Today’s Headlines

  • Port Authority Toll Increases Spur Ridership Jump on PATH and NJ Transit (NYT)
  • Staten Island Excited to Get First Pedestrian Plaza, Already Applying For Three More (NY1)
  • County Execs Blast Cuomo For Scrapping Tappan Zee Transit, Steamrolling Locals (CapTon)
  • Kate Slevin: Transit-Free Tappan Zee “Civics Lesson In How Not to Do A Transportation Project” (LoHud)
  • Cuomo Calls For Stimulus, But Only to Build Roads and Bridges (NYT, Buffalo News)
  • Tax Reform Talks May Touch Payroll Tax, Though MTA Would Be Reimbursed For Cuts (News)
  • Pete Donohue: Senate GOP Plan to Cut Payroll Tax Would Cripple Transit, and Long Island (News)
  • From Great Neck to Southampton, Long Island Begins to Embrace Walkability (NYT)
  • Taxi Riders Would Prefer Cabbies Drive Less Aggressively (Post)
  • One Hospitalized After Car Slams Through Wall of Flatbush Grocery (Gothamist)
  • Michael Kimmelman Looks at Public Space from Ped Plazas to Penn Station (NYT)
  • In Chelsea, Private Parking “Sky Garages” Cost $800,000 A Pop (NYT)

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

  • Anonymous

    What a breath of fresh air it is to have an architecture critic at the NYT who has a forest over trees outlook!  This ‘out of the box’ selection by the Times of someone who actually thinks about how ALL of the elements of a city (plazas, streets, buildings, transportation nodes, etc.) should come together to make it function better for everyone who lives there or uses it’s spaces is to be much applauded. I was only dimmly aware of Michael Kimmelman  before he took on this mantle, but I now can’t help muttering “yes! yes! yes!” to everything that he writes. I like the unfolding pattern in his writing and look forward to reading more of his spot on commentary with regularity.

  • Anonymous

     As with the ill-conceived Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, the streets, subway entrances and plazas around Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, where millions of New Yorkers will actually feel the development’s effects, seem like they’ve hardly been taken into account.

    So what if you funnel thousands of Nets fans through the world’s biggest exhaust pipe when you have Economic Development.

    – Robert Moses

  • Larry Littlefield

    I believe that total expenditures on the subway station, connections and entrances around Atlantic and Flatbush in recent years comes to something like $500 million.  Much of that was planned before Atlantic Yards was conceived, but with the redevelopment of that area in mind.

    I was there the other day to try to figure out what the pedestrian access would be.  My one complaint is this.  Due to cost over-runs during the Atlantic/Flatbush station re-hab, the width of the passageway from the Brighton Line (B, Q) to the rest of the station was reduced.  Many of those entering and exiting the arena may end up in that passageway.  If they had known about AY, maybe they would have spent the money to make that passageway wider.

  • Anonymous

    As the AY project moves into reality it gives me an inexplicable feeling approaching something like extreme dread. Pedestrian or cycling access to anything there, including the ability for area residents to go from one neighborhood to another does not appear even to be an after thought. Walking from my home in Park Slope to BAM, where my family and I often attend events, has already become a dangerous ordeal. I can only imagine what it will be like on game days at the arena. On the bright side, maybe the gridlock will be so bad that it will be possible to walk through all of the stopped cars.

    Even with the arena, this could have been done so much better. It seems that Rattner & Co. are determined that the Nets should bring a little piece of Jersey with them when they move to Brooklyn. I’m suprised that Atlantic Ave. doesn’t have it’s own off ramp there.

  • Larry Littlefield

    “Walking from my home in Park Slope to BAM, where my family and I often attend events, has already become a dangerous ordeal. I can only imagine what it will be like on game days at the arena.”

    How long have you lived in PS?  Basically, I would have been afraid to walk through that no-man’s land at night back in the day, and still am, due to worries about getting mugged.  I guess I would have walked south of Atlantic through the other side of 4th Avenue and then north, so at least there were people around.

    I somehow don’t have the same dread.  And if I do go to the arena, it will certainly be by bike or train.  As at Yankee Stadium but perhaps more so, I think the auto modal share is going to way lower than most people — perhaps even Ratner — expect unless and until the MTA collapses.

  • kevd

    Has the de mapping of 4th Ave north bound lanes between Atlantic and Flatbush helped at all? 

    It seems to have helped cycling conditions a bit.  

    That new wide sidewalk would be a decent Bike Share location, right?

  • Anonymous

    Larry:
    I’ve lived in that area on one side of Atlantic Ave. or the other for 27 years. That crossing was never particularly pedestrian friendly, but at least there was a semi-decent crossing at 5th Ave. & Atlantic that was at a location far enough away from another at 5th Ave. & Flatbush so that it could be done in 2 easy steps. With 5th Ave., a human scaled commercial street, closed off at Pacific St. it is now necessary to negotiate through the mega-intersection where 3 major vehicular streets (Flatbush, Atlantic, & 4th Ave.) converge. If one wants to bicycle through there with any degree of safety it is now necessary to walk your bike on soon-to-be crowded sidewalks for long distances or travel several blocks out of the way to Vanderbilt Ave. at one end or 3rd Ave. at the other to cross Atlantic.

    It’s been years since I’ve felt particularly vulnerable to crime in that area, and with the commercial activity that’s already there combined with the level of activity that is destined for it, ped traffic could be so much better. All we hear about it is ‘how are we going to deal with the cars?’ but here was an opportunity that was given no thought.

  • Anonymous

    Larry:
    I’ve lived in that area on one side of Atlantic Ave. or the other for 27 years. That crossing was never particularly pedestrian friendly, but at least there was a semi-decent crossing at 5th Ave. & Atlantic that was at a location far enough away from another at 5th Ave. & Flatbush so that it could be done in 2 easy steps. With 5th Ave., a human scaled commercial street, closed off at Pacific St. it is now necessary to negotiate through the mega-intersection where 3 major vehicular streets (Flatbush, Atlantic, & 4th Ave.) converge. If one wants to bicycle through there with any degree of safety it is now necessary to walk your bike on soon-to-be crowded sidewalks for long distances or travel several blocks out of the way to Vanderbilt Ave. at one end or 3rd Ave. at the other to cross Atlantic.

    It’s been years since I’ve felt particularly vulnerable to crime in that area, and with the commercial activity that’s already there combined with the level of activity that is destined for it, ped traffic could be so much better. All we hear about it is ‘how are we going to deal with the cars?’ but here was an opportunity that was given no thought.

  • Mike

    My guess is that once the arena finally opens, it will be reasonable to cross both Atlantic and Flatbush at 5th Ave, and walk between them along the arena plaza.  It will be slightly out of the way, but not really that bad.

  • Ian Turner

    Regarding taxis and passengers, perhaps we need this in our taxis and black cars:

    http://www.cgdev.org/files/1421541_file_Habyarimana_Jack_Heckle_FINAL.pdf

    (Money shot is on p. 24)

  • fj
  • fj

    A surge from Hurricane Irene 1 foot higher might have caused a tipping point of sorts for agile netzeroMobility and the requisite safe streets since the subways would been down for a devastating 29 days.

    http://transportationnation.org/2011/11/17/for-transit-agencies-climate-change-could-cost-billions/