Non-biking peds should note that we are affected as well. Rain harder.

Unless Gerson’s lawyers are trying to write up a ban on activist organizations cheering a friendly administration, then yes it would have be a different change.

As a constituent of Alan Gerson, I applaud his attempt to rein in the career bureaucrats and politically-connected appointees at this rogue agency. They represent no one and were elected by no one.

The mistaken statement by the TA rep above is totally and typically without merit. Safety IS a concern for both CBs and the City Council. In fact, most CBs have a Public Safety committee or component, and the same applies to the Council.

The PEOPLE elected Gerson to look after OUR interests and to defend the businesses and residents of OUR community against the narrow agenda of the current DOT regime and their schills on this blog.

Do not relent, Mr. Councilmember, in your efforts to bring some sanity to what has been happening downtown at this out-of-control agency. DOT has ruined the quality of life in several areas of the district. Ignore the taunts from the extremists here that will follow, just as I shall. They don’t vote. We do. We’re in this together.

Maybe what T.A staffer means is that the safety and well being of cyclists and pedestrians is a civil right. It is not subject to being vetoed or constrained by community boards or councilmembers. This comes across as a revolutionary idea given that New York City spent a century marginalizing pedestrians, and bicyclists, and establishing a popular mindset that the free movement and storage of private cars trumps all else.

Isn’t the political dynamic a bit more worthy of lament than some radical cyclists’ personal failings?

This board’s for choir-preaching, as far as I can tell.

Nobody denies that it’s complicated to reconcile universal goals with local perspectives. But it’s a mistake to allow community boards or council to veto safety improvements. The community boards around Queens Blvd didnt do a damn thing when 10 pedestrians a year were getting killed there. Then they complained about the safety improvements and were ignored by the Weinshall DOT. (City Council also did nothing about Qns Blvd during decades of carnage.) Bike lanes and cycletracks save life and limb. Should community boards or council be able to veto those improvements? Should we have a city where cyclists and pedestrians are protected in one community board and unprotected in the next? It doesn’t make sense. Agreed that it gets more complicated when you consider Prince Street pedestrianization. That’s not strictly a safety improvement, though pedestrian crashes would go down if it was pedestrianized.

The political dynamic is that power is concentrated in organized, vocal minority interest groups that dominate the political landscape, monopolize the community review process and fan the flames of controversy in the local media by making unsubstantiated, incendiary remarks based entirely on conjecture, such as:
“This could be the demise of Little Italy.” (Grand Street bike lane)
“This once-vibrant commercial strip is beginning to look like a ghost town” (Fordham Road select bus service)
“The DOT tried to bulldoze Soho”(Prince Street temporary pedestrian street)

The current DOT is not shaken by all that noise and posturing, but instead continues to implement fact-based user-oriented transportation improvements informed by lessons learned from international best practices, not by the daily jabber of the parking-obsessed local merchant associations who are used to getting VIP treatment from city officials.

I can’t think of anything more inaccurate than to call this DOT “politically connected appointees”, having a “narrow agenda”. For decades New York City has suffered having politically-appointed DOT commissioners hellbent on maintaining unsafe status-quo street designs, and capitulating to the interests of the local connections. For once, the agency is finally being managed by a qualified leader, selected for their merits, not by which Senator’s wife they were. This DOT has an extremely ambitious, wide-ranging and totally transparent agenda that makes the safety of street users more important that whether or not a store owner can park his SUV in front of his door all day. No wonder the old guard is so upset.

J,

Community boards are no more democratic than the DOT you malign. Just like transportation commissioners, community board members are appointed by politicians and serve at their pleasure. One need look no further than Brooklyn Community Board 6 to see what happens when community boards try to take a stand. To call them democratic, especially in comparison to other appointed organizations, is a fallacy.

Community boards do have a useful place to play, but their opinions and credibility would carry a lot more weight if they were elected rather than appointed.

Cheers,

–Ian Turner

#10, I guess we can add ageist to the list also given that you call us oldtimers. Btw, I not sure what you are smoking but you tried your best to get people to the meeting to support your side and no one showed up. Here is the NYTimes story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/nyregion/thecity/23prin.html

Your so politically unsophisticated it’s funny.

“…with no greater danger than they would face walking on the sidewalk or riding in a car.”

Larry, you’re setting too low a standard. Walking is by far the most dangerous form of transportation.

Sean, I go to lots of board meetings and remain quiet, doesn’t mean that I support the position of the majority, just that opposition is fruitless. As to where the proper level of transportation decision making lies in an urban democracy however, the city level is that location. It is in fact what makes New York a city and not a collection of little villages like Long Island and New Jersey.

And transportation, even more than land use, is the area of government policy most appropriately applied at the city level because transportation involves moving people and things from one political jurisdiction into another. Both generator and recipient of the resulting traffic must live with whatever decision is made. And the pro Sadik Khan writers here are quite correct in recounting the decades when making more space for cars was the priority of the city-wide decision makers.

But, Mr. Gerson has a perfectly clear right to put whoever he wants on the Community Board, he is after all their elected representative, and they have a perfect right to “advise” that cars be accommodated, that the dangerous bicycles be chased away and that pedestrians be banned or whatever. And if the neighbors hate Ms. Sadik-Khan so much, vote against Mr. Bloomberg, the evil genius that appointed her. If Mr. Weiner prevails expect every yahoo from Neponsit to drive their SUV downtown and park it for free wherever they wish.

The Community Boards have their place, their place is to tell you what is wrong with anything that benefits anyone else, to chase away developers and to assure parking above all other transportation considerations. But it is the job of the Mayor and the City Council to set policies that benefit the city as whole. If Mr. Weiner or Mr. Gerson wants a different system they are free to propose it and in this case Mr. Gerson has. I personally do not want any cars driving down my block at all but nonetheless get the spill over from the BQE as people snake through Brooklyn to the “free” bridges every time the Expressway backs up, which is every day two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening. I thank Mr. Weiner and Mr. Markowitz and Mr. DeBlasio for that privelege, but ultimately the decisions are really made in City Hall and Albany. I’d like to change the process though to prohibit that sort of traffic but I’m not going to burn four hours a month at Community Board meetings in that effort. What I will do instead is write checks to politicians who support a city-wide decision making process on Land Use and Transportation issues and learn to live with the result until the next election.

Timmy,

Aside from, perhaps, a desperate last minute post or two here on Streetsblog, no one made any effort to get livable streets advocates out to that Community Board meeting to support the car-free Prince idea. The only information the community was receiving was the “Mauling of SoHo” crud that Sweeney was spreading (Note that Sweeney is still, essentially, fighting the commercialization — the “malling” of SoHo — a battle that his so-called “organization” lost about 20 years ago). DOT, frankly, blew the car-free Prince effort. There was no community outreach or advocacy around it at all.

As soon as someone does decide to organize a car-free Prince campaign, you’ll know about it. Trust me. It’ll be big. I have no doubt that the idea will be popular and accepted and a well run campaign will manage to generate at least enough of a counterweight to your NIMBYism that we’ll at least get to see some weekend trial events come to fruition. This, of course, is your deepest fear — simply trying it. You know that car-free Prince will be popular and people will want more of it. Your nightmare: shoppers, tourists, residents and parents with children walking down Prince Street enjoying a sunny weekend morning or brisk pre-Christmas shopping day. Arggh! How horrible.

As for being “politically unsophisticated.” All I can really say is thank you, Timmy, you hardbitten SoHo activist for educating me on the realities of New York City politics. You SoHo guys have been so effective in… well, come to think of it, you haven’t really done anything progressive or constructive lately, have you? Like a Community Board you just kind of focus your energy on stopping things. I know you stopped that Robert Moses thing back around the time when my parents were getting married… Good work on that one. What is the SoHo Alliance anyway? Do you have members? A board? By-laws? Is there an office aside from Sean Sweeney’s apartment? You guys are so sophisticated and yet… the organization seems to be one guy with some extra time on his hands.

A couple of years ago sophisticated like you, Timmy, were saying that things like separated bike lanes were “politically impossible” in New York City. Yet, politics and street designs are both a lot more malleable than you realize.

To clarify my remarks quoted here. Years ago, as traffic-related deaths were mounting in the face of City inaction, T.A.’s call again and again was “DOT – do your job.” Safety should be the single most important priority for their agency. We’re increasingly seeing this ethic take hold, whether it’s closing part of the Park Avenue tunnel for pedestrian safety, or turning car traffic lanes into protected cycle tracks. There are times when community boards and council members call for safety, and in these cases the City should take note. But when the outcry against a DOT safety measure is motivated by convenience, especially the convenience of parking an automobile, safety should win out every time.

SoHo Resident,

The perspective of a lot of people here, myself included, is that the best way to address automobile congestion is via road pricing. That enables trucks to get through without generating so much smog or wasting so much time, and a $20 tax on a truckful of merchandise is negligible. But our state politicians decided we don’t want road pricing, so we have to find another way.

The problem is that right now the biggest force against congestion is congestion itself. Who wants to drive through such bad traffic? The corollary is that it doesn’t much help to add more road space, because the new roadways simply attract more cars so that the overall congestion is the same. This, at least, at peak hours. The conclusion that I and others here reach is that it doesn’t matter if you take road space away from even the most congested parts of the city: You will retain the same amount of congestion either way.

If congestion is bad no matter how you stripe the roads, then, why not take space away from cars and give it to people?

While it is definitely a cheap way of creating a physically protected bike lane the very assumption that a bike lane needs to be physically protected is what is up for discussion. I don’t think it should be. This type of parking arrangement obstructs visibility, causes massive congestion at it’s inception point and unnecessarily chokes a reasonably wide street turning Grand Street into a “not so grand” street.

What needs to change is the culture. The automobile/bicycle relationship. This type of bike lane segregates the two factions, teaching neither how to behave around one another.

I’m all for more bike lanes. Broome Street from Centre Street going west could use a nice West-bound bike lane in my opinion. The Prince Street bike lane is a little bizarre just because Prince Street is so narrow. Regardless, I feel that parking cars in the middle of the street is not the way to go.

The city is broke right? If we installed cameras along these bike lanes and electronically ticketed vehicles that abuse them it would be a massive revenue stream for the city. Liek they do in Europe. You see the flash go off and you know you’re going to get an unpleasant surprise in the mail.

The Grand street bike lane hurts bike lanes in general. It is not liked by any of the merchants (and I’ve talked to a lot of them) and is getting a tepid reception from residents. Put the bike lane back where it was (on the north side of the street, beside the parking lane) and paint it green.

Everyone I’ve spoken with loves the Lafayette Street Bike Lane. It’s all a matter of scale. Houston Street is the correct place for an unprotected bike lane on both sides of the street in my opinion. Put them everywhere they fit, just don’t put parked cars in the middle of the street where they cause problems.

PS: Just to clarify that I’m not your typical NIMBY. Get rid of all non-commercial parking for all I care. I sold my car last year. Who the hell has the time to play the parking dance? And toll them damned bridges already!

SoHo Resident,

I’m all for automated bike lane enforcement, especially as NYPD has no interest in enforcing this manually. However, you’d have to get any cameras past David Gantt. That said, I guess all that takes is an extra 80 grand or so.

If a lane for bicycles is a good thing, it is a good thing all the time and not just when motorists are feeling generous enough not to park there or use it as a murderous passing lane. Both of these abuses are frequently taken with Lafayette’s buffered lane. Everyone I’ve spoken with agrees that Grand’s protected lane is better, but then I don’t move in lofty SoHo Residential circles. (Just lowly soho worker circles—maybe if I yell out the window I’ll be heard from a loft?)

The need for bikes to be physically separated from busy traffic is NOT up for discussion. If mixing cars and bikes (which is what we’ve had for the last 60 years) worked well, there wouldn’t be hundreds of cyclists being killed every year in traffic accidents in this city. I just can’t stress that enough. Hundreds of people are being killed every year on bicycles in New York City – men, women, children, anybody. These are some novices and some experts, some in bike lanes and some out, some obeying traffic laws and some not.

The thing about the Grand Street bike lane is that it’s not a stupid cockamamie notion that some loonies at the DOT dreamt up this summer. They are emulating a successful model from other cities that have <a href=”“high levels of cycling of low levels of injury. And we have already seen here in New York where some people argue they won’t work, that the cycle tracks make streets safer, and more people are cycling as a result, which in turn makes cycling even safer.

It has worked exactly the same way in other cities. Generally the only people who feel comfortable on unprotected bike lanes are young, able-bodied, fast-riding experienced cyclists. In order to make cycling a meaningful share of commuter culture, and a practical way to get around, it has to be made safe enough for all ages, body types, and experience levels, and that means separated from traffic. Once there are networks of protected routes safely inter-connecting popular destinations, the level of cycling will dramatically increase. And the new cyclists will be safer, slower, less aggressive demographics of cyclists (women, children, seniors, etc.) that will better abide traffic laws. And the number of cyclists on the road will be so great that drivers and pedestrians will also be more attentive, injury rates begin to plummet.

And the most amazing part is that in EVERY ONE of the dozens of cities this has been done so far, there are always groups of locals saying it won’t work here, it makes traffic worse, it’s inconvenient, they’re not necessary, it’s more dangerous, business will fail, no one will use them. The mayors of Portland, Melbourne, Copenhagen, Paris, etc. could have predicted exactly what people like Soho Resident would say – they could produce thousands of similar claims. And yet each of these cities is now showing unprecedented traffic safety, more vibrant and more successful commercial areas, cleaner air, better health, less traffic congestion, and the list goes on and on.

Pardon me but I must make a factual CORRECTION:

There were several Prince Street business owners at the infamous CB@ Prince Street MAUL transportation meeting and at least two of them spoke out against it. One was a gallery owner (on Price) and the other was (I believe) a general contractor (just off of Prince on Greene). There was also a reporter from the POST (he sat right next to me) and a reporter from the Villager. Check your memory. Check your facts.

We need to keep this discussion civil and factually correct. Bike lanes GOOD (we all agree). Parking lane in the middle of the street BAD (in my opinion).

Also, I believe the Lafayette bike lane is fairly successful. Sure motorists abuse it at times, but the only time I find it a problem is during rush when the abuse is ubiquitous. That’s when the DOT should enforce/enrich!

Sean, keep on crowing but the fact of the matter is that there was no effort whatsoever to counter your overwrought propaganda and organize a turn-out in favor of a Car-Free Prince Street trial run. There was only one team on the field. As soon as someone takes the time and effort to organize that campaign, the Car-Free Prince trial is going to happen, and it will happen with the overwhelming support of your Community Board, your local businesses and the majority of your neighbors who don’t bother to show up at local meetings about such matters.

Marty, contrary to what you claim, there WAS a serious effort to organize a turn-out in support of closing Prince St.

Oh, Sean, how charmingly naive. One guy putting up flyers on a lamppost isn’t a “serious effort.” When organized activists finally decide to undertake a “serious effort” to make Prince St. car-free, you’ll know all about it. It will look something like this:

http://www.transalt.org/campaigns/prospark

Or this:

http://www.grandarmyplaza.org/

Or this:

http://www.livablestreets.com/projects/inwood-livable-streets/summary

Or even like this:

http://www.streetsblog.org/category/special-reports/9th-street-road-diet/

And if those efforts seem too serious to prospective activists, I would also just add that I think it would, in fact, take quite a bit less work to win a few car-free trial weekends on Prince Street. The institutional support is there and the opposition is highly irrational and not at all representative of the diverse group of constituents who have a stake in Prince Street. Someone just needs to do the organizing work and stand up and rebut the NIMBY’s. I wish I had the time to do it myself. It would be an incredibly fun campaign to put together.