Today’s Headlines

  • Broadway Leads City in Pedestrian Fatalities, Second Deadliest Street in NYC Metro (MTR, City Room)
  • Raiders of the Lost ARC Redux: Is Cuomo Set to Follow Christie’s Lead? (NYT)
  • More on Hunters Point South Development From Times, WNYC, Crain’s
  • Kabak Compares MTA and NJ Transit Bus Tracking Tech
  • Suburban Assembly Member Announces Vague Plan to Fight Payroll Tax (ESN)
  • Carroll Gardens Pedestrian Critical After Tuesday Collision; “No Criminality Suspected” (CG Patch)
  • By Carrot and Stick, Mayors in China Look to Reduce Car Commuting (Scientific American)
  • When It Comes to Truthiness, Magic Eight Ball Gives NBBLers a Run for Their Money (FiPS)
  • Salt Lake City Tops NYC in Absurd U.S. News Ranking of “Best Cities for Public Transportation”
  • Who Says the Post Hates Cyclists?

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

  • vnm

    Also the first six letters to the editor in today’s Daily News all denounce their anti-bike-lane cartoon from two days ago. Kudos to Brian Immerman, Ron Dowd, Aaron Naparstek, Chris Giannini, Jeff Prant and Josh Gosciak for writing in and getting published.

  • Chris

    I don’t think Ron Dowd’s comment was denouncing anything. He makes the point that JSK should be doing something about the adult sidewalk riders (mostly deliverymen I would assume). Nothing will happen with that unless you have effective NYPD enforcement (which doesn’t appear to be happening). It’s not up to JSK to enforce the laws regarding sidewalk riding, etc.

    On an unrelated note – while walking the pooch last night I counted at least 3 cars running red lights, one brazenly in front of a moving squad car (which of course did nothing about it).

  • cycler

    It may be absurd to rank SLC above NYC, but Salt Lake has been very progressive and very ambitious in building and expanding their transit/ light rail system. I think that the ranking is largely based on spending per capita, and they’ve been spending a LOT in building a new system. The good news is that it seems to have a very high buy in and great ridership numbers. I can imagine that the budget problems and service cutbacks that NYC is struggling with dinged its rating in the overall rankings

  • I would like to point out that none of the Broadway fatalities happened in areas that have been calmed. There was one death near City Hall, and one in Times Square in 2008, before it was pedestrianized. There were three deaths in Inwood, one in Morningside Heights and five in Hamilton Heights (Harlem).

    Here in Queens, the most dangerous road is Cross Bay Boulevard, in Eric Ulrich’s district.

  • Mike

    This “study” of pedestrian fatalities (first link) is completely retarded. It just adds up the number of fatalities on streets with a single name and ranks them. It doesn’t do any normalization to account for the fact that some streets are 15 miles long and others are a block long, so it doesn’t actually tell you anything at all about the safety of Broadway other than that it’s the longest street in Manhattan.

    Please don’t report on completely idiotic stories like this. I don’t understand why the otherwise reputable TSTC puts it out every year, but they should stop undermining their own credibility.

  • vnm

    Chris, you are correct.

  • @NYC_DOT Public voting for Big Apps 2.0 is now open! Help NYC become more transparent, accessible, and accountable. @nycbigapps http://bit.ly/iipVbf

    Bus Rapid Rransit, a system that has proved a popular solution in other crowded areas like Mexico City, will grow 10 times in China. http://nyti.ms/fp7iWy

  • @TransportationNation NYC #taxi medallions sell for $950k EACH

  • re: By Carrot and Stick, Mayors in China Look to Reduce Car Commuting (Scientific American)

    Yes, China has stated explicitly that is moving away from “heavy machine” industrialization as the critical path to growth.

    Though easier said than done, it is far from impossible, and the rewards will be truly disruptively positive, extraordinary, and key to survival; and, there is an indication they’ve been thinking about this for about a decade.

    We’d be uncharacteristically wise to follow suit.

  • Larry Littlefield

    Give the devil his due. Looks like Mr. Markowitz shifted some of his discretionary funds over the 4th Avenue/9th Street subway station.

    http://www.brownstoner.com/brownstoner/archives/2011/02/more_details_em.php

    Of course credit for paying for this improvement should be more widely shared, among taxpayers. But the money wasn’t used for parking.

    “Perhaps the most notable improvement is the re-opening the east side entrance to the station, which will eliminate thousands of pedestrian crossings on 4th Avenue (and/or 9th Street). The second exciting plan is repairing and filling the dormant retail space near 4th and 10th. All this should be complete (fingers crossed!) by the end of 2011, with new retail in place by 2012.”

    Let’s just hope there are no surprises. The MTA bought a two-story building near Bergen Street to put a signal room in the basement, and expected to sell it back with a store and some other use above. But it found that the second story was contaiminated with so much piegeon crap it was toxic. The cost to remove it by workers in space suits was more than the agency could afford, and it was kept dormant. Perhaps it still is.

  • Bolwerk

    Re US News, Portland is a little absurd to rank #1 already.

  • Best cities for public transportation:

    1. Tokyo
    2. Zurich
    3. Vienna
    4. Hong Kong
    5. Osaka
    …
    40. New York
    …
    150. Washington
    …
    666. Portland