Today’s Headlines

  • Bloomberg Speaks Softly at Swearing In; De Blasio Envisions a Louder Advocate’s Office (NYT, NYT)
  • Times Square Plazas Winning Over Retailers and Office Workers (Marketplace)
  • Late-Night Bus Commuters Stranded If MTA Has to Cut Service (NYT)
  • Cuts Would Hit Bay Ridge, Harlem, Fresh Meadows, and Westchester Square Especially Hard (Post)
  • Textbook Blame Game: Assembly Member Says MTA Failed to Toll Bridges. Really? (Herald-Record)
  • Let’s Get These Kids Up to Albany (NY1)
  • Paterson Rep Rejects MTA Capital Program Due to Lack of Funding (Post)
  • Drunk Livery Driver Kills Bensonhurst Man on New Year’s Day (News, Post)
  • Teenager in Critical Condition After Cab Hits Her on 34th Street (Post)
  • LIRR Atlantic/Flatbush Entrance Finally Opens, Surrounded By Hulking Sidewalk Barriers (Bklyn Paper)
  • Hey Terrorists, NYPD Won’t Look Twice at Your Vehicle If It’s Got a Bogus Parking Placard (NYT)
  • Cop Drives Into Bronx Cyclist; Cyclist Sues NYPD (News)
  • Will 2010 Be the Year That States Get Serious About Outlawing Distracted Driving? (NYT)
  • Achtung! Bono Wants to Revive Boomer Fantasy of Sexy Cars (NYT)

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill.

  • The LIRR security barriers look terrible. Security landscaping has been done well for decades, just stop by any federal building and notice the street level. There is no need for massive stone blocks when iron benches and stone planters do the same thing.

  • Agreed. They’re hideous. Awful. Especially with the closure last year of the slip lane from Flatbush Avenue to Ashland Place, this space could have become a very inviting little public plaza with the planters and benches the previous writer referred to. Something to lighten that side of Atlantic Terminal and a complement to the BAM Cultural District. It wouldn’t cost a fortune to do something right, and it’s not too late to do so. How about it, Community Board 2?

  • Car Free Nation

    I don’t have a lot of evidence for this, but I think the “security barriers” are meant to be public art. If you look carefully, you’ll see the same basic style in the pedestrian triangle across the street, and you’ll see another similar example on the stairwell to the 2/3 line within the station.

    My guess, is someone with little knowledge of the area thought an art piece that looked like rubble would be a great means of expression. Many public projects set aside 1/2 percent for art, so this is what we get. It’s like when art students are given the job of designing art for the inner city. Inevitably, it involves using the “ruins” as a focus. Who wants to see ruins, if you live among them?

    It’s also rather dispiriting when you look at some of the more interesting subway art around the city. The Atlantic/Pacific stop, considering the sheer number of people who walk through it, always seems to get short shrift.

  • CFN,

    The stone blocks in the triangle across the streets are much smaller, and look to be about the right size for sitting, if someone actually thought sitting in the midst of the intersection of Flatbush, Atlantic and Fourth Avenue and sucking in car exhaust might be pleasant. The barriers outside the LIRR terminal look to be about four-and-a-half feet high, not at all scaled for a rest stop.

    If this is public art, it’s the very worst example I’ve ever seen.