Streetsblog New York City

Last stop for Brooklyn's trolley dodgers at Fairway Market in Red Hook.

Devotees of the Red Hook, Brooklyn Fairway grocery store can have the pleasure, after loading up on gourmet salt and other essentials, of sipping coffee on their back veranda over looking the river. It's a wonderful view. On your right is the Statue of Liberty, flame aloft, and to your left, about ten feet away, a decrepit old green streetcar.

This old trolley, which adds a rough urban charm to the spot, is about all that remains of an admirable effort that ended a few years ago by Bob Diamond and cohorts to bring streetcars back to Brooklyn.

Diamond, renowned for his discovery of the old Atlantic Avenue tunnel -- one of the oldest rail tunnels in the world - may have simply been peaking too soon, for streetcars are coming back. While they aren't back in Brooklyn yet, they are in many cities. Dozens of cities have built, or are building, new streetcar lines. They include Portland, Kenosha, Charlotte, Little Rock, Lowell, Memphis, Tampa, San Diego and Charlotte. Some of them are installing vintage or antique cars; some are installing brand new ones. They join cities like New Orleans, Toronto, Melbourne and San Francisco that kept or revived existing lines.

Paris, France launched a sleek, modern streetcar system last year. More Paris photos below...

This trend is a good one, for streetcars can be one more way to give people alternative to driving, and thus enabling more walkable, bikeable streets. Perhaps most important, streetcar lines are the most urban of transit systems, at least those that run above ground. Unlike their competitor, the so-called "light rail line," streetcars mesh almost seamlessly into a street without bulky grade-separating apparatus and stations that can end up making a street less walkable. Streetcars are also less polluting, more energy-efficient and cheaper to maintain than their other big competitor, freewheeling buses.

Before World War II and the complete domination of the private car, streetcars used to run on virtually every major street New York City and indeed, every major street in every city in the United States. These old lines, although long gone, have left their mark on streets in big and small ways.

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I've long bristled at the word "subsidies" that is applied so frequently to subways, buses and trains, and so infrequently to driving, even when the latter is "subsidized" much more lavishly than the former.

The latest subsidy I've encountered most viscerally is the requirement that exists, even in most parts of New York City, to build parking when you construct a building. This is nothing more than an enforced subsidy of driving, for if you require parking, you are encouraging people to buy cars to fill up those spaces.

I've been thinking about development these days more, and it struck me that the severity of this requirement would be demonstrated if we thought of it a different way.

What if we required that developers subsidize mass transit the same way we require them to subsidize car use? What if we required property owners and developers to kick in say, $25,000 for every unit of housing they built and give it to New York City Transit as compensation for the riders the new development would generate?

So if you built a 40 unit apartment building, you would hand the Metropolitan Transportation Authority a $1 million check. With private developers constructing tens of thousands of units of housing every year, that would soon add up to a nice additional source of revenue for the region's mass transit system.

This may sound absurd, but we already do that with car use by requiring the construction of parking in most parts of the city. There are some exceptions, like in Midtown Manhattan, but in the boroughs and even much of Manhattan -- including the new Hudson Yards redevelopment zone on Manhattan's west side -- constructing parking is a requirement.

This gets expensive, very quickly, particularly in the higher-density areas that also have the best mass transit access, and so don't need the parking.

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I'd bet that people walking outnumber people bicycling across the Brooklyn Bridge by at least 100 to one. I cycle across the wooden-slatted walkway that soars over the top of the bridge regularly now, and every time I do so I think about this. My rolling bicycle negates the space for scores of people every second, forcing them into a relatively skinny strip that is half as wide as the whole walkway.

One day it hit me: Why not erase the white line? Why not end the separation of cycles and pedestrians from each other, and allow them to mix freely on the curved arc across the East River. After all, under the "Shared Street" philosophy, pioneered in Holland and spreading around the world under the proselytizing of folks like my colleague Ben Hamilton-Baillie of Bristol, England, a number of good things might happen.

First of all, walkers would have more space. That's an obvious benefit. As the bottom and most important base of the pyramid of uses that occupy a public space, it's right that walkers should have as much space as possible in a public right of way. They are using the most efficient form of transportation ever devised in terms of moving people from point A to B.

Secondly, bikers would slow down. Just as the "Shared Street" studies show with drivers when faced with a street devoid of traffic signs and lines and full of kids playing and people walking, bikers would slow down when faced with the task of slowly navigating through the crowds of locals and tourists making their way from one shore to another. The bikers would not have some line on the sidewalk essentially giving them a thumbs up to speed along, shouting at pedestrians to get out of their way.

The brain experts tell us vision is an act of discrimination. In other words, we don't see everything; see what we look for, what we expect to see.

Which probably explains how the guy on Avenue B over near 10^th Street opened his door directly in front of me, just after sticking his head out the window and looking back. He wasn't looking for a thin vertical line, i.e. a man on a bicycle. He was looking for a big bulky object that might be a car or a truck. He "edited out" all visual information that wasn't that.

I let out an involuntary scream, squeezed my handlebar brakes, swiveled to one side, half fell off my bike but did not completely lose control. I was not injured. I was happy about that, but shaken that such an incident could occur.

I was angry at the guy, but my anger really didn't make sense. After all, the guy had looked. He just didn't see me.

It's in this situation that I think the now studied "Safety in Numbers" phenomena will gradually help cyclists. Over time, and cyclists grow in number on New York City streets, drivers, whether parked or otherwise, will start looking for them. They will expect to see cyclists, and thus will see them. We, as objects, will start to exist.

I look forward to the day.

A bicyclist in Amsterdam: "Dignified, civilized, unhurried and even elegant..."

The ragged, angry tear on the woman's jeans at ankle level was matched by her angry expression on her face as she looked in vain for some sort of consolation or advice from the bike shop attendant, to whom she explained how the front sprocket on her new bicycle had repeatedly caught and tore her pants leg.

No dice. The attendant at the bike store at 5^th Avenue and St. Johns looked at her as she were complaining about aliens visiting from the moon.

I approached them and offered my perspective that it was absurd that most bikes lacked chain guards, and that one could not even buy a simple chain guard for most bicycles, and thus one was condemned to spoil one's clothes.

"Thank you, thank you," the young woman said to me repeatedly, as if I had actually helped her in some way. She was apparently deeply grateful that someone was taking her complaint seriously. "I saved up money to buy this bicycle, and now I find that it tears my clothes. It has caused me to fall when my pants legs gets tangled. He tells me there is nothing I can do" .

I sympathized. A wise bike shop attendant in Cambridge, Mass once succinctly said to me some years ago that bike design and manufacturing in this country is "overly influenced by the sports market." How right that is. First it was the rage for 10-speed style racing bicycles that shaped casual bicycling; then it was mountain biking. Neither has much to do with simple bicycling for transportation, particularly in towns and cities.

I have a love/hate affair with my own bike, a mountain bike with an absurdly large frame and long seat post to fit my 6'7'' body. The big tires and springy suspension really help riding in the city, particularly one like ours that has standard-grade American-style infrastructure, which means lots of pot holes and dangerous bumps to jump over or roll across.

But I've long loved the ideal of urban cycling being actually urbane, which in my book means dignified, civilized, unhurried and even elegant. One should not appear as if one were either in the Olympics or bouncing down a cliff-face when one is pedaling along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan or Brooklyn. One of my favorite memories of Amsterdam is seeing an older gentleman cycling down the street, wearing not only a suit and hat, but puffing on a pipe as well. He looked like a steamboat gently chugging along the street.

Not getting flattened by a 50,000 pound "big rig" is a good reason to stop at a red light if you're on a bicycle. But how about less skin-saving reasons? Are there in fact, good reasons to ignore traffic regulations when you can, because after all, they are really meant just for cars?

It's a question that comes readily to mind at times, particularly say when pedaling up a steep hill or going down one, and having to stop at a red light in the middle. Many of us often just cruise through with a careful glance in each direction, but we feel guilty about it. Should we?

Maybe not. If you look historically, you'll find that there were practically no traffic regulations as we know them before cars. No stop signs. No traffic lights. No left turn lanes. In the 19th century, the streets of New York were a seething mass of horse drawn wagons, walking adults, playing children and yes, in the late 19th century, bicyclists.

Cars changed this. In the 1930s, traffic congestion became a serious and unanticipated problem. How to handle it? Enter the new "science" of traffic engineering. With the addition of stop signs, street lights and all the other accoutrements that are common today, traffic congestion would soon be a thing of the past, the new professionals assured the public.

Of course, this wasn't true at all. What it did do was make that street much less convenient for someone on a bicycle or using any other form of non-motorized travel.

So here's my point. Given that most traffic controls were put into place solely for the benefit of drivers, why should the rest of us have to obey them? They're not helping us. In fact, they're impeding us.

What we may need to move toward is some sort of system where cyclists, non-motorized scooter riders, skaters or users of any other kind of self-propelled vehicle are exempted or partially exempted from traffic controls. It could be understood that a red light is there to control the car or truck, not everyone else.

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"Necessity is the mother of convenience" is what I found to be true this morning as I rode for the very first time from my home in Crown Heights all the way to Union Square in Manhattan.

To experienced bike commuters, this would be nothing to brag about. But while a frequent cycler around my home in Brooklyn, I had always been intimidated by the thought of crossing the big river into "the city." I had envisioned hours of pedaling, perhaps too much for my weak back. I saw little old me being crushed by unfriendly Manhattan traffic, (even though when I lived in Chelsea I cycled without a problem.)

I was able to do it this morning because I didn't plan to. Down with planning! As I should know as a parent, big tasks are easier when broken into parts.

First I cycled my almost three year old son Max to his daycare center at 5th Avenue and St. Johns Place. Then I cycled over to Brooklyn Heights to drop off something that had to be there today. Then the plan was, I'd lock my bike up and take the subway to my office at Union Square.

But once in Brooklyn Heights near Borough Hall, I said to myself, "Gee, you're so close now. Why not try cycling to work?" As is my tendency, I talked myself into it despite still feeling intimidate, and I soon found myself pedaling across the Brooklyn Bridge, having remembered where the somewhat obscure pedestrian entrance is.

It was a lifetime moment, seeing the stony double naves of the historic Brooklyn Bridge above my handlebars as I pedaled on that wooden path, the towers of Wall Street off to my left. What a glorious moment!

After that, on the advice of a fellow cycler beside me, I pedaled up Centre Street to 4th Avenue and then up to Union Square, (after a quick detour for a first-time stop at Ninth Street Expresso, whose coffee was really as amazing as I had read about.) Once at the Con Edison building where the Regional Plan Association have their offices, I locked my bike to a lousy bike rack Con Ed provides inside their fenced-in parking lot, and walked inside. Piece of cake!

I could definitely see doing it again. It takes me about 45 minutes on the subway, including walking time. I could see cycling being very competitive with that. What other challenges have I been putting off because I supersized them in my mind?

Photo: Seth Holladay / Flickr

The feminine part of "women and children first" has, perhaps, been dropped in our more equitable and less chivalrous times, but the kid side of the sum has not, at least that's my sense of things. As a society, we generally try to put children first knowing they are our world's future, not to mention payers of our future social security checks.

Which is why we should make way for that twin-filled, double-wide stroller driven by a firm-handed mom down the sidewalk of the Upper West Side, Park Slope or even in some other less mom-oriented part of the city. Or should we?

Whatever the answer, it's hard to stifle a feeling of irritation when parents use their strollers like battering rams to make way through crowds. And in New York City crowded environment, it's simply a fact that space is scarce, and strollers take up a lot of it. Even a small stroller takes up a disproportionate amount of space because it and an attached care giver act like a blocker on a sidewalk, impeding the free flow of traffic in, out and across a sidewalk.

I write as a parent who is behind a stroller for often more than an hour a day, so I've been both sides of the equation. As I wrote in a recent essay, before becoming a parent, I swore that I would not use a stroller, particularly a really big one. And then I found that I did. The stroller my partner and I use can only be called an SUV-style stroller -- a wide three-wheel jogging stroller with a wider than average width and footprint. It's so large, it can't fit through most supermarket check out lanes.

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This is the third essay from Alex Marshall, who has written extensively on transportation issues as a journalist and author. He is a senior fellow at the Regional Plan Association, where he edits the bi-weekly Spotlight on the Region newsletter.

"All SUV drivers are assholes," I've frequently found myself thinking as I face the grille of a Cadillac Escalade while crossing a street on foot or from the perch of my bicycle seat. Why would anyone drive such a vehicle in New York City, hardly a brutal wilderness calling for four-wheel drive? They sure don't need the space to haul a load of firewood.

It's undeniable that SUVs make life difficult for the rest of us street dwellers, simply by virtue of their sheer size. Their height impinges on the sight lines of everyone, even other drivers. And because SUV drivers can't see as well themselves -- the action is literally too far below them -- they are more dangerous.

But I try to keep an open mind. Who's an asshole depends on where one sits, and to the SUV drivers, I'm probably the asshole, darting in front of them on my bike like a pesky gnat they would like to swat away, while they are trying to savor another sip of coffee.

I am served a dose of humility when I remember my experience with strollers. Before having a child myself, I would chafe at the legions of "stroller people," as my now wife and I called them, who took up all the sidewalk space on the Upper West Side, using their child carriers like battering rams to get ahead of the pack. I swore not to become one of them.

This is the second essay from Alex Marshall. As a journalist and author Alex has written extensively on transportation issues, he is a senior fellow at the Regional Plan Association where he edits the bi-weekly Spotlight on the Region newsletter.

A guy on a Segway rolled by me the other day on 15th street to the east side of Union Square. I can't remember whether he was wearing a helmet, but I do remember his pursed lips and worried eyes. He seemed to fear a judgmental gaze or remark, and to be preemptively avoiding that by staring straight ahead.

Whatever the actual reason for it, his tense expression metaphorically indicated to me the somewhat beleaguered place Segways occupy on our streets and sidewalks. Although tiny in actual number, in mind-share the Segway has occupied a lot of space due to the successful publicity blow-out before the machines were introduced in late 2001.

As part of this juggernaut, its inventor Dean Kamen spent many millions getting them approved for sidewalk use in most places, but he hit a snag in New York State and in the city particularly, where he found sidewalks and streets more contested ground. Here cycling and pedestrian advocates have managed to keep it in limbo legally, neither completely denied but definitely not completely permitted. That hasn't stopped the police from trying them out though. The Segway made news recently because the NYPD bought ten of them for officers to use in Central Park and other areas.

From a practical standpoint, the Segway's current legal status might be okay. But as a precedent, the hostility against the Segway from the "street" community troubles me. I'm reminded that one discriminated or beleaguered minority is supposedly more likely to discriminate against another minority rather than embrace them. There's not enough room for all of us, seems to be the view of many cycling and pedestrian advocates.

This is a pity, for it's not the right approach to the use of streets. Rather than enshrining particular devices, there should be an attitude of "Everyone into the pool" when it comes to streets. With some exceptions at either end of the scale, generally streets within urban areas should accommodate all types of traffic. Urban designer and writer Michael Sorkin, in a class of his I spoke at CUNY, talked of the streets of Bangladesh and how they contained animals, cyclists, cars and other traffic, all moving along at about 12 mph, absent any particular rules or regulations.