Streetsblog New York City

This item slipped under the radar late Friday afternoon: The New York State Republican Party is calling out Governor Andrew Cuomo for abandoning transit on the Tappan Zee Bridge.

After the feds declined to invite New York to apply for a low-interest loan to finance construction of a transit-less TZB, the state GOP sent out this statement (hat tip to Nick Reisman at Capital Tonight’s State of Politics blog):

County Executives Astorino and Vanderhoef have implored the Governor to include mass transit into any new Tappan Zee Bridge as a way to ensure that the bridge is not obsolete on day one and protects the environment going forward. Governor Cuomo, who has acknowledged the importance of a new bridge, has been conspicuously silent and woefully inert.

The cause of rebuilding New York’s infrastructure will only succeed if it has a champion, and New York’s two U.S. Senators and Governor are the only elected officials with the political capital to get the job done. Today’s news makes clear that they have neither the will nor the ability.

As Reisman notes, even though Cuomo is a Democrat, the state GOP is not in the habit of criticizing him this sharply.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, state legislators Andrea Stewart Cousins, David Carlucci, Amy Paulin, Tom Abinanti, and Ken Zebrowski all signed on to a coalition statement last December which, like the state GOP, calls Cuomo’s TZB plan “obsolete from day one” [PDF via Tri-State Transportation Campaign]. The coalition also includes labor unions and environmental organizations.

So it seems that the Cuomo administration’s current TZB plans are so shortsighted and plainly unpopular in the Hudson Valley (where residents participated for years in a public planning process envisioning transit on the bridge), that both ends of the local political spectrum feel compelled to oppose them. Whether you’re approaching this issue from the left or the right, building a superwide, cars-only Tappan Zee Bridge is a lousy idea.

A quick reminder: Tonight’s meeting of the Brooklyn Community Board 6 transportation committee is an important one, with DOT presenting its proposal for a two-way bike lane on Plaza Street. The public is invited to participate in the meeting, so if you want to weigh in on this upgrade to the Brooklyn bike network and whether it should be protected from traffic with a row of parked cars, tonight’s your chance.

Also on the agenda tonight is a proposal to fill in a one-block gap in the Third Street bike lane between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue, and — in what seems to be an increasingly common item in the DOT toolkit — on-street bike parking for the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue by Park Place.

The meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. at 1 Prospect Park West, in the Turner Room.

We’re launching our spring pledge drive here on Streetsblog today, and we have some exciting prizes to give away to contributors. Before I get to that, I thought I’d share a few points about the importance of reader donations to Streetsblog and the impact your gift will have…

• Thanks to support from our readers, we’ve produced in-depth coverage of NYPD’s traffic fatality investigations, exposing the shoddy underpinnings of the department’s victim-blaming crash reports. Your gift will help us sustain this reporting and hold elected officials to their promises to get NYPD to reform its ways.
• Your contribution will also help Streetsblog stay on top of the region’s most important infrastructure story: The Cuomo administration’s headlong rush to build a new Tappan Zee Bridge that only Robert Moses could love — tons of asphalt, and no room for transit. No one is tracking the ins and outs of the Tappan Zee saga and exposing Cuomo’s hypocrisy like Streetsblog.
• And with bike-share around the corner, we need your support to cover what promises to be the biggest livable streets story of the year. Maybe you’ve heard: 10,000 bikes at 600 stations will be on the streets in July. Help us thoroughly report on the preparation, launch, and day-to-day use of North America’s largest public bike system. We won’t let Andrea Peyser get the last word.

We’ve got some great prizes to give away to lucky supporters. First, anyone who contributes $50 or more to Streetsblog NYC or Streetfilms by June 1 will be eligible to win a new Schwinn city bike courtesy of the excellent, family-run Ride Brooklyn bike shop on Bergen Street, just off of Flatbush. You can also enter the drawing by signing up to make a recurring monthly gift of just $4 or more — think of it as a subscription to the fine reporting and commentary you read on Streetsblog.

Here’s what the winner will take home thanks to the Ride Brooklyn folks: a Schwinn Jenny 7 or Schwinn Willy 7 — your choice.

There’s more. Anyone who gives by April 30 will also be eligible to win a one-year subscription to Yes! magazine, which happens to be Pete Seeger’s favorite publication.

Thanks to all our readers for sustaining the work we do here at Streetsblog. Your support keeps us going. Please give and contribute to the high-impact reporting our team cranks out every day.

– Ben

This is a meeting of the Brookly Community Board 6 and 8 Transportation Committees. On the agenda:

• Joint presentation to and review by the Transportation Committees of Brooklyn Community Boards 6 and 8 on a proposal by the Department of Transportation to install a two-way bicycle lane on Plaza Street at the Grand Army Plaza.
• Presentation and review of a proposal by the Department of Transportation to install an eastbound and westbound bicycle lane on one block of 3rd Street between 3rd and 4th Avenues to extend and connect pre-existing bicycle lanes on 3rd Street (between Smith Street-3rd Avenue & between 4th Avenue-Prospect Park West).
• Presentation and review of a proposal by the Department of Transportation to install an on-street bicycle parking facility at the northeast corner of 5th Avenue and Park Place.

It should be good news that, on Ray Kelly’s orders, NYPD is going to start tracking bike-ped crashes. There’s a scarcity of information on the subject, and while the best available data indicates that the number of pedestrian injuries involving cyclists is dropping, the quality could be much better. Collecting information on these crashes with the same methods NYPD uses for motor vehicle crashes is a step up.

Photo: Newsday

But here’s the thing that’s got to be nagging anyone who pays attention to NYPD street safety policies, such as they are. It’s very rare for Ray Kelly to turn his attention to traffic violence. At the moment, the department’s approach to traffic safety is in the public eye, thanks to a courageous group of victims’ families and a recent City Council hearing that exposed the inadequacy of the NYPD traffic enforcement and crash investigations. So right now would be a good time for the commissioner to, say, order a review of how the department handles traffic injuries and deaths.

While the department is ready to shift its protocol to get a better handle on the 500 or so injuries New York City pedestrians sustain in collisions with cyclists each year, we’re still waiting for Ray Kelly to even acknowledge that police can do more to prevent the 75,000 or so injuries and 270 deaths caused annually by NYC motor vehicle crashes [PDF].

Here’s a brief run-down of the department’s traffic safety failures that have recently come to light, which Kelly has yet to address:

• Police officers trained to look into traffic crashes only take cases where the victim dies or is deemed likely to die. The department does not assign trained investigators to the thousands of non-fatal traffic crashes in the city each year, nor could NYPD tell the City Council how many non-fatal traffic injuries result in charges for the driver.
• When the Accident Investigation Squad does take a case, they routinely fail to collect or report evidence that might incriminate the driver, as in the case of Rasha Shamoon. Investigators often accept the driver’s account of events and blame victims even when the driver’s word doesn’t square with other evidence, as in the cases of Shamoon, Mathieu Lefevre, and Stefanos Tsigrimanis. And NYPD has dropped the ball and botched the case when charges are filed and the evidence seems ironclad, as with the alleged drunk driver who killed Clara Heyworth.
• As a matter of protocol, NYPD won’t charge motorists with reckless endangerment or failure to exercise due care unless an officer personally witnesses dangerous driving behavior, according to testimony from Susan Petito, a senior attorney at the department.

How much longer do New Yorkers have to wait to read in the morning paper that Ray Kelly is taking action to stop preventable traffic injuries and deaths?

The Weekly Carnage is a Friday round-up of motor vehicle violence across the five boroughs and beyond. For more on the origins and purpose of this column, please read About the Weekly Carnage.

Reginald Velez, an off-duty Mount Vernon cop, was killed in a head-on collision with a tractor-trailer on I-95 in the Bronx. Photo: Daily News

Fatal Crashes (3 killed this week, 43 this year, 4 drivers charged*)

• Crown Heights: Josh Thorne, 25, Run Down Twice By Drivers Who Fled Scene (WABC, Streetsblog)
• Norwood: Motorcyclist Justin Bravo, 28, Crashes Into Concrete Overpass on Mosholu Parkway (DNA)
• Baychester: Reginald Velez, 29, Drives Wrong Way on I-95, Collides With Tractor-Trailer (News)

Injuries, Arrests and Property Damage

• New Dorp: School Bus Crash Leaves Six Children, One Adult Injured (DNA)
• Parkchester: Driver Critically Injures 2-Year-Old Chasing Ice Cream Truck (DNA)
• Oakland Gardens: 89-Year-Old Driver Leaves 56-Year-Old Pedestrian in Critical Condition (Times Ledger)
• Coney Island: Ten People, Including Four Students, Injured in School Bus Crash (DNA)
• Midtown: Teen Smashes Into Taxi After Driving Wrong Way on 7th Avenue (Post Blotter)
• Bed-Stuy: Fire Truck Driver En Route to Blaze Crashes Into Vehicle, Injuring 10 (DNA)
• Elm Park: Off-Duty Cop Charged With DWI After Crashing Into Telephone Pole, Driving Wrong Way (News)
• Willowbrook: Driver Jockeying for Parking Spot Injured in Crash on College of S.I. Campus (Advance)
• Bay Ridge: Mini-Bus Carrying Seniors Overturns Following Collision; 11 Injured (DNA)
• Downtown: EMTs Block Erratic Driver from Plowing Into Chatham Square; Police Unaware of Incident (DNA)
• Far Rockaway: Car Carrying Queens Boro Prez and Aides Rear-Ended By Channel 4 News Truck; No Injuries (DNA)

Read more…

In its headlong rush to build a new Tappan Zee Bridge, the Cuomo administration still hasn’t answered basic questions about why the project won’t include transit or how it will be financed.

One question for the governor: If costs are such a concern, why does the state plan to build a new bridge that's twice as wide as the old bridge? Photo: Angel Franco/Newsday

Today is the last day the Cuomo administration will be accepting public comments on the draft EIS for the new Tappan Zee Bridge. All over Westchester, Rockland, and Orange counties, officials are calling for a commitment to transit on the bridge consistent with the last decade of public planning.

In a functional process, the state would collect public input, fully address key questions, respond to major concerns by revising the project, and then start soliciting bids for design and construction contracts. But the die seems to be cast already: The administration put out the final RFP to its shortlist of preferred firms three weeks ago.

Meanwhile, huge question marks remain:

• Earlier this week the local chapter of the American Planning Association expressed serious doubts about the administration’s cost estimates for building bus rapid transit on the bridge and asserted that the project would violate criteria in New York state’s smart growth law.
• The Tri-State Transportation Campaign wrote this week that a bridge without transit cannot meet one of the project’s stated purposes in the DEIS: to improve mobility.
• And according to analyst Charles Komanoff, the cost of building the bridge’s extravagantly wide spans could lock in car-oriented planning for decades.

You can read Komanoff’s full analysis in this PDF. An edited version of his letter to the state DOT follows the jump.

Read more…

You can add Tarrytown to the growing list of Hudson Valley suburbs that want Governor Andrew Cuomo to include transit on the new Tappan Zee Bridge, reports Dani Simons at Mobilizing the Region.

The proclamations of support for transit on the new TZB are proliferating. Map: Tri-State Transportation Campaign

Tarrytown sits at the foot of the TZB on the eastern bank of the Hudson. Last week the village Board of Trustees unanimously approved a resolution calling on Cuomo, the state DOT, the Federal Highway Administration, and the Federal Transit Administration to restore plans for transit on the bridge, which were unceremoniously discarded after a decade of public planning.

In recent weeks the number of municipalities proclaiming official stances in favor of transit on the bridge has continued to grow. Earlier this month it was Orange County exec Edward Diana, the Rockland County village of Wesley Hill, and New Rochelle — the seventh largest city in the state — taking a stand.

Simons says of the pro-transit coalition’s geographic reach…

The fact that Orange County, along with New Rochelle and Yonkers, two of Westchester’s largest cities, are calling for transit is particularly significant. Though these areas will not be directly impacted by the project’s construction, their leaders recognize the importance of including transit in this project to form a strong foundation for a system to address the region’s mobility needs, both now and in the future.

For those keeping a running tally, the three county execs from Orange, Rockland, and Westchester want to restore transit to the TZB project, as do the following municipalities: Yonkers, Greenburgh, Dobbs Ferry, Croton-on-Hudson, Hastings-on-Hudson, Tarrytown, New Rochelle, Wesley Hills, and the 14 municipalities of the North Westchester Energy Action Consortium.

The Weekly Carnage is a Friday round-up of motor vehicle violence across the five boroughs and beyond. For more on the origins and purpose of this column, please read About the Weekly Carnage.

The driver of a Mercedes crashed into two vehicles before hitting and seriously injuring a 63-year-old man on a bicycle in Bensonhurst. Photo: Daily News

Fatal Crashes (1 killed this week, 39 this year, 4 drivers charged*)

• Flatiron: Amos Veloz, 21, Fatally Struck By City Bus Crossing East 23rd Street; No Criminality (Post, News)

Injuries, Arrests and Property Damage

• Harlem: Two-Car Crash on 125th Street Leaves Six Injured (DNA)
• Castleton Corners: Man Walking to His Car Close to Death After Driver Hits Him (Advance)
• Hollis: Speeding Motorcyclist Thrown from Bike After Crashing Into Tree (Times Ledger)
• Bensonhurst: Octogenarian Driver Fleeing Crash Scene Hits, Critically Injures 63-Year-Old Cyclist (News, Post)
• Midwood: Van Driver Who May Have Run Red Sets Off-Chain Reaction Crash; 12 Injured (NY1, Post)
• Williamsburg Bridge: Four Hospitalized Following Crash That Overturned Car (DNA)
• Inwood: SUV Driver Mounts Parked Livery Cab Outside School (Streetsblog)
• UES: Cab Driver Slams Into Park Avenue Doctor’s Office, Injuring Passenger (DNA)
• Stapleton: Police, FDNY Respond to Collision That Downed Utility Pole (Advance)
• East NY: Car Thief Leads Police on Chase Before Crashing Into Van, Charter Bus (Post)
• BQE: Tractor-Trailer Crash Closes Traffic Lanes Near Brooklyn Bridge (DNA)

A cab driver crashed into a doctor's office on the Upper East Side, injuring a passenger. Photo: Gothamist

Read more…