Streetsblog New York City

A hot topic on Streetsblog the past few weeks has been the massive numbers of pedestrians and cyclists using the Brooklyn Bridge walkway during rush hours and weekends. Since many folks don't have the chance to experience the promenade day-in and day-out, I decided to capture the conditions on a recent ride home from work.

I shot all the footage you see here in about half an hour, starting at 4:15 p.m. -- it doesn't even show rush hour, when there are usually far more cyclists. I would say these scenes capture typical conditions on weekdays between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., as long as it's not rainy.

So, you can see the Brooklyn Bridge promenade is popular. Which is good! It's a wonderful place to experience the city and an important transportation link for many New Yorkers. But all those commutes, workouts, and sightseeing expeditions are increasingly uncomfortable for pedestrians and cyclists. Ten years ago I would have been amazed to see this many people using the walkway. Today, the Brooklyn Bridge promenade needs some relief.

Big news out of Miami last week as the city government approved "Miami 21," which the Congress for the New Urbanism calls "the most ambitious contemporary zoning code reform yet undertaken by a major U.S. city."

How necessary was this reform, which is in large part aimed at making Miami a more pedestrian-friendly city? Well, hear what Miami resident Olga Ramos had to say over the weekend in a post on Streetsblog Network member Transit Miami:

The view from Miami's Brickell Avenue. Photo by leoncillo sabino via Flickr.

Every day I make a choice; a small choice, but an important one none the less. I choose to walk to work. Even though my company pays for a much-coveted covered parking spot in one of the most prestigious pieces of real estate in Miami, I leave the transponder in my car parked in our apartment building and I choose to use what nature gave me to get to the office.…

[I]n Miami most people don’t walk because it is dangerous. During my walk every day, I play a sort of human frogger that affords me at minimum three near-death experiences a week. As an adventuresome girl I could deal with that, however; what really irks me is how rude people are. I have been crossing Coral Way and Brickell, the crosswalk will be clearly signaling my right of way and drivers will still regularly yell obscenities in whatever native language is theirs or just use hand signals to communicate their disgust.…

But what I really want are two simple things. I want for all of the crosswalk lights to work (something I haven’t experienced since July) and I would like for some signage to go up on the traffic signals that states "Yield to Pedestrians."

If Ramos, a self-described "adventuresome girl," feels that walking the quarter-mile to her office is dangerous (yes, that's the distance in question), how must older and less nimble residents feel? How absurd is it that such a short walk should be the source of so much stress and risk? Why is it that Brickell Avenue is lined with glittering glass towers that are touted as the latest in modern architecture, but the city can't keep the pedestrian signals working?

This is part of what I meant last week when I talked about mobility as a basic human right. It's not that everybody should be granted subsidized flights anywhere in the world at a moment's notice (as some commenters chose to interpret it). It's that if people want to leave their apartments and get to work or a friend's house in their own community, they should be able to do so without fear -- even if they don't, can't, or won't drive an automobile.

Miami is taking an important step in the right direction. We look forward to hearing about concrete changes from Transit Miami and other network members on the ground there.

More from the network: Hard Drive reports on how roundabouts are revolutionizing traffic in Oregon. Copenhagenize looks at bicycle-friendly trash cans. And Extraordinary Observations says it should be easier for young people to rent cars -- so that they have less reason to own them.

This week we have competing Tuesday evening events, followed by the big Tri-State Transportation Campaign fund-raiser on Thursday. But first, TA and TSTC team up for what could be a momentous discussion on traffic justice.

• There are three events on Tuesday: the legal symposium on vehicular homicide with presumptive Manhattan DA-elect Cy Vance, sponsored by Transportation Alternatives, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and the Cardozo School of Law (9 a.m.); Auto-Free New York hears a presentation on the NYC Planning Commission from Hunter College Prof. Tom Angotti (6 p.m.); and TA's East Side Committee celebrates recent successes, including the Upper East Side protected bike lane resolution (6:30 p.m.).
• Wednesday: NYU hosts a panel on transit funding with Dick Ravitch. Unfortunately, registration is closed. 8 a.m.
• Thursday: TSTC's annual benefit honors Streetsblog and Streetfilms. Be sure to sign up for this important fund-raiser. 6 p.m.
• Sunday: The exhibit was extended due to popular demand, but this really is the last day to see "The Future Beneath Us: Eight Great Projects Under New York" at the Transit Museum and the New York Public Library. All day.

Keep an eye on the calendar for updated listings. Got an event we should know about? Drop us a line.

Last April, DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan announced the "New York City Model" -- mapping out a strategic plan to prioritize greener, more efficient modes and turn city streets into world-class public spaces. We've seen some major changes in the year-and-a-half since. Among the big accomplishments: the transformation of Broadway, an expanded bike network with more protected routes, and a new street design manual that codifies the progressive treatments DOT has started to adopt. Plans for new rapid bus corridors are approaching fruition, with a route on First and Second Avenues scheduled for completion next year and several more in the pipeline.

In an update to the strategic plan released this month, DOT lays out several new benchmarks, including some glimpses of the agency's goals for the rest of 2009 and 2010. The document isn't available online yet, but Streetsblog has a hard copy so I thought I'd share a few highlights:

• Bike modeshare targets are more ambitious than before. The goal is now to double bike commuting by 2012 and triple it by 2017 compared to 2007 levels. The previous goal was to double cycling by 2015. If annual increases stay close to last year's 35 percent clip, the new target should be easily achievable, especially if the next item turns into something concrete...
• DOT will "explore opportunities for a large-scale public bicycle system in Manhattan and surrounding areas." The agency had previously signaled its interest in launching a bike-share network, but I believe this is the first official hint of the scale they're contemplating.
• 8-10 new rapid bus corridors will be selected by the end of this year. (DOT had already posted a timeline for this process on its website.)
• DOT will increase the number of 20 mph zones around schools from 25 to 75.
• More templates from the Street Design Manual will take shape on city streets. "Shared streets" are mentioned as a potential new design treatment.
  
• Summer Streets will expand "to additional days and areas."
• To keep cabs out of bus lanes, the city will make greater use of bus-mounted enforcement cameras. (The city launched a pilot enforcement program along these lines on 34th Street back in February.)
• Some single-space parking meters, which are being decommissioned by the thousands as more muni-meters are installed, will be converted to bike racks.
  
• PARK Smart, a performance parking program that DOT has piloted in Greenwich Village and Park Slope, will help manage the curb crunch in more neighborhoods.
  

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Some Inwood & Washington Heights Livable Streets members were torn between attending their own meeting and coming out to support nearby Community Board 8 this Wednesday. Brad Conover filed his own account of the CB 8 success, and Maggie Clarke reported back on the IWHLS meeting, bearing hopeful rumors of pedestrian mall possibilities for Dyckman Street. Maggie writes:

"The more I think about it, the more it would be kind of neat to try to replicate something like Boulder or Denver. They have almost a little park in the middle of the street with seating, trees, flowers, sculptures, little playing areas for the children, etc. Denver's has two lanes of traffic on the outside for buses."

The group was happy to have an intern from State Senator Eric Schneiderman's office in attendance. As Brad Aaron wrote earlier this week, IWHLS is seeing positive results for the hard work they've put into Dyckman Street, among other projects. Sample letters of support, petitions, and the Dyckman Greenway proposal itself are available as attachments to this page. They invite suggestions and comments on their broader goals and projects, and have mapped some of them out here. While efforts so far have proven mostly fruitless, the group hopes to get Community Board 12 on board for safer streets in Upper Manhattan.

In other news, New Haven Safe Streets Coalition posts that their state legislature is looking into stricter penalties for texting while driving; TA's Brooklyn Volunteer Committee launches a new campaign with a Fifth Avenue ride; and we welcome new groups Smart Transit for Northern Kentucky, Livable Saskatchewan, and Rails for Rail.

Photo: kate at yr own risk/Flickr

The Weekly Carnage is a Friday round-up of motor vehicle mayhem across the metro region. For more on the origins and purpose of this column, please read About the Weekly Carnage.

Fatal Crashes (17 Killed This Week, 227 This Year*, 22 Drivers Charged**)

• Staten Island: Man Crushed to Death By His Own SUV (News, Advance)
• Manhattan: East Village Collision Leaves One Dead (Streetsblog)
• Manhattan, Queens: 3 Motorcyclists Dead in Separate Crashes (AP) 
• Queens: Unidentified Pedestrian Killed in Corona (Gothamist)
  
• Shirley, LI: Drunk Hit-and-Run Driver Kills Pedestrian; Not Charged for Death (Newsday 1, 2)
• Yaphank, LI: Hit-and-Run Driver Kills Ped; Tells Cops He Thought Man Was a Deer (Newsday)
  
• Yaphank, LI: 1 Killed in Collision Involving Family of 911 Dispatcher (Newsday 1, 2)
• Deer Park, LI: Elderly Man Dies After Crash Possibly Precipitated by Health Emergency (Newsday)
• Ronkokoma, LI: Man Dies in Collision With Tractor-Trailer (Newsday)
• Danbury, CT: Teen Killed, 3 Injured in One-Vehicle Crash (CT Post)
• Bethany, CT: 3 Killed When Car Hits Tree (CT Post)
  
• New Brunswick, NJ: 15-Year-Old Pedestrian Struck; No Charges (S-L)
  
• Millburn, NJ: 19-Year-Old Dead in Single-Car Crash (S-L, The Local 1, 2)
  
• Branchburg, NJ: Man Slits Own Throat, Flips Car After Police Stop (Somerset Rep)***

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A reader sent in this picture of the scene at First Avenue and 4th Street in Manhattan this morning. I won't speculate too much about what sheared the roof off this minivan or what happened to the people involved. Perhaps the car was pried open deliberately to rescue those inside. Details are scarce: An investigation is underway, according to the Gothamist newsmap, and we have a request in with NYPD for more information.

Update: A police spokesman tells Gothamist that a 55-year-old woman was killed after this minivan collided with a delivery van. No one else was injured, apparently, and no one has been charged. We've also received an unconfirmed report that this was a T-bone collision in which the minivan ran the light.

Advocates of sustainable transportation are sometimes charged with elitism and criticized for being out of touch with the mainstream of America. A new exhibit of photographs showing in Los Angeles, "Without a Car in the World: 100 Car-Less Angelenos Tell Stories of Living in LA," graphically makes the point that the people who have the most to gain from effective public transportation and complete streets are hardly the elite.

Stephen Box, author of the SoapBoxLA blog, was featured in the exhibit along with his wife, Enci. Box lives without a car by choice. But he said when he attended the opening of the exhibit he was "humbled" by the stories of others in his city who don't drive because they can't, for medical or economic reasons. Box writes:

Waiting for the bus in Los Angeles. (Photo: Thomas Hawk via Flickr.)

[T]he story that established the baseline against which the success of LA's transportation system must be judged was told by a gentlemen who simply explained "I'm on the bus six, seven hours a day. MTA doesn't see what we see, they need to come from behind the desk, take a two- or three-day trip, get on all the buses, see how they aren't on schedule, they're always crowded ..."

LA's weakest and most vulnerable community members live in fear, sometimes unable to simply cross the street. If LA is to become a Great City, it will start with a commitment to mobility as a civil right, a basic guarantee of effective transportation choices that extends to everybody.

Box's post is an important reminder for sustainable transportation advocates. It is vital to remember that access to affordable public transportation, as well as safe pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, is a fundamental social equity issue. There's nothing elitist about it.

More from the Streetsblog Network: Systemic Failure wants to get bike lanes out of the gutter. Tucson Bike Lawyer wonders if drivers only get charged for making an improper turn if they end up hitting a police officer. And Biking in LA reports on the opening testimony in a particularly frightening vehicular assault case.

Mark your calendars: The Tri-State Transportation Campaign is honoring Streetsblog and Streetfilms at its annual benefit next Thursday. We hope to see you there, so here's our pitch. In addition to watching Aaron Naparstek and Clarence Eckerson share the stage with the other honoree, New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, you'll be contributing to an exceedingly deserving organization.

The hardworking folks at Tri-State somehow manage to be everywhere in our huge metro region: pushing for safe streets in New Jersey, smart growth in Nassau, and BRT in Connecticut -- I could go on. They also manage to write a top-notch advocacy blog and, in their downtime, take Cory Booker out to bike around Newark.

To support their excellent work, here's what you need to know:

Tri-State Transportation Campaign Annual Benefit
Thursday, October 29, 6:00 - 8:30 p.m.
The Gates, 290 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY
Tickets available from $150

Manhattan Community Board 8 issued a strong call for safer streets on the Upper East Side last night, voting 38 to 1 for a resolution supporting protected bike lanes. The reso asks DOT to come back to the CB with a neighborhood bike plan that includes physically protected lanes, though it refrains from mentioning specific routes.

For New Yorkers awaiting the day when it's safe for all ages to bike the East Side's wide avenues, last night's vote signals a big step forward. Especially when you consider that it comes from a board which has not always embraced the notion that the interests of cyclists and pedestrians are aligned. 

Thanks to groundwork laid by Transportation Alternatives' East Side committee, yesterday's proceedings offered further evidence that, as Charles Komanoff wrote a few weeks ago, cyclists are shedding their status as "the embattled minority." By and large, the discussion lacked duke-it-out drama. During the public comment period, eight speakers testified in favor of the resolution, including TA's bike advocacy director Caroline Samponaro, who delivered a few hundred signatures for good measure. None spoke against. And when it came time for the board to take up the matter, a few CB 8 members identified themselves as bike commuters.

People spoke movingly about their harrowing experiences trying to ride in their own neighborhood, and about the inadequacy of un-protected bike lanes. "Painted lines on the road are not safe," said Jack Russell, 62, a 29-year resident of Yorkville. Given the lack of protected space and the disconnected state of the East River greenway, several cyclists testified that they ride far out of their way -- over to the Hudson River path -- to get downtown. Anthony Romer, a recent transplant from Madison, Wisconsin, told the board that he just doesn't ride as much since he moved to New York: "If I ride here, I put my life on the line."

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A reader sent in this photo earlier in the month of what looks like an inlaid stone bike lane on Center Boulevard, in the Queens West development in Long Island City. Repeated queries to DOT yielded no additional info, but we thought this one was too nice to sit on any longer. Anyone know how long this has been in place?

It'd be nice to see this Euro design elsewhere -- though I wonder if it might be slippery when wet.

Checkmate.

In the unofficial battle for the most irresponsible, over-the-top media endorsement of motorist entitlement, the Daily News took the trophy this morning, declaring that drivers are within their rights to run down human beings who stand between their vehicles and on-street parking.

Under an arguably racist headline, News editors claim that sushi chef Ke Hai Du got what he deserved when motorist Paul Todd hit him with his car during a dispute over a Lower Manhattan parking spot on October 9. According to reports, as Du stood in a space to hold it for his boss, Todd nudged his Lincoln into Du's knees, then ran over his foot, breaking it.

To many people accustomed to the norms of civilized society, this would seem a clear case of assault, if not something more serious. But to the News it's a game, which the victim rightfully lost when he challenged the "finders keepers" rule -- or, as News editors put it, "a basic and inviolable tenet of the universe."

What Du did is right up there with stealing a taxi from the person who hailed it, or bringing 15 items to the "10 items or less" register, or stopping at the top of a subway stairway to read e-mail, or backing up in an E-ZPass lane.

The lesson is clear: Park your carcass in a parking space, and you may end up as road kill.

Discounting off-peak transit service could be a boon to New York City's transportation and quality of life, so long as revenues can be found to make up for the likely farebox shortfall.

MTA chief Jay Walder floated the idea of off-peak discounts in an interview in today's New York Times. While Walder didn't offer quantification, the Balanced Transportation Analyzer software model I've developed with Ted Kheel can estimate the effects of time-varied subway fares -- not just how ridership might shift from peak to off-peak periods, but indirect impacts such as the shift of auto trips to transit and the resulting changes to car travel speeds.

The results look promising for this prototype fare structure that I tested with the BTA:

• 1/3-off subway fare from 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m.
• 1/6-off subway fare from 5:00 to 7:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and 7:00 to 11:00 p.m.
• 15 percent higher subway fare from 8:00 to 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. (Although Walder referred only to off-peak discounts, the model suggests that forestalling an increase in ridership during the two peak hours, when the system is strained beyond capacity, could require raising fares at those times.)
• No fare change during the "shoulder" hours of 7:00 to 8:00 a.m., 9:00 to 10:00 a.m., 4:00 to 5:00 p.m., and 6:00 to 7:00 p.m.
• 1/4-off subway fare at all hours on weekends and holidays.
• 1/4-off bus fare at all times (not mentioned by Walder but assumed here to preserve overall fare parity).

Here are the results:

• The average price of a subway ride drops by 23 percent, equivalent to a $210 annual savings for a typical straphanger who takes 12 trains a week.
  
• Notwithstanding the overall discount, however, peak-hour subway users who could not change their commute times would pay $100 a year more in fares.
  
• Annual savings of $230 for bus riders, due to the assumed 25 percent drop in bus fares.
• Subway usage increases 3 percent, even as morning and evening peak hour ridership drops by 1 percent and 3 percent, respectively, slightly easing crowding during those critical times.
  
• Bus usage increases 5 percent.
• 15,000 fewer cars enter the Manhattan CBD on weekdays, raising average speeds there by 2 percent.
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