Streetsblog New York City

The third installment of the Streetsies concludes 2011 for Streetsblog NYC, but we still have a few days left in our year-end pledge drive. Please drop a donation in our bucket to help support Streetsblog and Streetfilms in 2012.

Have a great New Year everyone. We’ll see you back here on January 3.

Elected Official of the Year

What progress would New York City have made on bike policy in 2011 without City Council Member Brad Lander?

Flash back to this spring. The Prospect Park West lawsuit had the tabloid press whipped into an anti-bike frenzy. A growing faction within the city’s political class found it advantageous to attack NYC DOT’s transportation reform efforts. And why wouldn’t they? With Democratic Party kingmaker Chuck Schumer reportedly upset about the new bike lane in front of his house, it seemed like any pol who stood up for safer streets was going far out on a limb.

Against this backdrop, Lander defended the Prospect Park West project again and again. While other Democrats with local ties stayed off to the side or hopped aboard the DOT-bashing bandwagon, Lander made a stand. On the steps of City Hall, on the local news, in front of Brooklyn Supreme Court, in legal briefs submitted to Judge Bert Bunyan, he reminded everyone of the years-long public process that produced the PPW bike lane and the broad support for the project in his district.

Lander’s defense of the PPW project would have been enough to earn him this Streetsie. Of course, he also stood up for pedestrian refuges on Fort Hamilton Parkway, spoke eloquently against NYPD’s irrational Central Park bike crackdown, and produced an excellent report about bus service on the B61.

Clearest Vision

Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito saw right through the business owners who claimed that protected bike lanes in East Harlem would worsen asthma rates. Instead of folding under the pressure, she called it what it was: “misinformation.”

Comeback of the Year

In March, the New York Times was ready to write Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan‘s political obituary. Not so fast, Michael Grynbaum. By September, Sadik-Khan was announcing the most ambitious bike-share program in North America. Yesterday she delivered the news that New York City pedestrian fatalities are at an all-time low. The mojo is back.

Activists of the Year

I might be a little impartial but this award goes to Eric McClure and Aaron Naparstek of Park Slope Neighbors. For years they were out doing the gruntwork to make Prospect Park West a safer street: putting on public workshops, gathering signatures, and attending community board meetings. Then in 2011, thousand-dollar-an-hour attorneys and PR professionals parachute in and start lobbing grenades at the redesigned street, all because a few very well-connected people in the neighborhood didn’t like the result of that public process.

Throughout the winter, spring and summer, Eric and Aaron went toe-to-toe, quote-for-quote with the NBBL war machine. You couldn’t ask for better people on the front lines.

Most Spontaneous Advocacy Campaign

Seemingly on a lark, Ken Coughlin and advocates for a car-free Central Park mounted a hugely successful campaign that no one saw coming. Sure, this wasn’t the first time that a car-free park proposal won community board votes. But it wasn’t supposed to happen this year, not during a supposed backlash against livable streets policies.

As one community board after another endorsed a car-free park trial, they confounded the whole backlash narrative. Getting cars out of NYC’s flagship park is just plain popular. By the end, more community boards signed on to the idea than ever before. While no car-free trial happened in 2011, the city started collecting traffic data that can be used to evaluate the effect of a car-free Central Park next summer.

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The 2011 Streetsies continue with a look at the most troubling news and dastardly deeds of the past year. You may want to catch Part 1 and the people’s choice poll results before diving in.

Biggest Setback

Which Andrew Cuomo transit policy deserves the honors?

• Fast-tracking a Tappan Zee replacement with no transit option, undoing nearly a decade of public process and ceding the future of NYC’s northern suburbs to traffic, pollution, and sprawl.
• Plugging the gap in the MTA’s capital program by borrowing billions, so the agency will spend more on debt service in the future, and less on running trains and buses.
• Eviscerating the transit lockbox bill, which would have guarded against Albany raids on dedicated MTA funding.
• Cutting $320 million a year in dedicated MTA funding to appease suburban Republicans.

In a close vote, the cut in dedicated funding edged out the Tappan Zee debacle. All it takes is one unexpected shortfall to trigger the next MTA fare hike or service cut, and this could be it.

While Cuomo promised to make up for the loss in funding by finding revenue elsewhere, he hasn’t identified the new $320 million yet. Even if he comes through this year, the way Albany works, it’s only a matter of time before this promise is forgotten.

For all these reasons, Cuomo also receives…

The Mr. Magoo Award for Extreme Shortsightedness

NIMBY of the Year

The contenders for this award have the formula for New York City livable streets NIMBYism down cold. Take a proven street safety technique and invent some outrageous theory about how it will trigger worse problems than it was meant to solve. Then watch the press beat a path to your door.

Cheeseburger salesman Erik Mayor and pizza purveyor Frank Brija made headlines when they contended that protected bike lanes would make East Harlem asthma rates worse. When public health experts told the local community board that this was hogwash, none of the dailies thought it was worth mentioning.

Hatzolah ambulance drivers provoked a whole CBS2/Marcia Kramer series by claiming that new pedestrian refuges on Fort Hamilton Parkway were a public safety hazard, slowing down emergency vehicles. Kramer never mentioned that Maimonides hospital and FDNY reported no effect on their response times. Nor did she bring up the senior citizens run over and killed on Fort Hamilton Parkway in the past few years, before the refuges went in.

The undisputed champions, though, are Iris Weinshall, Norman Steisel, and Louise Hainline, who ran away with the NIMBY of the Year vote for the second year in a row.

With their lawyer, Jim Walden, these three completely mastered the art of NIMBY doublespeak. They called themselves “Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes” while they boasted about preventing bike lanes from being built in their neighborhood. They based their accusations of DOT data manipulation on their own fabricated numbers and cherrypicked statistics. After a multi-year public process led to the installation of the bike lane, they accused DOT and neighborhood advocates of holding “secret barroom meetings” — all the while NBBL met in secret with the City Council transportation chair, the public advocate, and various other political figures, trying to reverse the results of the public process.

In 2011, they sued the city and waged a scorched earth media campaign that spared no one: not DOT, not the local council member, not the community board, not their own neighbors. And they had a lot of enablers. Here was a group who wanted nothing more than to eradicate a popular project that improved street safety and made bicycling more accessible, especially to kids — and they could call in favors from New York City’s political and media establishment seemingly at will. Editorials were written, meetings were brokered, and legislation was crafted at their behest.

The NBBL juggernaut took its toll by delaying other street safety projects, but it seems to have spun down for now. If nothing else, NBBL put NYC livable streets advocates through their paces. Here we are at the end of 2011, which will go down as “the year of the bike lane lawsuit,” and the bike lane is still there.

Biggest Dupes

Norm Steisel’s connection to the Daily News editorial page was NBBL’s most valuable media contact. With Steisel spoonfeeding material to the paper, they regurgitated NBBL talking points on no fewer than four occasions this year.

Hypocrite of the Year

Earlier this week, City Council Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca told the New York Post:

My priority is protection of the pedestrians, and my mantra is that the pedestrian is always right, even when the pedestrian is wrong. Everything I do is governed by that basic foundation. I think the issue of safety for all the constituents will be what guides my committee.

Was he talking about some new initiative to reduce the 150-plus pedestrian deaths and thousands of pedestrian injuries caused by motor vehicle traffic each year? Nope. He was referring to the slate of bike enforcement and bike lane red tape on his agenda for 2012.

So it goes with Vacca. When Christine Quinn awarded Vacca the committee chair in 2009, she gave him a bully pulpit, if not much actual power. In 2011 he used it mainly to bully the advocates and officials who are trying to make New York City a safer place for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists.

In May, he turned a hearing in his committee into a televised farce, grilling DOT staff about the Times Square plazas, one of the most successful pedestrian safety initiatives in recent memory. Traffic injuries in the vicinity of Times Square dropped 35 percent after the installation of the new plazas. But James “protection of the pedestrians” Vacca was more interested in whether Seventh Avenue was seeing higher traffic volumes: “That concerns me from an access point of view, from a traffic movement point of view, and certainly from a pedestrian safety point of view as well.” Marcia Kramer and her crew beamed the inquisition into living rooms all over the region that night.

In July, he came out with a bizarre bill to compel DOT to estimate the parking loss that would accompany all future bike lanes. (Streets with bike lanes, don’t forget, are safer for pedestrians.)

In November, he told the Post that Transportation Alternatives shouldn’t tell members how to join their local community boards.

When there’s a press conference about a new DOT safety initiative, Vacca pops up in front of the cameras. And he still talks the talk about traffic enforcement on occasion. But he’s never held a hearing about bringing automated speed enforcement to NYC, never asked NYPD tough questions about their careless handling of crash investigations, never exhibited any understanding of how re-engineering streets can save lives. In his committee this year, he spent more time and energy making life easier for alt-side parking violators than making streets safer for pedestrians. Those are his priorities.

Biggest Disgrace

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, hellbent on keeping the streets of his borough hostile to pedestrians and cyclists, almost snagged this award, but he was overmatched by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

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The presentation of the 2011 New York City Streetsies kicks off with highlights from the past year. To catch up on the nominees and winners in the people’s choice categories, have a look at the voting results.

Best Moment

Streetsblog spent the better part of 2011 covering a half-baked lawsuit. Merit-less though it was, the case against the Prospect Park West bike lane enthralled New York City’s conflict-hungry press corps. The litigants made up their myth about a bike-obsessed transportation commissioner imposing her will over local communities, and they found no shortage of pliable pundits and reporters willing to repeat it.

A lot of the year’s best moments gave the lie to all those stories about bike lanes being jammed down the proverbial throats of New Yorkers.

When supporters of the Prospect Park West bike lane outnumbered opponents 8 to 1 at a March community board hearing, when Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito cheered the extension of protected bike lanes to her East Harlem district, and when poll after poll showed bike lanes are broadly popular, the truth came out: Most New Yorkers want safer streets for biking.

The votes are in, and the people’s choice for the best moment of 2011 was noteworthy for a few other reasons. When DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan announced the selection of Alta Bikeshare to operate a public bike system, she described a network of sufficient scale — 10,000 bikes at 600 stations — to overcome barriers that keep hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers from bicycling. Live in a fourth-floor walk-up? Not a problem when there are always bikes waiting for you on the street. Your office building won’t let you bring your bike inside? Just ride a public bike to the nearest station. With 10,000 bikes available from the Upper West Side to Bed Stuy, New York City would have a bike-share system on par with London and Paris. Nothing else could make bicycling for transportation accessible to such huge numbers of people so quickly.

An announcement, though, is just an announcement, and while the bike-share press event was impeccably executed (hat tip to the go-getter who brought both big business advocate Kathy Wylde and labor champion Dan Cantor to the mic), a lot has to happen before any bike-share stations hit the streets. What gave the bike-share announcement extra weight was the timing.

It came at the end of the whole months-long fracas set off by the politically connected PPW NIMBYs. By going big on bike-share, the city sent a clear signal: The future of New York City’s streets won’t be hampered by 9 Prospect Park West. It still belongs to people with vision.

Most New Yorkers are glad that’s the case.

Best Pedestrian Project

Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed Grand Army Plaza as a great gateway to Prospect Park, a civic space extending beyond the cramped corner of Flatbush Avenue and what was then Ninth Avenue. Little did they know the advent of the automobile would turn it into a traffic vortex. Within a few generations, Grand Army Plaza made a fitting site for the Brooklyn Death-o-Meter, tallying up all the traffic deaths and injuries in Kings County.

In 2011, NYC DOT’s ingenious additions to the north and south sides of Grand Army Plaza reclaimed this public space for pedestrians. The traffic is still there, but now, especially on the north side, you can walk across it without taking your life in your hands. No more long, circuitous routes scampering from one sad excuse for a pedestrian island to another. The new Grand Army Plaza invites you to walk with dignity.

It’s still going to take a lot of work before Grand Army Plaza hosts the variety of activity that would make it a great public space. Already, though, the GAP improvements are a model for local livable streets advocates throughout the city. The project never would have happened without neighborhood champions like the Grand Army Plaza Coalition pressing for change, and DOT staff who listened and weren’t afraid to make change happen.

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It’s that time. Time to take stock of the year in livable streets. Time to revisit the great media bike freakout of 2011. Time to feel the agony of transit raids and savor the joy of victories over the bikelash all over again.

Yes, the polls are open for the people’s choice categories in Streetsblog’s annual Streetsie Awards. They will remain open until Monday at midnight.

Happy voting, and don’t forget to donate to Streetsblog and Streetfilms if you haven’t gotten around to contributing yet. There are some stylish Levi’s jeans in it for one lucky reader who gives before midnight tonight.

Update: Still have the urge to vote? The polls for the Capitol Hill Streetsies are now open.

Happy 2011! May this year bring peace, harmony, and a six-year transportation reauthorization.

The best part about 2011 is that it’s not 2010. Last year was a tough one at the federal level: constant extensions of both the transportation bill and the general budget, no progress on an adequate funding source for infrastructure investment, and then a bruising election in November.

We asked you, Streetsblog readers, to vote for the bests and worsts of 2010 in our annual Streetsie awards poll. You took time out of singing carols and making snow angels to cast your vote. Here’s what you said.

You’ll miss Jim Oberstar. The architect of the half-trillion-dollar infrastructure proposal that reformers still dream about – Rep. Jim Oberstar, the Minnesota Democrat who chaired the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure – lost his re-election bid by a hair.

Oberstar secured funding for bicycle facilities when few on Capitol Hill wanted to talk about bikes. He told cyclists, “We’re going to convert America from the hydrocarbon economy to the carbohydrate economy.” He helped create the Safe Routes to School program and expand transit access to low-income communities. He helped level the playing field between transit and highway projects.

It’s not every day you find a champion like that on Capitol Hill.

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This is our last post for 2010, and today is also the last day you can vote in the Capitol Hill Streetsies (vent your frustration with Chris Christie over there). Have a great New Year, Streetsblog readers — we’ll see you back here on Monday.

Activists of the Year: Every December it gets tougher to choose the recipient of this Streetsie. The list of deserving volunteers and advocates in 2010 is so long it just won’t fit in this write-up. So I’ll get to the point: After a year marked by outstanding organizing, the Streetsie goes to Tila Duhaime, Lisa Sladkus, and the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance, for their heroic effort to secure the Columbus Avenue bike lane.

Here’s a sample of what Tila and Lisa put into this campaign: Gathering more than 100 Upper West Side merchant signatures on a letter in favor of protected bike lanes; collecting hundreds of handwritten letters to Manhattan Community Board 7; speaking up at numerous CB meetings; and, before the climactic 23-19 CB vote, going door-to-door to sound out merchants on Columbus and hear their concerns.

Since the lane went in, they’ve continued their outreach, in conjunction with DOT, to address merchant concerns as they arise. All those volunteer hours must make riding on the safer Columbus Avenue that much sweeter.

NIMBYs of the Year: Iris Weinshall and the “Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes” win this one in a landslide. In our people’s choice nominations, we separated Weinshall, the wife of New York’s senior Senator and a former DOT chief, from the group of Prospect Park West bike lane opponents who go by the NBBL handle. But after Weinshall signed a letter to the Times alongside NBBLers Norman Steisel and Louise Hainline, it’s time to drop the pretense that there’s any daylight between them.

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Nadir of the Year – Transit Division: This vote wasn’t even close. Low points don’t get much lower than the worst service cuts in a generation. In June, more than a dozen New York City Transit bus lines were eliminated, service was reduced on dozens more, trains started to run less frequently, and platforms got more crowded.

“Success has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan,” the saying goes. The lineage of these service cuts is long and includes governors, mayors, and scores of legislators — the decision makers who borrowed to the hilt, rejected full funding packages, and flat out robbed from the transit system. So far, none of them have paid a political price.*

Nadir of the Year – Street Safety Division: As of this month, there are laws on the books that let New Yorkers look up local data on hate crimes, domestic violence, and arrests in schools. When it comes to traffic enforcement and the safety of their streets, however, New Yorkers are still in the dark.

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We’re kicking off this year’s NYC Streetsies with the good stuff — the best street redesigns, transit enhancements, policy innovations, and advocacy moments of 2010. Tomorrow we’ll round up the bad stuff. And on Thursday we’ll recognize the people and personalities who shaped the past year. Streetsblog will be back on our regular publishing schedule January 3.

To familiarize yourself with the nominees in our people’s choice categories, check out the poll results from last week. To feel the thrill of voting one more time, head over to Streetsblog Capitol Hill, where Tanya has polls open in six national transportation policy categories until December 30.

Best Livable Streets Moment: If there’s one thing to take away from 2010, I’d say it’s this: No matter how progressive NYC DOT may be, no matter how much outreach accompanies a particular street re-design, and no matter the extent of public support for that project, change doesn’t come easily. You can’t just sit back and hope everything works out in favor of safer streets and better public spaces. You need to show that New Yorkers want to live in a city where walking, biking, and transit come first. You need to organize.

The 2010 nominees for this category tend to reflect that. Grassroots organizing powered the campaign to install the Upper West Side’s first protected bike lane, the push to get City Hall to make good on the promise of safer biking and walking on the entire length of the East Side, and the defense of the Prospect Park West bike lane. Federal funding to study the replacement of the Sheridan Expressway was a bureaucratic decision that wouldn’t have happened without years of advocacy work by the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance.

In a crowded field, the Streetsie goes to an act of organizing that yielded an immediate win: The march for the 78th Street Play Street. It’s a fantastic story.

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Even after 51 weeks of reporting on NYC’s sustainable transportation and street safety scene, it’s still somewhat stunning to sit back and pore over the sheer volume of news that happened in the past year. 2010 was an epically bad year for transit riders, leavened by some important flashes of innovation. New York also saw historic progress on making streets safer for biking and walking, tempered by political pushback and a barrage of negative press.

To commemorate the best and worst of 2010, soon we’ll be posting our fourth annual year-end awards, the Streetsies. Right now we’ve got eight people’s choice categories for you to vote on — the polls are open until midnight on Sunday, December 27.

Before we sign off for the holiday weekend and get to the nominations, a few updates about developments that will help Streetsblog crank out your livable streets fix in 2011 and beyond:

• Our first pledge drive is in full swing until December 31 — just a few more days! Have you given yet? Your tax-deductible donation will provide invaluable support for Streetsblog NYC, directly funding high-impact reporting that sets the agenda for sustainable transportation and street safety policy.
• A big shout-out to the fine people at Bicycle Habitat for sponsoring our coverage. Check out the Bike Habitat ad on our sidebar and visit their shop on Lafayette Street — they’re open tomorrow and on Christmas Eve, in case you’re searching for something to give the cyclists (or prospective cyclists) in your life. If you’re interested in advertising on Streetsblog NYC, send an email to Vanessa Hamer at vhamer [at] openplans [dot] org.

And now, without further ado, your nominees for the 2010 Streetsies.

This post wraps up the Aughts for Streetsblog. For more year-in-review flavor, Clarence has a real treat over at Streetfilms. Have a great New Year everyone. Best Legislator: Brooklyn's David Yassky capped off a very pro-livable streets tenure in City Council by carrying the banner for the Bicycle Access Bill. After a legislative win that difficult and that significant, there's no way we'd end the year without handing him a Streetsie.

Runner-up: State Assembly member Brian Kavanagh, who played the leading role in rallying 18 other local electeds to support physically separated bus and bike lanes on First and Second Avenues. Honorable Mention: Bronx City Council member Oliver Koppell, for sponsoring the Bicycle Access to Garages Bill. You've gotta like Koppell's response to a hostile lobbyist during a hearing on the bill in the council chamber: "Are you living in the 1950s?" NIMBYs of the Year: Can't argue with success. Sure, "Dr. Rick" and assorted West Village cranks managed to quash the idea of a protected bike lane on Carmine Street. And those faceless Grand Street merchants somehow inserted their windshield perspective into the New York City mayoral contest. But only one reactionary group actually got the city to take a step backward on street safety in 2009. That's why South Williamsburg's Hasidic leaders are both the people's choice and the editors' choice for NIMBYs of the Year.

Thanks to a pre-election deal between the Hasids and the mayor's political staff, 14 blocks of extremely useful bike lane are gone from Bedford Avenue. So, who benefited? Not the mayor. Hasidic turnout for Bloomberg was the weakest it's ever been, and the irresistible hipster-vs.-Hasid storyline has produced a lot of embarrassing press. The Hasids? For now, all they've got are more dangerous streets in their own backyard. But if this does turn into some kind of teachable moment within the Hasidic community, maybe something can be salvaged from the whole affair. Activist of the Year: As a member of Manhattan CB 8's transportation committee, Michael Auerbach was instrumental in securing a 38-1 vote requesting protected bike lanes for the East Side. The same night, CB 8 also passed a resolution in favor of converting parking meters to bike racks on Madison Avenue. These votes would have been nearly unthinkable in previous years. It's always tough to single out one of NYC's many hardworking local activists for this Streetsie. For his role in CB8's stunning turnaround, Michael gets the honor.

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