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.

Most Persistent Advocates

After many false starts and delays, Bike Upper Manhattan finally got an audience with Community Board 12 and NYC DOT to talk about adding bike infrastructure in their neighborhood.

Advocacy Campaign to Watch in 2012

Brownsville residents are pushing for the neighborhood’s first bike lanes. Will the city stripe them?

Best Ambassador for #BikeNYC

Brooklyn’s own Kimberly White, organizer of the first Youth Bike Summit here in New York, received a standing O after she delivered the closing address at the 2012 Safe Routes to School National Conference in Minneapolis.

The Speaking Truth to Power Award

Last December, Jason King was run over and killed on his way to work by a truck driver who was backing up illegally. After a Marcia Kramer segment used his death to promote a Carl Kruger bill to ban walking while listening to music or talking on cell phones, Jason’s mother, Sonia King, sent an outraged letter to CBS 2, Kruger’s office, and the Manhattan DA. She wrote: “They left the truth out of the story and used our son’s death to go for headlines and political pandering.”

Best Local TV Reporting on the PPW Story

Best Bike-Related Commentary By a Reporter Whose Beat Has Nothing to Do With Bikes

Jason Gay writes a sports column for the Wall Street Journal, and he also penned this brilliant postmortem of the 2011 bikelash.

Favorite John Cassidy Smackdown

You knew things were getting out of hand when the New Yorker published a column spouting nonsense about bike lanes, even if it was just on their website. Of all the responses to John Cassidy’s bike lane rant, Aaron Naparstek wrote the original and best, though I do think Adam Sternbergh got stiffed in the voting for this Streetsie.

Favorite Installment of the NBBL Files

I thought the one about Chuck Schumer would take this prize. I was way off. Chuck is powerful, but he’s just one guy. It turns out that the most fascinating thing about NBBL is that they sought out an impressive collection of friends in politics and government to undo the public process that produced the PPW bike lane.

Favorite Streetfilm

Best Movie

Runner-up: Gary Hustwit’s Urbanized.

Winner: Bill Cunningham New York. The next time someone tells you, “Not everyone can bike,” recommend this documentary. An 80-year-old fashion photographer bikes around Manhattan on a beat-up Schwinn — every single day, except when he’s in Paris. (Also recommended for this purpose: My NYC Biking Story, starring Lucette Gilbert, directed by Elizabeth Press.)

Most Boring Video

Best Reason to Stop Forcing NYC Developers to Build Parking

Parking minimums make housing more expensive, as NYU’s Furman Center documented in their excellent report, “Minimum Parking Requirements and Housing Affordability in New York City.”

Most Revealing Moment of Candor

Department of City Planning official Howard Slatkin admits that the Bloomberg administration uses parking minimums to buy political support for upzonings.

The “I Told You So” Award

Yankee Stadium garages go belly-up, further proof that the obscene amounts of subsidized parking at the new stadium were a total waste of taxpayer money.

Most Convincing Cultural Signifier That Bike Commuting Has Gone Mainstream

Martha Stewart invites Bike New York’s Emilia Crotty to the studio to share tips on biking to work.

Fishiest Explanation

After Staten Island Republican James Oddo proposed environmental review for new bike lanes, he told Streetsblog that he wasn’t out to slow the growth of the bike network at all. He just wanted to call attention to what he sees as an overly restrictive environmental review process. Duh.

Most Unexpected Pro-Bike Lane Survey

In the far reaches of car-dependent Eastern Queens, City Council Member Mark Weprin found that 61 percent of his constituents support bike lanes. Said Weprin: “People seem to like them, including myself.”

Community Board Hall of Fame

Ian Dutton is leaving Manhattan CB 2 after seven years of service, decamping for Brooklyn. On the community board Ian was a strong counterweight to perennial NIMBY Sean Sweeney. During his tenure, protected bike lanes, public plazas, pop-up cafes, and performance parking came to SoHo and Greenwich Village. His efforts earned him the first Streetsie for Activist of the Year, back in 2007. One of the last projects he helped initiate and shepherd through was the conversion of the Hudson Street buffered bike lane to a protected lane.

Manhattan’s loss will be Brooklyn’s gain.

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

Image: CBS2

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.

Photo: Newsday

Streetsblog readers know the rote NYPD refrain when a sober driver kills or injures someone and stays at the scene: “No criminality suspected.” But what’s behind the words? What sort of work goes in to exonerating motorists who maim and kill? Well, not much.

Two incidents this year shed some light on the paltry effort police put into crash investigations: Camille Dodero’s Village Voice piece about the 94th Precinct’s handling of the hit-and-run crash that nearly killed cyclist Michelle Matson, and the Lefevre family’s brave search for answers about the crash that killed their son Mathieu.

The picture that emerges is deeply troubling: a police force predisposed to believe cyclists are culpable for their own deaths and injuries before any facts are in; investigators who can’t be bothered to collect key evidence or follow up with witnesses; major discrepancies between information in the crash report and accounts police give to the press.

People are dying in the streets and NYPD doesn’t seem to care about what’s causing the carnage or how to stop it. All on Ray Kelly’s watch.

The Kremlin-on-the-Hudson Award

Who’s in charge at 22 Reade Street? Amanda Burden? Sandy Hornick? The real estate lobby? When it comes to parking policy, the Department of City Planning headquarters seems full of palace intrigue.

Sandy Hornick and Amanda Burden. Who's calling the shots on NYC parking policy?

DCP is in the midst of updating the city’s off-street parking policies, and the agency could go in any number of directions. Based on dispatches from inside DCP, it seems like some factions want to strengthen the existing parking limits in Manhattan, while others want to eviscerate them.

Parking policy can spell the difference between a sustainable city and a traffic-choked city. So far there’s no decisive vision coming from Amanda Burden’s planning department.

Best Reminder That Community Boards Are Only as Democratic as Their Overseers Allow Them to Be

Council Member Vincent Gentile dismissed Community Board 10 member Bob Cassara after Cassara tried to get the board to reconsider its opposition to a bike lane on Bay Ridge Parkway.

Most Embarrassing Tweet

Anthony Weiner’s crotch shots have nothing on Eric Ulrich’s constituent messages. After a resident of his Queens City Council district told him that she wants more bike lanes and traffic calming measures, Ulrich tweeted back that she should “#getalife.”

The “Winning the Future” Award

Jay Walder left the most prestigious transit job in America to take the top spot at Hong Kong-based rail company MTR. Reports indicate that his annual compensation will be five times higher than it was running the MTA.

The Steve Cuozzo Prize for Commentary

…goes to Alex Nazaryan of the Daily News editorial page.

Fakest News

Chuck Schumer hails the Prospect Park West bike lane as a national model for safe, sustainable transportation. Dream on.

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.

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.

Walking to and from Grand Army Plaza is no longer an exercise in defying death. Photo: Ben Fried

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.

Best Bike Project

The bike network didn’t grow as rapidly in 2011 as it did the previous three years, but this year saw critical new links take shape. The people’s choice came down to two worthy segments competing for the title of year’s best bike project. In a close vote, the extension of the First and Second Avenue bike lanes up to 57th Street edged out the new Queensboro Bridge approach at Queens Plaza for the honors.

Photo: Noah Kazis

The East Side project, while not very robust on the Second Avenue side, stands apart for a few reasons: 1) It’s the first north-south pair of on-street bike lanes that connect to the heart of Midtown; 2) First Avenue now features the first northbound protected bike lane to extend past 34th Street (this explains why 2011 was the first year I biked to Grand Central); and 3) It inspired the…

Best Marcia Kramer Segment

Cross 2011 bikelash hysteria with USA PATRIOT Act-era fearmongering and you get this unholy spawn:

Best Bus Project

With the launch of MTA Bus-Time on the B63 route this February, riders could look up the location of the next bus by sending a text message or checking their smartphones. The MTA struggled for years to deliver information that would take the guesswork out of waiting for the bus. The agency seems to have made a breakthrough with the open source platform that B63 Bus-Time is built on (disclosure: OpenPlans, Streetsblog’s parent organization, helped develop the platform). Bus-Time is coming to every route in Staten Island next year, and if all goes well, to every bus route in the city soon thereafter.

Best New Plaza

2011 was a banner year for neighborhood plazas outside Manhattan. In Brooklyn, Clinton Hill and East New York welcomed new public spaces. And in Queens, the city’s most park-starved neighborhood, Jackson Heights, got more breathing room with the as-yet-unnamed plaza on 37th Road between 73rd and 74th streets. The nameless Jackson Heights plaza wins the award by virtue of the people’s choice votes, the outstanding collaboration between DOT and neighborhood advocates that led to this project, and the fact that it’s clearly a big draw at all times of day, no matter the weather:

Photo: Clarence Eckerson, Jr.

Best Use of Asphalt

With some new signs, a little thermoplast, and a few asphalt speed humps, NYC DOT made Claremont the city’s first neighborhood 20 mph zone. Yes, it could look nicer, but the “slow zone” treatment is low-cost traffic calming that other neighborhoods want for their streets. The more places opt in, the more drivers will get the message: Speed kills.

Best Report

The Hunter College graduate students who wrote “Beyond the Backlash” put together the year’s most original research on how cyclists use neighborhood streets and how the bike network serves them (or doesn’t). Their report also includes some of the clearest thinking put in print about how DOT can overcome the shortcomings of the current Community Board process to deliver a safer bike network for all New Yorkers.

Most Underappreciated Pedestrian Safety Innovation

New York City’s first bike corral turned a loading zone on Smith Street into a dozen bike parking spots. But it’s not just a place to store bicycles (although it is an excellent place to do that) — it’s also a great way to improve sightlines for pedestrians and drivers so everyone can see where everyone else is headed. Countless intersections in New York City would be safer if the street corners belonged to bike parking instead of car parking.

Photo: Jeremy Charette

Best Grand Opening

From now on, instead of ribbon cuttings, every new public space project should put on a dance party like Putnam Plaza:

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.

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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.

"We'll Miss You Jim Oberstar!" say 86 percent of Streetsblog readers. Image: Bike Portland

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.

Many of you are also sad to see Sen. Chris Dodd go. From his seat as chair of the Banking Committee, he fought for transit funding and for his Livable Communities bill, which is less likely to see action in the next Congress without his advocacy.

But the blow of losing Oberstar was made harder by the surprise of it: Dodd announced his resignation a year ago, but who really thought Oberstar would lose, after 18 easy election wins? Plus, the Senate is still controlled by Democrats, but a Republican-controlled House could have really used an Oberstar to keep transportation reform at the forefront.

So James Oberstar gets the Streetsie for the politician who will be missed most in the 112th Congress. Which brings us to the category:

Best Bet to Take Up Oberstar’s Mantle in the 112th: Oberstar was a good friend, but he wasn’t the only ally to reformers. Reps. Earl Blumenauer and Peter DeFazio (both D-OR) will continue to be fervent supporters of sustainability, bicycling, and public transportation. And we know we can count on Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) to keep fighting for a National Infrastructure Bank.

But we’re going to give the Streetsie to Sen. Barbara Boxer, hoping she’ll step up her efforts to secure meaningful transportation reform and a robust funding source in the coming year. With Dodd gone, sustainable transportation supporters need her to be a hero in the Senate.

She should receive support from colleagues like Senators Tom Carper of Delaware and Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, who have stood up for transit, as well as the New York delegation. But as head of the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works – and having emerged stronger than expected from a tough re-election battle – she’s got some political capital to spend. We award her this Streetsie in hopes that she’ll spend that political capital on reducing carbon emissions through transportation reform.

Best Idea With a Million Supporters and Still No Chance of Going Anywhere Anytime Soon: A higher gas tax. The Deficit Commission came out in favor of it. So did former Transportation Secretaries Norm Mineta and Sam Skinner. Not to mention outgoing Republican Senator George Voinovich of Ohio and Democratic Senator Thomas Carper of Delaware. And a coalition of economic policy groups.

Still, politicians avoided it like the plague. No one was willing to stand up for a way to replenish the starved highway trust fund during the last election season. The only thing less popular than a hike in the gas tax is a shift to a VMT fee.

Most Important Action Congress Failed to Take in 2010: Of all the unfinished business of the 111th, Streetsblog readers were most bummed out by the failure to pass a transportation reauthorization. Indeed, that’s the centerpiece of nearly all federal-level efforts to reform the transportation system. Making matters worse is the fact that that task now shifts to the hands of Republicans who have announced their intention to cut spending (at a time of rousing cries for greater infrastructure funding) and to prioritize sprawl-spreading highway building over more efficient and sustainable forms of transportation.

But fully a third of you were even more disappointed by the inability to pass a climate bill that dealt with carbon emissions from transportation. The most recent iterations of the climate bill were getting weaker and weaker on that score, and now the bill is on the scrap heap.

Incidentally, that’s why we’re pulling for Sen. Boxer to pick up the transportation reform banner. She worked long and hard on the climate bill, and she could accomplish many of carbon reduction goals set out in that bill by focusing on transportation, which is responsible for a third of all carbon emissions. Which brings us back to that transportation bill…

In our next post: your votes for most short-sighted governor, and some reasons for optimism.

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.

Tila's on the left, Lisa's on the right.

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.

Speaking of that letter to the editor, it’s a perfect expression of the NBBL ethos: many assertions, no facts. Reading it might give you the urge to bow your head and give thanks that NYC is no longer served by a transportation commissioner who feels comfortable attaching her name to statements like this: “When new bike lanes force the same volume of cars and trucks into fewer and narrower traffic lanes, the potential for accidents between cars, trucks and pedestrians goes up rather than down.” It’s as if all the accumulated research on the safety benefits of road diets, slower vehicle speeds, and shorter crossing distances went out the window when the street in front of Weinshall’s house got re-designed. (For a thorough debunking, read this Tom Vanderbilt post.)

We’re heading into 2011 and the new PPW is in no immediate danger, but don’t kid yourself. Weinshall et al aren’t going to quit. While they were vastly outnumbered at the battle for PPW in October, the war they’re waging now is bigger than a single street. The opinions they got published in the Times, the press hits they drummed up from the City Council hearing they helped to foment, and the letter they sent from one deputy mayor to another all make it harder for the city to go forward with the next re-design to make streets safer.

YIMBYs of the Year: When plans for East Side bike lanes suddenly got cut off at 34th Street, the transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 11 wouldn’t take no for an answer, demanding that the Bloomberg administration extend the street safety treatments uptown.

Elected Official of the Year: A surprising number of pols put themselves in the running for this one. First, the honorable mentions…

State Senator Eric Adams introduced a bill to insert a bike safety component into the New York State driver’s ed curriculum. Dan Dromm marched for a play street in Queens, and Melissa Mark Viverito stood up and called for protected bike lanes in her East Harlem district. Tish James, Dan Garodnick, Gale Brewer, and Jimmy Van Bramer all acquitted themselves well at last month’s City Council bike policy hearing. Dan Squadron, Jonathan Bing, and Micah Kellner have been consistent supporters of street safety and effective transit. Jimmy Vacca has been an earnest supporter of slowing down speeders, and Scott Stringer did his level best to get the NYPD to enforce the rules of bike lanes.

Our runner-up is Brad Lander, whose office produced the survey and incredibly detailed report on the Prospect Park West bike lane. Lander’s defense of the Fort Hamilton Parkway pedestrian refuges was also deft and firm.

The Streetsie goes to Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh. Kavanagh sponsored Hayley and Diego’s Law, legislation intended to protect pedestrians and cyclists which passed August 13. Among electeds, he’s also been the strongest voice for prioritizing transit on First and Second Avenue and extending the East Side bike lanes all the way to 125th Street.

Best Developer: Martin Dunn got an exemption from the city’s parking requirements so he could build the 458-unit Navy Green project without a single parking space.

Best Mayoral Moment: After reporters hounded him with questions about traffic flow at January’s announcement that the Times Square plazas will stay, Mayor Bloomberg channeled his inner Enrique Penalosa. “Are the roads for multiple uses — everybody, pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists,” he asked, “or are they just for motorists?”

Hottest Air: Apoplectic over the PPW bike lane, Borough President Marty Markowitz accused Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan of wanting to “make life difficult” for motorists and “putting bicycle paths on every single block of New York City.”

Most Over-the-Top Marcia Kramer Story: Killer pedestrian refuges!

The Goldbricker Award: Fill out some paperwork and send a check for $250 to Dr. Sheldon Werner of Wappingers Falls, New York, and you too can acquire a bogus parking placard and all the attendant privileges it conveys.

Most Opaque Transit Platform: Did anyone come away from Andrew Cuomo’s campaign for governor any wiser about how he’ll handle the MTA’s funding problems once in office?

The WYSIWYG Award: Carl Paladino entered the general election with a reputation for being a little unhinged, and in fact he did have some nutty ideas about how to craft transportation policy.

Biggest Question Mark: In his first year on the job, Manhattan DA Cy Vance followed through on a campaign pledge to beef up his vehicular crimes unit but failed to hold drivers accountable for killing pedestrians in at least a few cases where inattention or recklessness appeared to have played a factor.

Rookie of the Year: Streetfilms intern Dahlia Lopez Ramsay knocked one out of the park with “Women in Motion.” Bike Snob raved: “Refreshingly guileless.”

Best How-to: Clarence took you on his bike commute from Jackson Heights to Chinatown. Scenic, safe, and doable, even if you’re a beginner.

The Bike-Friendly Business Award: Edison ParkFast, for knocking down the daily rate for bicycle parking to one dollar.

Lifetime Achievement: Theodore W. Kheel, transit policy visionary and one of the MTA’s founding fathers, 1914 – 2010.

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.

Photo: Aaron Naparstek

“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.

A bill requiring the release of data on traffic crashes and summonses stalled in the City Council after high-level NYPD officials refused to back the measure at a hearing in April. Interested in finding out which parts of your neighborhood are badly in need of traffic calming or better enforcement? The police don’t want you to know. “This information is only valuable to those with the training, knowledge and experience to understand its context and interpret it correctly,” testified Chief of Transportation James Tuller.

NYPD's James Tuller tells the City Council why his agency doesn't want to release readily available information about street safety. Photo: Noah Kazis

His predecessor, Michael Scagnelli, begged to differ, telling the Council: “I strongly believe that one way to help reduce traffic injuries and fatalities on New York city streets is for the NYPD to make traffic injury, fatality and summonsing data open and available to the public.”

Urban Abomination of the Year: Four nominees faced off in what turned out to be the most hotly contested people’s choice category. All were united by an abundance of traffic-generating, city-decimating parking. What was it that put the subsidies for parking at Flushing Commons over the top? I think it mainly has to do with timing.

In a year marked by shrinking budgets and transit cuts, the City Council and NYC Economic Development Corporation doled out $3 million to subsidize driving and keep parking cheap at Flushing Commons. The same amount of funding could have covered all the bus service that Flushing lost in 2010.

Biggest Setback: In April, NYC DOT was presenting plans for continuous bike routes on First and Second Avenue from Houston to 125th Street, including protected lanes in East Harlem. In June, the city said it would only build protected lanes up to 34th Street this year, and the commitment to completing protected lanes uptown was suddenly in doubt. In between, Stephen Goldsmith took over as deputy mayor for operations.

Biggest Loophole: It turns out that even if you enact a law that directs specific taxes explicitly to transit, the governor and the state legislature can swoop in and spend it on other things. With Albany facing huge structural deficits, the lack of a locked box for transit revenues cost the MTA $160 million and was a direct contributor to this year’s service cuts. Andrew Cuomo will have the power to close the loophole for as long as he’s governor.

Best Encapsulation of Albany’s Views on Transportation Policy: In August, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver flew to Rochester, where he accepted a lifetime of free parking from Mayor Robert Duffy (now Lieutenant Governor-elect).

The reason for the gift? To show gratitude for $12 million in state assistance that Shelly helped arrange for Rochester’s South Avenue Garage. Said the Speaker in his acceptance speech: “For there to be any growth in job creation, there must be a strong foundation of infrastructure that supports economic activity.”

The Five Wrongs Don’t Make a Right Award: An officer with the Ninth Precinct refused to write up an accident report for dooring victim Rodney Seymour. Then, feeling peevish, the cop slapped Seymour with two summonses for riding an improperly equipped bicycle. The truck driver who doored Seymour did not receive a ticket. While Seymour was at the hospital getting checked out, someone stole his bike.

Most Delusional Renderings: Forest City Ratner released drawings of shiny, happy people milling about the temporary plaza that will be situated between its new arena and the twin traffic sewers of Atlantic and Flatbush. Not pictured: The oceans of surface parking on the other side of the arena.

A kid with a balloon strikes up a conversation with a kid on a bike, in one of many chance encounters that will never actually happen on Forest City Ratner's arena plaza.

Requiem for a Bike Lane: After many years of service, most of the Father Capodanno bike lane was hounded out of existence by Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro, Council Member James Oddo, and the Staten Island Advance.

*Does Pedro Espada count? I would argue that Pedro paid dearly for orchestrating the coup, his corruption scandals, and being an all-around embarrassment to the Democratic Party. The campaign to unseat him did not focus on his obstruction of bridge tolls.

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.

Photo: Jackson Heights Green Alliance

After experiencing the joys of a car-free play street on a few weekends the past two years, residents of park-starved Jackson Heights decided they could really use the extra public space every day, all summer long. Members of the Jackson Heights Green Alliance lined up an impressive roster of local electeds in support of the expanded play street, but got rebuffed by the transportation committee of Queens Community Board 3, which said it would bring too much noise to the neighborhood and eliminate too many parking spaces. Undeterred, residents regrouped. They made their case to the full board with a chant-filled march, estimated at 150 to 200 people strong. At the meeting that evening, the board overturned their committee in a 27-9 vote.

Jackson Heights was rewarded with one of the best neighborhood public space improvements in recent memory, as documented by Clarence:

While Streetsie purists may find it a little objectionable to learn that local Council Member and longtime play street supporter Dan Dromm told his tweeps to vote for the march, in our book, that’s good for extra credit. Organizing wins. And really, more politicians should angle for Streetsie recognition from here on out.

Best Pedestrian Project: Hard to top last year’s winner, the Times Square plazas, for showstopping impact and iconic-ness. But Union Square is not too shabby. One of New York’s great public spaces got much better around the edges with the addition of pedestrian areas on nearby streets. Broadway’s green ribbon now extends all the way from 59th Street to 14th Street, and, to borrow a concept from Project for Public Spaces, Union Square’s outer park has become a fitting link to the inner park, at least on two sides of the square.

This space used to be consumed by traffic. Photo: Noah Kazis

Runner-up: Gotta give a hand to all the sidewalk extensions and pedestrian refuges built as part of the Safe Streets for Seniors program.

Best Bicycle Project: It’s been three years since New York’s first protected bike lane debuted on Ninth Avenue. Now a bike lane almost isn’t news unless it’s physically separated from traffic. (Note: this trend does not apply to bike lanes in Southern Brooklyn.)

In 2010, the Columbus Avenue bike lane brought protected on-street cycling above 59th Street for the first time. And the First and Second Avenue lanes were the biggest single addition to NYC’s protected cycling network to date — tremendous progress that was immediately soured by the unexpected cut-off at 34th Street. As the bike network expands, those two projects may turn out to be the most-traveled cycling routes built in 2010. And both are already making cycling more accessible to a wider range of New Yorkers.

Photo: Jeff Prant

For true “8 to 80″ all-ages cycling, though, the Prospect Park West bike lane is tops. Anyone who can ride a bike can ride safely and without fear on the new PPW. As street transformations go, the PPW re-design has a few other things going for it. The excess space for motor vehicles is gone, taming traffic on an avenue that used to be plagued by speeding. With the transfer of one auto lane to bicycles, this project turned a speedway back into a neighborhood street.

Best Bus Project: Select Bus Service on First and Second Avenues. Compared to the old M15 Limited, Manhattan’s first rapid bus route improved trip times along the whole corridor by 12-16 minutes during rush hours — before the start of camera enforcement. Which is great news for the tens of thousands of daily riders who count on this bus, and will probably entice many other New Yorkers to start riding the route. The success of the East Side project should also build momentum for future SBS routes, including ones planned for Brooklyn and Staten Island coming up soon.

Photo: Noah Kazis

Most Encouraging News for Transit: If you can mentally block out the historically terrible service cuts that took effect in June, the past year actually brought a lot of good news for bus riders. In addition to the launch of East Side SBS, NYC DOT unveiled plans for the city’s first physically-separated busway on 34th Street, and Albany finally passed a bill enabling NYC to enforce certain bus routes with cameras.

With three nominees perhaps splitting the bus project vote, this people’s choice award goes to a subway enhancement that’s been a long time coming: the addition of countdown clocks at more than 100 stations. The new train arrival displays are taking the guesswork out of waiting on the platform and gradually bringing straphangers the type of reliable information that riders of other world-class systems have enjoyed since the 20th century. It’s also a case where MTA chair Jay Walder can show tangible progress on an initiative he’s prioritized since the first days of his tenure.

Most Encouraging News for Bicycling: The “safety in numbers” effect describes the repeated empirical observation that the more bicyclists are on the streets, the safer it is to ride a bike. If a bike-share operator comes through with a system as big as the one envisioned in NYC DOT’s December RFP, there will be many more cyclists on NYC streets.

Most Encouraging News for Everyone in NYC: NYC DOT’s Pedestrian Safety Study and Action Plan includes commitments to build 20 miles of “intensive safety redesigns” each year and to pilot 20 mph zones.

Biggest Demonstration Crowd: Brooklynites of all ages filled an entire quadrant of Grand Army Plaza on the morning of October 21 before marching down Prospect Park West to declare “We love the street!” to a band of bike lane opponents (and this guy).

The staging area for October's pro-PPW demonstration was totally packed. Photo: Ben Fried

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.

Worst City Agency: Aching to build a huge parking deck but don't have enough cash? The NYC Economic Development Corporation is here to help. This quasi-public agency's predilection for financing suburban-style development was on full display in 2009. Two EDC specials held grand openings: The Gateway Center Mall on the South Bronx waterfront, with its 2,800 parking spots and atrocious walkways; and East River Plaza, a big-box retail complex with a 1,248-car garage hulking beside the FDR Drive in Harlem. These are utterly hostile environments for anyone who doesn't get around in a car, subsidized by taxpayers and located in neighborhoods with very high asthma rates. How does it all fit with PlaNYC and the vision of a more sustainable city? It doesn't. Not one bit.

The Gateway Center Mall. Photo: Jacob-uptown/Flickr.

Photo: Newsday.

Elected Official of the Year: If we based this award on good deeds, we'd give it to outgoing Brooklyn City Council Member David Yassky, who shepherded the Bicycle Access Bill through some tumultuous turns. But this award is really about who best embodied the legislative spirit of 2009. The undisputed champion: State Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada.

He foiled New York City's best chance for an adequately financed transit system. His taxpayer-funded health care clinic maintained a sizable fleet of gas guzzlers and SUVs as the state budget imploded. He temporarily abandoned his party and brought the governance of New York State to a grinding halt. And he did it all while driving home to his estate in suburban Mamaroneck on many a night, not his Bronx district, where more than 71 percent of households are car-free and where the law requires him to reside. The kicker? Despite tearing the last vestiges of Senate Democrats' dignity to shreds, he probably won't even face a challenger from the Bronx Democratic establishment in the 2010 primary. Pedro Espada, you are Streetsblog's Elected Official of 2009.

Biggest Legislative Fiasco: As last week's voting confirmed, The Fare Hike Four richly deserve this one. This troupe of State Senate Democrats from New York City -- Espada, Carl Kruger, Ruben Diaz, Sr., and Hiram Monserrate -- put on a clinic in legislative obstructionism back in the spring, blocking an MTA financing package because it set a price on car commuting over free bridges. A few months later, their band-aid has peeled away, leaving most of their constituents exposed to painful cuts in transit service -- again. This pair of images pretty much sums it up:

Photo: Liz Benjamin.

Urban Abomination of the Year: Well, people's choice voters, you chose to bestow this award on the deteriorating public space near Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project. This seems a little premature to us. Forest City hasn't turned whole city blocks into oceans of surface parking plus a big ugly arena just yet, though transgressions like this certainly deserve to be shamed...

The editors' preference would have been to give this one to the new Yankee Stadium and its 9,000 parking spaces -- that's 40 percent more than at the old stadium! -- which were fully formed and ready for opening day 2009 thanks to generous subsidies. Those new public parks that were supposed to replace the acreage that the stadium obliterated? They're taking a bit longer to materialize.

The Anthony Weiner Award (Formerly the "Most Opinions, Fewest Solutions" Award): Goes to State Senator Carl Kruger. This is a bit unfair. Kruger, chair of the powerful Finance Committee, actually had a lot of solutions for New York's transit funding crisis. They were just wildly irresponsible, batsh*t crazy, or both.

Most Schizophrenic Bloomberg Administration Moment: Fresh off his return jet flight from the Copenhagen climate summit, the mayor joins Ray Kelly at the groundbreaking for New York's next police academy. It's more than a mile away from the nearest subway station and will include a massive 3,000-car garage for future cadets. Somehow, that probably won't stop the city from getting the project certified LEED Silver by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Saddest Example of NYC Democratic Campaign Strategy: Bill Thompson and the entire Democratic citywide ticket spend a few minutes of valuable last-minute campaign time criticizing plans for rapid bus service on Nostrand Avenue at a sparse gathering of merchants, reporters and neighborhood cranks. A hundred feet away, a much bigger crowd of Brooklynites waits for a ride on the city's most unreliable bus, the B44.

Here's the first slate of winners in our annual binge of award-giving, the Streetsies. You may want to review the people's choice poll results before diving in. We'll be rolling out two more installments before the new year and resuming our regular publishing schedule on Monday, January 4. Enjoy...

Biggest Livable Streets Victory: 2009 will probably go down as a year with more than one watershed moment for livable streets in New York City. On the campaign trail, the next Manhattan District Attorney, Cy Vance, pledged to get serious about deterring reckless, deadly behavior behind the wheel. Implications for street safety could be huge. In City Hall, bike commuters won a legislative victory that had proved elusive for more than a decade. By ushering the Bicycle Access Law through City Council -- over objections from the powerful real estate lobby, don't forget -- bike advocates, bill sponsor David Yassky, and the Bloomberg administration gave a leg up to New Yorkers who want to ride to work without worrying about bike thieves.

But for sheer visceral impact, nothing topped the transformation of Times Square, Herald Square and Broadway. Midtown's new pedestrian spaces are street reclamation writ large -- acres of iconic urban space converted from vehicle lanes to public plazas. It's the kind of bold project that urban planning visionaries had counseled for ages, but which no mayor or DOT commissioner had the chutzpah to pull off until now.

Will it be permanent? We'll find out soon enough. What mattered more in 2009 was that the sweeping changes on Broadway got people talking about our streets and how we use them. While some members of the press are still freaking out and issuing nativist screeds against the enjoyment of public space by the great unwashed, most New Yorkers have decided that this new, more humane version of Midtown is their kind of place.

Best Pedestrian Project: The Times Square plazas are a shoo-in for this category, right? In our people's choice poll, apparently so: The new Times Square captured more than 70 percent of the vote -- more than any other winner. But let's take a closer look at the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project. In terms of permanent, concrete-pouring sidewalk expansion, it's got the upper hand. After years of advocacy and an agonizingly slow trip through the city's construction bureaucracy gauntlet, this project improved safety at dozens of intersections in neighborhoods overrun by car commuters taking advantage of free East River bridges. In some places, the effect on the quality of public space is quite palpable.

Photo: berk2804/Flickr.

So it was a tough call. In the end, the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project nabs the runner-up position. Turning one axis of the crossroads of the world into a street for walking, socializing, and snowball fighting takes the top spot. Times Square is a completely different place for the 350,000-plus office workers, theater-goers, and, yes, tourists who walk there every day. And it's all the more potent because of those oft-maligned visitors from out of town. After a visit to the new Times Square, they're heading back home to the Omahas and Jacksonvilles of the nation with a different perspective on what an American city can be.

Best Bike Project: DOT built out innovative bikeway designs at an unprecedented clip in 2009, so it's fitting that this was the most competitive of all the categories we put up for a vote. You've got the city's first two-way, protected on-street path on Kent Avenue. A first-of-its-kind center median protected path on Allen and Pike. The completely transformed experience of biking through Midtown on Broadway. Any of those projects could have claimed this award in previous years.

But we agree with the people's choice: The Sands Street bike path deserves top honors. A year ago Sands Street was one of the most dangerous missing links in the city's bike network. Now, with a piece of heavy-duty infrastructure protecting cyclists from BQE-bound traffic, it's the gold standard for other bridge approaches.

Best Bus Project: 2009 was an in-between year for major bus projects in New York. The city's first Select Bus Service routes debuted last year, and we won't see an expansion of the rapid bus network until late 2010 at the earliest. So that leaves us with a familiar winner: the real-time arrival displays on 34th Street.

Feeling a twinge of deja vu? Arrival displays won this award in 2007, but the MTA eventually scrapped those units, along with the contractor, because the system failed to deliver accurate information. Hopefully the latest version of this long-overdue amenity will prove more successful and expand throughout the bus network. Together with a forward-thinking open data policy from the MTA, rolling out reliable arrival displays would make bus service more predictable, pleasant, and appealing for New Yorkers.

Best Local Livable Streets Project: With the addition of new pedestrian spaces and safer bikeways to the Allen and Pike Street malls, DOT delivered the goods on a project that's been bubbling up for years through public workshops in Chinatown. Funding for a more ambitious and permanent version could make it even better.

Photo: Curbed.

The Multi-species Multi-modalism Award: Brooklyn's Park Circle not only sports some excellent new connections for walking and biking to Prospect Park, it also includes a safer equestrian path for horse riders heading to and from Kensington Stables.

Most Important Change to the DNA of NYC Streets: The New York City Street Design Manual. With an impressive and meticulously organized collection of templates to help city agencies implement progressive street designs, the May release of this handbook for transportation engineers, planners, and designers was probably the year's most auspicious development.

Streetsblog is about to go dark for the holiday, so we've got something that will hopefully keep you satisfied until Monday. Polls. Lots of polls.

The last thing we publish every year is the Streetsies, our final burst of awards and commentary. This time we're adding a "people's choice" wrinkle. The voting is open in six categories until Sunday at midnight. Then we'll see how the popular will compares to the stuffy editors' picks. If you've got a write-in candidate for any category, tell us about it in the comments. Many thanks to tech director Chris Abraham for getting the polls up and running.

Next week we'll be back with our year-end wrap, and Streetsblog will return to our regular publishing schedule on Monday, January 4. In the meantime, you might also get a kick out of these pictures.

Best Spontaneous Livable Streets Moment: Joyous New Yorkers take to the streets to celebrate Barack Obama's victory.

Movement of the Year: This year we saw cities across the U.S competing to run the first, biggest and best Bogota-style Ciclovia events. San Francisco debuted Sunday Streets (after local activists sat Mayor Gavin Newsom down in front of Streetfilms' Ciclovia video and sold him on the idea), Portland and Chicago both called it Sunday Parkways, in south Florida it was Bike Miami and, of course, New York City experienced the phenomenal Summer Streets.

Best International Transportation Concept: The huge success of Paris's Velib has made it so that if you are a big city mayor and you want to be considered "green" you've got to have a public bike-sharing program in the works.

National Policy Idiots of the Year: Texas Gov. Rick Perry opens the rebuilt Katy Freeway proclaiming 18 lanes of "freedom" while Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin whip Republican crowds into a "Drill, baby, drill!" frenzy.

The Year's Most Promising National Trend: Increasing demand for transit.

Maybe There is Hope After All Award: Obama dismisses Clinton and McCain's gas tax holiday "gimmick" one week before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries and with gas prices hovering somewhere around $4 -- and people still vote for him.

Welcome to the Future Award: Atlanta motorists used Twitter to locate service stations that haven't run out of gasoline.

Most Inexplicably Popular Streetfilm: "Hal (and Kerri) Grade Your Bike Locking." It's a smash hit with 24,000 views since being posted at the end of April...

Simplest, Cheapest, Best Bike Infrastructure Idea: Portland's bike corral.

Best Use of Bicycles in Television Advertising: Regions Bank, Kaiser Permanente and FreeCreditReport.com. 

Best Livable Streets Rap Video: "Bikes on Board" by Louisville, Kentucky bus mechanic and m.c. Mr. Theo and his back-up singers, the TARCettes. 

Best Public Service Video: Transport for London's "Awareness Test."

America's Baddest Livable Streets Activists: Los Angeles's Crimanimalz. It turns out the 405 and Interstate 10 are somewhat practical bike routes during rush hour. When is someone going to try the BQE with a camera on their helmet?

Coolest New Web App: New York City cyclists get their own online route mapping service with Ride the City.

Professional Athlete of the Year: Baltimore Orioles pitcher and regular bike commuter Jeremy Guthrie.

Most disturbing photo: Paul "The Fixie Flasher" White bikes over the Brooklyn Bridge.

Book of the Year: Tom Vanderbilt's "Traffic."

Best out-of-town Streetfilm: A Harvard student named George Zisiadis is doing some great work for Livable Streets Boston. Here's one:

Sexiest Streetfilm: Vancouver, British Columbia's "B:C:Clettes vs. Sexy Back." Watch out!

Junket of the Year: Streetfilms goes to Melbourne, Australia. Clarence loves his job.

Lifetime Achievement: Hans Monderman, engineer of livable streets, 1947-2008.

Worst City Agency: The NYPD. If they're in a good mood, they'll summons you for no apparent reason. If they're in a bad mood, they'll body slam you off your bike. They drive recklessly through city parks in their off-duty hours and park their vehicles in bus lanes, bike lanes -- pretty much wherever they want. If you're hit by a car while walking or biking in New York City? Don't waste their time. If you're still breathing, they're not interested. If you're dead, they'll probably just call it an "accident." Maybe they'll even blame you after taking witness testimony from no one else but the driver of the vehicle that killed you.

NIMBY of the Year: All in all, it was a tough year for the not-in-my-backyard crowd. Despite their occasional protests, New York City's streets and neighborhoods continued to improve for pedestrians, cyclists and bus. Still, there were some standouts:

Manhattan Community Board 4 member Allen Roskoff wins an honorable mention for arguing that Chelsea's gay community would no longer "feel at home" on 8th Avenue because of DOT's new, separated bike path plan.

In Windsor Terrace, Randy Peers, Alvin Berk and Assemblyman Jim Brennan earn special commendation for trying to argue that routing motor vehicle traffic through Prospect Park is actually good for the environment.

City Council candidate Isaac Abraham and some members of South Williamsburg's Hasidic community also win an honorable mention for their contention that the new bike lanes on Kent Avenue -- installed with overwhelming Community Board approval following a painstakingly inclusive, decade-long community-driven process to create a Brooklyn waterfront greenway -- would bring too many scantily clad women through the neighborhood. Abraham showed the kind of leadership he'd bring to the Council when he urged his fellow motorists to harrass and endanger Williamsburg cyclists.

But the hands-down winner of our coveted NIMBY of the Year award is Sean Sweeney of the SoHo Alliance. With bike, bus and public space improvements proliferating throughout Lower Manhattan, Sweeney had a busy year trying to maintain his neighborhood's traffic-choked status quo. Though his protests of the Prince and Grand St. bike lanes have gone nowhere (thusfar), he managed to kill "the Department of Tyranny's" proposal for a car-free Prince Street weekend trial project, in part, by raising the ominous specter of neighborhood streets overrun by mimes. Well played, sir! You may disagree with Sweeney but you've got to respect him for being a hardworking neighborhood activist. He's also sporting enough to mix it up in the Streetsblog comments section. For all of that and, I'm sure, much more in 2009, Sean Sweeney (below) is our NIMBY of the Year.

Rarest Sighting: The NYPD ticketing bus lane violators on Broadway. As for the 34th Street bus lane? No such luck.

Best Transportation Policy Reporting: PBS's Blueprint America series. If only more transportation journalism received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation instead of the auto industry.

Saddest Excuse for Journalism: When it came to the two biggest transportation stories of the year -- congestion pricing and the MTA's canyon of a budget gap -- New Yorkers were not particularly well served by their local media. Of all the reporters that accepted Richard Brodsky's populist claptrap as gospel or zeroed in on $30,000 in travel perks for the MTA Board as the agency stared down a $1,200,000,000 deficit, Fox 5 reporter John Deutzman stands out. Deutzman is the brave soul who ambushed MTA chief Lee Sander while he was getting a shoe shine at Grand Central and peppered him with questions about his personal commuting habits. Just when you thought the level of discourse about MTA finances had already reached rock bottom.

Most Memorable MTA Moment: MTA Board member David Mack, a well-to-do Long Island real estate developer, essentially says that mass transit is an "inconvenience" fit for "common people" -- with a New York Times reporter in the room.

Most Disappointing City Agency: Amanda Burden and the Department of City Planning win for their laissez faire attitude on Brooklyn's "New Fourth Avenue and their near total lack of attention to parking policy, particularly in Hell's Kitchen.

Most Schizophrenic Bloomberg Administration Moment: Three months after his transportation agency rolled out its Sustainable Streets plan, Mayor Bloomberg endorsed a big box store and 2,300-car garage for Manhattan's west side.

Best Policy Paper That You Probably Didn't See Because They Released it at the End of August: Suburbanizing the City, Transportation Alternatives report studying the impact of off-street parking requirements on traffic congestion. Conclusion: "If New York City maintains current parking policies, the traffic generated by the addition of new off-street spaces will likely exceed a billion miles per year by 2030."

Best City Agency Strategic Plan: It's got to be the Department of Transportation's Sustainable Streets  because, as far as we know, no other city agency has a strategic plan.

Most Disappointing City Council Member: Until a few weeks ago, Bill de Blasio was a shoo-in for this category thanks to his refusal to back congestion pricing despite its promise of less traffic and cleaner air for his predominantly car-free constituents. But Alan Gerson made a last-minute surge, taking the lead when word surfaced that he would introduce a bill to give "Council and Community input into street reconfigurations." Gerson had been known to at least show up for a photo-op in support of bike and pedestrian improvements, but has now apparently cast his lot with a livable streets backlash driven by Lower Manhattan's NIMBY contingent.

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.

Biggest Setback: After being approved by an unprecedented civic coalition, the mayor and New York City Council, congestion pricing -- the one policy measure that simultaneously reduces traffic congestion while raising money for mass transit and livable streets -- died in an Albany backroom without even a vote.

Lobbyists of the Year: Walter McCaffrey and the Committee to Keep NYC Congestion Tax Free (below). It turns out New York City government is controlled by a handful of Queens Democrats, suburban state legislators and the Automobile Club of New York.

How Not to Lobby a State Legislator: Brooklyn State Senator Martin Malave Dilan's car is towed during a congestion pricing meeting with city officials.

Most Sociopathic Elected Official: Bronx State Senator Jeff Klein nearly crushes a cyclist with his black Mercedes and then tells him, "Get your hands off my car, you f*#king a55hole." Unfortunately for Sen. Klein, this particular cyclist happens to run a pretty robust media operation.

Most Disappointing Elected Officials: During the congestion pricing debate, three State Assemblymembers stood out for their enormous potential to exert leadership and their utter inability or unwillingness to do so. Deborah Glick, Joan Millman and Hakeem Jeffries all represent districts that would have overwhelmingly benefited from New York City's congestion pricing plan. Yet, Glick could only find reasons to oppose it. Millman decided she supported it -- two hours after the proposal was killed by her Democratic Assembly colleagues. And Jeffries had the gall to demand increased subway service on the G line three weeks after helping to eliminate the revenue source that might have paid for it. If only New York City were represented in the state Assembly by an aggressive, attentive, self-aggrandizing politician like...

Elected Official of the Year: You've got to hand it to Westchester Assemblyman Richard Brodsky -- he works hard for his constituents and supporters. Unfortunately for New York City's traffic-choked neighborhoods, beleaguered transit riders and asthmatic kids, his constituents are the metropolitan region's wealthiest car commuters and his supporters own a bunch of parking garages in Manhattan. While New York City's legislators rolled over and played dead, Richard Brodsky worked his butt off to make sure that New York City's congestion pricing plan -- a plan approved by the Mayor, City Council and a state commission -- died a quiet death in the Assemly's Democratic conference. Brodsky did incredible damage to New York City in 2008 but he also showed us what effective representation in Albany might look like.

Worst Elected Official: Rochester Assemblyman and transportation committee chairman David Gantt continued his decade-long effort to deny New York City the ability to deploy automated traffic enforcement systems on its streets. He loosened up a little bit though. This year he introduced legislation that would allow counties outside of New York City to use red light cameras -- as long as they purchased the technology from a Swedish firm represented by one of his cronies. Shocking? Not really. Just another day in Albany.

Most Opinions Fewest Solutions Award: From now on, this will be called the Anthony Weiner Award.

Most Moronic Idea From Albany: State Senators Jeff Klein and Eric Adams put on their serious, fighting-for-the-people faces and proposed suspending tolls on New York City bridges and tunnels and giving drivers a $200 gas tax rebate ahead of Memorial Day weekend. Not planning to burn lots of gasoline for your summer holiday? These two have nothing for you.

We'll be back to a regular publishing schedule starting Monday, January 5. This week we'll be posting our year end awards, The Streetsies, once per day. Here's the first batch...

The Year's Best Livable Streets Project: Summer Streets. In a year of rapid and remarkable improvements in New York City's public spaces, bike lanes and bus infrastructure, the opening up of Park Avenue to pedestrians, cyclists, joggers and recreation-seekers for three consecutive Sundays in August was the livable streets movement's watershed moment. In one fell swoop, tens of thousands of New Yorkers personally experienced the benefits of reclaiming city streets from the automobile. It was really just a lot of good, healthy, inexpensive fun and Streetfilms was there...

The Year's Top Bicycle Project: New York City's bike network grew like kudzu in 2008 as DOT's hardworking team of bikeaucrats worked to surpass their 2006 mandate to produce 200 miles of new bike lanes in three years. There were so many outstanding bike projects in 2008 it's hard to single out just one. And, really, singling out one bike project is almost besides the point. Commuter cycling jumped an unprecedented 35% last year not because of any one new bike lane but because New Yorkers can now see a complete network of bike lanes filling out and taking shape on the streets around them.

Still, one project stands out as the year's most significant advance: The Grand Street bike lane. Grand Street now offers Manhattan's first crosstown protected bike path. It's a design that can be replicated on many New York City streets. And it's the kind of infrastructure that can make New York City a safe and comfortable place for pretty much anyone to ride a bike.

Best Bus Project: New York City got its first taste of bus rapid transit-ish service on Fordham Road in the Bronx in 2008. While DOT needs to do a better job of providing the MTA's buses with lanes that can't be obstructed by private automobiles, travel times on the Bx12 have been cut by 24 percent and the early results are promising.

Best New Street Design Element: The nipple bollard.

Best New Public Space: Broadway Boulevard is the year's most groundbreaking public space project. Paris has the Champs-Élysées, Barcelona has La Rambla and New York City should have a fully pedestrianized Broadway from Columbus Circle to Union Square. Broadway Boulevard is a great start and a smart way to dip a toe in the water and test the idea.

Best Local Livable Streets Project: Despite a couple of rainy weekends, Williamsburg Walks on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn was outstanding.

We’re going offline as we compile our 2008 year-end Streetsblog awards. If you’d like to nominate someone or something for a coveted Streesie, submit your idea here in the comments section. It’s not too late. Here are last year’s Streetsie winners to jog your memory.

From all of us at Streetsblog and the Livable Streets Network, have a nice break and good luck getting out of town if you’re flying. We wish you a transit-oriented economic recovery in 2009.