Streetsblog New York City

A cyclist was struck and injured by a cab driver at 81st and Broadway this afternoon.

A spokesperson said FDNY got the call at 2:20 p.m., and that responders transported a 35-year-old male in serious condition to St. Luke’s Roosevelt. A tipster who alerted us to the crash and took the photo said the victim was a delivery cyclist. She described the scene as “Bad.” Judging from the photo, the cab driver barely missed mounting the curb.

NYPD confirmed the collision between a cab driver and cyclist and said there may have been a third vehicle involved, but had nothing more when we called, a little over an hour after the crash.

If anyone has further info, let us know.

This crash occurred in the 20th Precinct. To voice your concerns about neighborhood traffic safety directly to Deputy Inspector Brian A. McGinn, the commanding officer, go to the next community council meeting. The 20th Precinct council “usually” meets on the fourth Monday of each month, except in July and August, at precinct, 120 W. 82nd Street, at 7:00 p.m. Call 212-580-6428 for more information.

The City Council district where this crash occurred is represented by Gale Brewer. To encourage Brewer to take action to improve street safety in her district and citywide, contact her at 212-873-0282, gbrewer@council.nyc.gov or @galeabrewer.

Citi Bike’s rollout to Long Island City, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, and eastern Bedford-Stuyvesant was delayed by damage from Hurricane Sandy. But it looks like bike-share will be establishing a toehold in Williamsburg, with new stations installed in time for the system’s launch, now just one week away.

In December, DOT revealed that flooding damage at Citi Bike’s Brooklyn Navy Yard warehouse had shrunk the initial rollout from 420 stations to 293. Then in April, Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan announced that the recovery from the storm damage was sufficient to launch with 330 stations.

The active Williamsburg stations popped up on the online bike-share maps last week, but it’s not yet clear how many will be installed in the neighborhood before Memorial Day. The Citi Bike website shows four active stations, while DOT’s bike-share map shows nine. We have a request in with DOT about which stations will be ready when.

It’s that time of year: DOT is breaking out electronic signage at dangerous locations throughout the city, warning drivers to slow down and obey the speed limit. Speeding was the top cause of traffic deaths in New York City last year.

The first electronic sign installed this year went in at Atlantic Avenue and Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights, where Martha Atwater was killed on the sidewalk by an curb-jumping driver.

A sign has also gone up on eastbound Park Avenue between Washington Avenue and Hall Street in Clinton Hill, where drivers have been clocked speeding as fast as 53 mph. The Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership has been working with community groups and elected officials on a pedestrian safety plan. One of the early results is that DOT will be installing more street lights on Park Avenue, according to News 12 Brooklyn. The plan also includes a number of physical infrastructure recommendations — no word on those yet, although DOT will be removing a few parking spots at intersections to improve visibility.

DOT will be installing 11 of these electronic signs and rotating them monthly throughout the city. It looks like this year, the signs have all been set to display the correct citywide speed limit, which is 30 mph.

When Putnam Plaza opened nearly two years ago in Clinton Hill, it was welcomed with a dance party. Last Friday, the dancing continued as the Fulton Area Business Alliance, the local business improvement district, held one of its FAB Friday events in the plaza. The space featured games, live music, and a portable library allowing people to sit and relax with a book. On Sunday evening, the BID hosted Soul Aerobics in the plaza. FAB Friday events are also scheduled this summer for Cuyler Gore Park and Fowler Square plaza in Fort Greene.

Across the street from Grand Central, a new pedestrian plaza is being installed this afternoon. Jonny Hamilton, who works nearby, snapped this short video of DOT workers laying down the new surface at Pershing Square between 42nd and 41st Streets, on the east side of the Park Avenue viaduct.

Once the plaza is installed, the block will also receive two bike-share stations with 59 docks each, making it the city’s biggest bike-share hub.

An airport bus stop was relocated to accommodate the plaza and bike-share stations, ”turning that street essentially into a bike-share plaza that would really allow it to be a gateway to Grand Central,” DOT’s Kate Fillin-Yeh said at a bike-share planning meeting with Community Board 5 last year.

On the other side of the viaduct, Hamilton said the southbound block of Park Avenue didn’t get attention from DOT crews today, but it will soon: a plaza plan in the works for that block since 1987 is scheduled to begin construction next year. The space will be managed by the Grand Central Partnership business improvement district.

Read more…

Spring has sprung, and with it came a new on-street bike corral on 82nd Street in Jackson Heights, near Roosevelt Avenue. Clarence from Streetfilms sent over these great pictures. The corral, which replaces one car parking space, has seven racks (for 14 bikes) and two planters. It is maintained by the 82nd Street Partnership business improvement district and was supported by Queens Community Board 4 in a 32-2 vote in March.

Perhaps the most succinct summation comes from the minutes of CB 4′s full board meeting last month. The report from District Manager Christian Cassagnol noted that DOT and “the 82nd Street BID had installed the bike corral, which looked beautiful.”

Our most recent progress report on the protected bike lanes for East Harlem and the Upper East Side came last October, when crews installed the bike lane and pedestrian refuges on Second Avenue between 100th Street and 125th Street. Last year also saw the construction of a protected bike lane on First Avenue between the Queensboro Bridge and 72nd Street. Now, long-time reader Jacob sends in photos of the latest extension on First Avenue, which will stretch up to 125th Street.

This is a major safety upgrade that East Harlem residents and Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito fought hard for the past few years. When complete, crossing distances will be shorter for people walking across the avenue, and biking will feel much safer than it did with the old buffered lane, which was frequently obstructed by double-parkers.

Elsewhere, adjustments to pedestrian and bike space on Broadway between Times Square and Herald Square are underway. When this stretch was first redesigned about five years ago, a protected bike lane was sandwiched between the sidewalk and a floating plaza space, which wasn’t the smoothest arrangement for either pedestrians or cyclists. The design tweaks, which got a thumbs up by Community Board 5 last fall, narrow Broadway from two general travel lanes to one, while replacing the plaza-adjacent protected bike lane with a buffered bike lane on the other side of the street. It also widens the plaza space to 20 feet and connects it to the sidewalk. While cyclists now ride between parked cars and motor vehicles, traffic is light and tends not to move at high speeds.

Courtesy of Christine Berthet of CHEKPEDS, here are photos of what could be Manhattan’s newest public space, a pocket park on Dyer Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen.

This plaza, conceived by area residents, occupies a sliver of traffic island on Dyer between 34th and 35th Streets, near the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel. The space was formerly used for motorcycle parking.

Berthet says this is an interim installation, since plans are on hold to convert three lanes of leftover asphalt on Dyer into a park.

See the before shot after the jump.

Read more…

We’re still filling in the details on this one, but here’s a look at the Gold + Williams furniture storefront on Lafayette and Kenmare in SoHo this afternoon. It looks like the driver kept going straight on westbound Kenmare, even though the street ends.

This block is very close to Streetsblog HQ and gets a lot of foot traffic during lunch hour. We’re checking in with NYPD and FDNY to see if anyone got hurt. Initial accounts reported by Gothamist suggest that, incredibly, no one was injured.

Wall Street Journal reporter Ted Mann adds this piece of background:

A car just drove into a storefront at 210 Lafayette St., across from Petrosino Square, where neighbors warned of danger from… bike-share.

— Ted Mann (@TMannWSJ) April 25, 2013

De-motorization of NYC streets can’t happen fast enough.

A few weeks ago, a reader sent in a picture of an intersection on Katonah Avenue in the Bronx, which DOT repaved and striped with a double-yellow line — but not crosswalks. For more than six weeks, residents crossed this neighborhood artery without painted markings, which had parents at P.S. 19 especially worried.

Our tipster recently wrote back with good news: Two days after we posted about the missing crosswalks, DOT crews were out on Katonah Avenue, putting high-visibility markings in place.