Best Legislator: Brooklyn's David Yassky capped off a very pro-livable streets tenure in City Council by carrying the banner for the Bicycle Access Bill. After a legislative win that difficult and that significant, there's no way we'd end the year without handing him a Streetsie.
Thanks to a pre-election deal between the Hasids and the mayor's political staff, 14 blocks of extremely useful bike lane are gone from Bedford Avenue. So, who benefited? Not the mayor. Hasidic turnout for Bloomberg was the weakest it's ever been, and the irresistible hipster-vs.-Hasid storyline has produced a lot of embarrassing press. The Hasids? For now, all they've got are more dangerous streets in their own backyard. But if this does turn into some kind of teachable moment within the Hasidic community, maybe something can be salvaged from the whole affair.
The Community Board Career Achievement Award:Teresa Torois leaving Brooklyn CB 1 (on her own terms this time, not someone else's) after distinguished service as chair of the transportation committee, working for more livable North Brooklyn streets.
Best Race for Elective Office: After a TA forum on traffic justice, the campaign to succeed Robert Morgenthau as Manhattan district attorney turned into a race to the top, with allthreecandidates putting together strategies to deter dangerous driving on NYC streets.
Most Encouraging Local Trend:Community boards voting in favor of bicycle projects. Manhattan CB 8 wasn't the only one to show newfound support for livable streets in 2009. Manhattan CB 7 and Brooklyn CB 6 also voted for protected bike lanes. And Brooklyn CB 9 let its bicycle flag fly, asking DOT to add bike lanes to a traffic-calming project on Empire Boulevard.
Most Encouraging National Trend:Boston released an RFP that opened the door to America's first truly effective bike-share network. Several other cities seem poised to make the leap from thinking about bike-share as a demo project to making it a real component of the urban transportation network.
Best Report: Media outlets all over the country picked up Dangerous by Design, which called much-needed attention to the epidemic of pedestrian deaths in America and the failure of our transportation policies to do much about it. Great job by the authors (including Michelle Ernst of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign) and advocates who helped get this information out there.
Best Moment in Livable Streets Education: Students at the Community Roots Charter School and P.S. 67 paint the pavement on St. Edwards Street in Fort Greene in a terrific day of DOT-sanctioned traffic-calming and community-building.
Livable Streets Personality Most Ready for a TV Deal: Every time Clarence puts Hal Ruzal on camera, ratings go through the roof. "Hal Grades Your Bike Locking 3: The Final Warning" was the most watched Streetfilm of 2009, with nearly 20,000 views.
Streetfilms' Biggest Fan:Bike Snob embedded no fewer than eight Streetfilms on his blog in 2009.
Best Lenswork:Jacob-uptown takes the prize for the second year in a row for his documentation of the anti-pedestrian atrocities committed by the builders of the Gateway Center Mall.
Ben Fried started as a Streetsblog reporter in 2008 and led the site as editor-in-chief from 2010 to 2018. He lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, with his wife.
"In Stockholm, people really thought that congestion pricing would be the end of the world, the city will come to a standstill, no one would be able to get to work anymore and all the theaters and shops would just go bankrupt. None of that happened."