Streetsblog New York City

The first time I saw this ad I thought my eyes and ears were deceiving me. But no, there it is: a young woman holding a cellphone toward the camera as "nüvifone" maker Garmin beckons viewers to "communicate while navigating."

"With my nüvifone, I can take calls from my friends while I'm driving to them," she says as she's shown piloting an SUV with two passengers, one of whom accepts an incoming call on a phone mounted to the windshield. (Note to Garmin: Hands-free is not brain-free.)

Maybe the most egregious aspect is the "Do not drive while distracted" disclaimer -- which pops up as the young woman is depicted driving while distracted.

What the ad doesn't show: The driver plows her SUV through one of the pedestrian-populated shots that follow, and bystanders whip out their nüvifones to call 911, text their friends and photograph the carnage.

Here's a chart breaking down New York Times exit poll results from the mayoral election.

What sticks out to us is not so much that 3 percent of voters rated transportation as the "one issue" that mattered most to them, since many who participated could care a great deal about transportation and you wouldn't know it. Notice instead how Bloomberg dominated the issue of economy and jobs, even in this terrible downturn, despite Thompson's attempts to portray livable streets improvements as assaults on small businesses.

Obviously, despite the low level of interest indicated here, transportation matters. Otherwise pols wouldn't drone on about the MTA ad nauseam. But what do these numbers tell you?

Our latest call for photos was inspired by the picture at right, taken by Streetsblog New York's own Ben Fried. It's an all too familiar scene -- transit riders crammed together, waiting for a bus (or train) that doesn't come when it's supposed to (if you missed the story that went with the picture, it's here).

Crowding is just one indignity transit users have to face. Others include inadequate bus shelters, nonexistent or vandalized seating, blocked entrances -- you know the stuff.

Send us your pictures of crummy transit service and infrastructure where you live and we'll put together a new slide show. You can e-mail JPEGs to me at sarah [at] streetsblog [dot] org, or tag them with "streetsblog" and "transitfail" in Flickr. Get your submissions in by next Thursday morning.

Our past slide shows have been on bike traffic, space hogs and work bikes. Check them out if you haven't already.

Ninth Avenue in Hell's Kitchen was the site of another pedestrian death Wednesday. Around 8:44 a.m., Seth Kahn was crossing Ninth at W. 53rd Street when he was hit by an out-of-service bus. He died a short time later at Roosevelt Hospital. Kahn, a 22-year-old from Westchester, was a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Inevitably, some media reports portray Kahn, who was in the crosswalk, as trying to beat the light, while making less of the fact that the bus driver, turning left from 53rd, must have also rushed into the intersection. The driver was not charged.

Despite the constant presence of pedestrians, Ninth Avenue is a notoriously dangerous place for people to walk. The quotes have been removed from the story now, but a local resident told NY1 (via Gothamist): "That particular corner always has some accidents. All the cars travel very fast and there's too many buses using 53rd Street and they don't even look for pedestrians."

Kahn was the fourth known pedestrian to die in the city in less than a week. On Tuesday a corrections officer with a suspended license hit Dorothea Wallace of Prospect Heights as she walked to work. Luis Rivera of the Bronx was struck and killed by a city bus driver on Halloween after he reportedly threw something at the bus' windshield. And last Friday, off-duty NYPD detective Kevin Spellman ran down 67-year-old Drana Nikac as she crossed a street in Kingsbridge.

A Parks Department sanitation truck struck a 78-year-old woman using a motor-assisted wheelchair in the Eighth Avenue bike lane this morning shortly before 10 a.m., just north of Bleecker Street. The victim suffered head trauma and was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital, where she is in serious condition, a police spokesman said. No further details on the collision are available at this time. NYPD said the investigation is ongoing.

The driver was heard repeating that he "didn't see" the victim, according to Michelle Ernst of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, who passed the scene of the crash this morning and sent in this picture.

Streetsblog has requests in with DOT and the Parks Department to determine if a policy is in place governing the use of protected bike paths by city vehicles. We'll post more information as it becomes available.

Loads of good stuff today on the Streetsblog Network.

Portland Transport has a post on the connection between cul-de-sac development and safety for all street users, as discussed at the Congress for the New Urbanism Transportation Summit in Portland.

What are the dangers of cul-de-sac development? (Photo: TheMuuj via Flickr.)

For me the highlight presentation on opening day…was about the safety effects of different street network types.

The study was based on looking at all cities in California with population of 40,000 or greater. The surprising finding was that cities built before 1950 are safer (in terms of both serious injuries and fatalities for all classes of users: auto drivers/passengers, cyclists and pedestrians) than cities built after 1950.

The differences appears to be in the type of street network. Compact street grids seem to be safer, compared to the arterial-collector-local street 'tree' style of street network popular in post-war development.

No link to the study itself yet, but we're interested in hearing more.

More from around the network: Urban City Architecture launches a series of posts on the pressing issue of pedestrian safety in Miami. Bello Velo reports on a new driver education campaign designed to improve cyclist safety in Huntsville, Alabama. And Copenhagenize is looking for your opinion on the safety of daylight headlight requirements.

The Senate environment committee approved its climate change bill today on a 10-1 vote, shrugging off a boycott by all of the panel's Republicans but missing out on the chance to consider amendments to the lengthy legislation.

The environment panel's chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) had offered Republicans several days to abandon their walkout, promising time to consider GOP amendments and a complete Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) modeling of the bill before it comes to the Senate floor.

But environment committee Republicans were unmoved, insisting on an immediate five-week delay for EPA analysis despite testimony from the EPA that such work would produce little new information. Boxer's GOP counterpart on the panel, Sen. Jim Inhofe (OK), seemed to delight in forcing the chairman's hand as he labeled the no-amendments move the "nuclear option."

The question now becomes whether the specific proposals added by Boxer's panel -- including grant programs for transit and clean transportation that nearly triple the funding approved by the House -- can survive a long slog through as many as five other committees.

Boxer insisted this morning that "many things in this bill ... are going to be part of that comprehensive bill" that ultimately reaches a full Senate vote. But others on the committee acknowledged that the bill's one-party approval would not bode well for its political prospects.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), the chief sponsor of efforts to boost the climate bill's clean transportation provisions, described himself as "very, very, very disappointed," particularly given the loss of a chance to amend the legislation.

Carper submitted an amendment that would have added more than $400 million to the bill's annual set-aside of climate money for transit, inter-city rail, local land use planning and other projects.  "I don't like this process," Carper said this morning. "I don't think any of us do."

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The $8,000 tax credit for new home buyers -- which was wracked by fraudulent claims after its creation as part of the nation's economic recovery effort -- is on the verge of a significant expansion by Congress.

Just how much will the tax credit mushroom thanks to the deal reached in the Senate? As the New York Times explains, it's time to take the "new" off of the credit's name:

The homebuyers’ credit ... would be extended to cover homes under contract by April 30. Also, it no longer would be limited to first-time buyers; people who have owned a home for at least five years could get a $6,500 credit on a new residence. Income limits for eligibility would be raised, making many more people qualify.

Extending and expanding the credit would cost an estimated $11 billion, on top of the $10 billion spent so far.

As Ryan pointed out earlier this week, the higher rate of home ownership in suburbs tilts the credit's benefits notably away from urban areas. But that's nothing new for the federal government, which has lavished subsidies on home buyers while paying much scanter attention to improving rental affordability.

In the fiscal year that ended October 1, Washington's support for home ownership totaled $230 billion, while parallel support for home renters was $60 billion, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported yesterday. That nearly four-fold gap is visible in the below chart:

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After two incidents in two months of off-duty NYPD officers running down and killing pedestrians, then refusing to submit to Breathalyzer tests, police Commissioner Ray Kelly this week convened a panel aimed at expediting the collection of blood evidence from motorists arrested on suspicion of driving drunk.

In September, Andrew Kelly, an officer with Brooklyn's 68th Precinct, was taken into custody when the SUV he was driving struck Vionique Valnord as she attempted to hail a taxi in Flatlands. According to prosecutors, a sergeant at the scene reported that alcoholic beverages were present in the vehicle, and said Kelly smelled of alcohol, had red, watery eyes and slurred speech. Yet when authorities were finally able to secure a warrant and draw a blood sample some seven hours later, Kelly had no alcohol in his system, potentially compromising the criminal case against him.

It took five hours to get a blood sample from Kevin Spellman, the NYPD detective who reportedly stumbled out of his government-leased Chevy Malibu after hitting 67-year-old Bronx grandmother Drana Nikac last week. Even so, officials said Spellman was found to have a blood alcohol level of .21. As with the Andrew Kelly case, the lag time between the arrest and obtaining blood evidence was heavily scrutinized by the media, perhaps putting pressure on Commissioner Kelly to act.

According to Commissioner Kelly, a major task of his panel will be to suss out the procedures used by all five city district attorney's offices in obtaining warrants for blood.

"I feel it is extremely possible to speed up the process and can say the DA offices are very interested in working with the Police Department to do so," says Joseph McCormack, chief of the Vehicular Crimes Bureau of Bronx DA Robert Johnson's office. "There are also some legal changes that would help."

One proposed measure supported by McCormack would remove the state requirement that a doctor be present to supervise blood withdrawals. In 2002, 91-year-old former Olympian Jack Shea was killed in Saranac Lake by a driver who was indicted for vehicular manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and DWI. Charges were ultimately dropped after courts ruled blood evidence inadmissible based on the fact that, since there was no doctor on duty at the small clinic where Shea and the driver were taken after the crash, the sample was drawn by an EMT. Appellate judges in the Shea case, according to the bill, "called on the legislature to amend the statute to remedy what they saw as an unnecessary restriction in the law."

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Mike Bloomberg defeated Bill Thompson yesterday to claim a third term as New York City mayor, but no one except the mayor's own staff is calling the five point margin a victory for the incumbent. The headlines today are all about Bloomberg's surprisingly lackluster showing. After breaking his own records for campaign spending and mounting a juggernaut political operation, the mayor could barely muster a majority of the votes.

And how few votes were cast. Total turnout -- 1.1 million out of about 4 million registered voters -- looks to be even lower than in Ed Koch's election to a third term, back when a million fewer people lived in the city. Participation in New York City's democratic process hasn't been this paltry since the days before women were enfranchised.

The Thompson camp appeared to take some satisfaction in the relatively close finish. Still, Democrats have got to be second guessing themselves today. No doubt much hand-wringing will ensue about the failure of President Obama and local power brokers to rally around the party's standard bearer.

But here are some numbers to chew on: Thompson lost by 50,000 votes, and New Yorkers make more than two million bus trips every day. What if the Democratic candidate had actively campaigned on specific ideas to improve bus service? Vastly outspent or not, Thompson couldn't clear the bar set by Freddy Ferrer in 2005 despite an electorate that seemingly felt little enthusiasm for the incumbent. (Disgust with the term limits extension may explain why Bloomberg himself garnered 200,000 fewer votes than he did four years ago, even though his approval rating, at 70 percent, remains quite high.)

Instead, when it came to New Yorkers' transportation concerns, Thompson sounded few consistent themes except the notion that self-serving complaints from a few local merchants should take precedence over safety gains and transit improvements on our streets. The Democratic Party -- purported defender of the working class and the environment -- failed to make the connection between urban transportation, economic opportunity, and sustainability.

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Today on the Streetsblog Network, Bike Portland looks at a new review of the scientific literature on the relation between bicycle infrastructure and injuries to cyclists, conducted by researchers at the University of British Columbia. While the study points to the need for more data, it finds that dedicated bicycle infrastructure is associated with a lower risk of injury for people on bikes.

Elly Blue writes:

Multi-use paths like the
Hawthorne Bridge have the
highest injury potential. Photo: Jonathan Maus

There’s a constant chorus -- sometimes soft, sometimes overpoweringly loud -- in every conversation about bike infrastructure in America. Its refrain: You’re safer without any bike lanes, separated lanes, cycle tracks, bike boulevards, off-road paths. Just take the lane, follow the rules, wear your helmet, and you’ll be fine.

A group of scholars at the University of British Columbia have found otherwise. They conducted a literature review, looking at all available studies linking bicycle safety with infrastructure. Their conclusions will be counterintuitive for some.

“Results to date suggest that sidewalks and multi-use trails pose the highest risk, major roads are more hazardous than minor roads, and the presence of bicycle facilities (e.g. on-road bike routes, on-road marked bike lanes, and off-road bike paths) was associated with the lowest risk.”

“One of the major advantages of infrastructure-based improvements, compared to personal protective devices such as helmets, is that safe infrastructure provides population-wide protection for all cyclists,” study co-author Meghan Winters said in a press release.

The study's abstract draws these conclusions:

Evidence is beginning to accumulate that purpose-built bicycle-specific facilities reduce crashes and injuries among cyclists, providing the basis for initial transportation engineering guidelines for cyclist safety. Street lighting, paved surfaces, and low-angled grades are additional factors that appear to improve cyclist safety. Future research examining a greater variety of infrastructure would allow development of more detailed guidelines.

I'm sure that many of our network members will want to dig deeper into this one. 

More from around the network: a rant against bike chic from Biker Chicks of West Chester. Extraordinary Observations makes the connection between free burritos and traffic congestion. And the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia reports on biking the transit strike in that city.

Conventional wisdom has it that the races for New Jersey governor and Congressional rep in New York's 23rd District are the hottest (or, in the case of the latter, most bizarre) Election Day 2009 tickets. Though Daily Kos has declared the contest for mayor of New York to be "pretty well predetermined," we'll be watching the returns just the same.

Leave your late-breaking news and observations in the comments. 

The Times ran a piece on Vélib's growing pains this weekend. The story is more thoroughly reported than the hatchet job we saw from the BBC back in February -- no claims that bike-share in Paris will flame out quickly this time around. Vélib is part of Parisian life now, and some level of theft and vandalism is part of the bargain.

Still, there's no mistaking the overwhelming sense of schadenfreude emanating from this new Times story (headline: "French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality"). Francophobes all over America are relishing the tale of Parisian comeuppance.

But bike-sharing is a global phenomenon. So why we do only seem to read alarming stories about the problems in Paris? Part of the reason appears to be that bike-share operators in other cities have few alarms to sound. In Montreal, 5,000 public bikes are available through the Bixi system, launched earlier this year. Responding to the Times story, a Bixi spokesperson told the Montreal Gazette that theft and vandalism don't affect the system very much:

“Our bikes are very robust and Montrealers have a great respect for the Bixi program,” said Michel Philibert, a spokesperson for Stationnement de Montréal, which oversees the bike rental program.

“Montreal is not Paris. The theft of bikes here is not a major challenge.”

The Bixi operators also brought down theft rates thanks to a technical fix: They reinforced segments of the docking stations, and fewer bikes were stolen.

Vélib showed the world what a bike-share network can accomplish, but the appeal of public bicycle systems has never been limited to Paris or France. In the past few years, cities in China, Brazil, and the United States have launched bike-shares of various size. London is looking at a 6,000 bike system, and Dublin recently launched a network with about 500 bikes. Boston may be on the verge of rolling out the first truly robust American bike-share network. Even in Australia, where it's illegal for anyone to ride without a helmet, bike-share is on the way.

Like any good invention, bike-share tech is going to evolve over time. The first telephone looked like a fat brick with a hole in one end, and there was no way to tell if someone else was calling you. So it makes sense that Vélib has some kinks -- it marked a huge step forward for bike-share systems, on a scale no one had ever tried before. Inspired by the Vélib model, cities all over the world are also trying to improve on it.