dailies in his campaign against Speaker Sheldon Silver. Newell and fellow challenger Luke Henry have both taken Silver to task over his handling of the congestion pricing vote in April.

Likewise, in the 25th Senate district (which also includes parts of Brooklyn), challenger Dan Squadron has pounced on 30-year incumbent Martin Connor's timid stance on pricing. The back-and-forth battle of endorsements -- Squadron has his mentor Chuck Schumer and Mayor Bloomberg on his side, Connor has fellow Albany Dems on his -- plus Squadron's prodigious fundraising, have made this one of the most closely watched elections this cycle.

Up in the 72nd Assembly district, incumbent Adriano Espaillat faces a challenge from City Council member Miguel Martinez. Both supported congestion pricing, but Espaillat was one of the plan's fiercest advocates. Espaillat also supported the traffic-reducing Gansevoort Waste Transfer Station, which, while outside his district, ran against the wishes of prominent Manhattan Assembly members.

There are plenty of other seats at stake where candidates' views may affect streets and transit. If there's an election with implications for livable streets in your district, or if you've got a story to share from the polls today, tell us all about it in the comments.

Photo: Vidiot/Flickr

Plot the Pork. What would you like to add to Sheldon Silver's Google map?

With New York City's mostly uncontested primary elections less than a week away, attention turns to the 64th State Assembly district in Lower Manhattan, where New York Times-endorsed insurgent Paul Newell is running a long-shot campaign against Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Facing his first Democratic challenge since the coining of the word "cyberspace," the decidedly analog Speaker has joined us here in the Information Age with a fancy new campaign web site, ShellySilver.org. It features an eye-catching Google map illustrating "What Shelly's Doing Near You" with some of the $3 to $7 million in member items he distributes annually.

Apparently, Silver hasn't caught on to the whole web 2.0 user-generated content thing because there's no way to drop your own pins on his Google map. If, for example, you wanted to stick a pin on Canal Street to make note of Silver's complicity in maintaining that street's never-ending traffic jam and Chinatown's third world-level childhood asthma rates, you'd be unable to do that. If you wanted to point out that Lower Manhattan enjoys some of the city's slowest buses and most dangerous streets, thanks, in part, to Silver allowing Rochester Assemblyman David Gantt to deny New York City the use of red light and bus lane enforcement cameras, you wouldn't be able to do that either. And given that the Speaker is known more for the projects and policies that he's stalled and killed (the commuter tax, New York City's Olympic bid, congestion pricing...) than the projects he's made happen, it seems like there ought to be a map showing all the things that don't exist in New York City thanks to Sheldon Silver's handiwork.

So, here it is. To help create a more complete picture of Shelly Silver's citywide footprint, Streetsblog went ahead and built a more interactive "What Shelly's Doing Near You" map. If you've got a contribution, go ahead and add it to the comments section here on Streetsblog. Pin it on Shelly.

This is the second installment of Streetsblog's interview with Paul Newell, candidate for State Assembly in the 64th District, who's challenging Speaker Sheldon Silver in the Democratic primary this September. In this segment, Newell addresses some of the issues that are fresh in the minds of everyone who followed the death of congestion pricing in Albany without a vote earlier this month. The first part of the interview, about running for office in New York, ran yesterday.

Streetsblog: What made you decide to run? What was the inspiration?

Paul Newell: The inspiration was seeing how Albany's broken and how that impacts
people's lives every day throughout this city and state, and in
particular downtown where I live and work. I've been an organizer for a
lot of years, and increasingly it became clear to me that we are not
going to move forward on new thinking on everything from transportation
to housing and education if we don't have a working system in Albany.
And the reason we don't have a working system in Albany is because of
Sheldon Silver and Joe Bruno.

Read more...

Last week Streetsblog caught up with Paul Newell, who's mounting the first primary challenge to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in 22 years. Discussing his candidacy, Newell made it clear that he is in it to win it. (He picked up some momentum yesterday, garnering the endorsement of BlogPAC, which describes itself as "a consortium of progressive bloggers from all 50 states.")

We're running excerpts from the interview in two parts. In this segment, complementing our previous look at what it takes to get on the ballot, Newell shares his advice for potential candidates and sheds light on the mechanics of running for office. In the second part, which we'll run tomorrow, Newell talks about why he decided to run against Silver, and how he believes transportation -- and Albany -- should be reformed.

Streetsblog: What's your advice for someone pondering a run for office?

Paul Newell: A lot of people will say that you can't beat an incumbent in New York. And they're wrong. Incumbents do lose, number one. Number two, times have changed. The times when these old machine candidates just turn out, punch out votes and kill any opposition are over. We do not live in that city.

Running for office is an incredible opportunity. You will learn more about yourself, your community, your state, than you ever could. You will meet amazing people, and you will have an opportunity to dramatically change your community for the better. It is fun. It is hard work, and it is worth doing.

In what may be a political first, Paul Newell, who is challenging Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in the 64th District, mentions "livable streets" as one of his three major planks in this campaign clip. Newell and Luke Henry, another Silver challenger, have both voiced support for congestion pricing. The last time Silver faced a challenger in the Democratic primary was 1986.

Streetsblog spoke to Newell yesterday about what motivated him to run against Silver, his stance on transportation issues, and his advice for anyone pondering a run against an Albany incumbent this election cycle. Highlights from the interview are on the way soon.

In the meantime, we grabbed Newell's transportation bullet points from his website -- posted after the jump.

Can't wait for someone to challenge Shelly Silver, Deborah Glick, Hakeem Jeffries, Joan Millman and other members of the Albany crew that didn't allow congestion pricing to even come up for a vote? Neither can the New York Times.

In a scathing editorial published on Saturday, the Times issued a call for change in the state capital, appealing for more Paul Newells to step forward and run against incumbent pols.

Any New Yorker who is not furious at the mention of their state capital, Albany, has not been paying attention. There are the sex scandals that forced one governor out of office and prompted his replacement to confess more details of his own indiscretions than anyone wanted to hear. The state comptroller quit last year after pleading guilty to misusing public assets. This week an Assembly member was convicted of corruption and faces up to a decade in jail. Angry yet?

The place needs a thorough cleaning -- a giant broom to sweep out the rascals, starting with the State Legislature. We are not in favor of term limits, but the idea gains currency when most people who get elected in New York State keep their seats until they retire, die or go to jail.

The ballot box is still the best form of term limits. So, here is how to change Albany: find and support somebody daring and thick-skinned enough to run against the local legislator.