Today’s Headlines

  • Not a Video Game: Man Driving Away From Car Wreck Kills Woman in East NY (News, Gothamist)
  • MTA Bus Driver Kills 41-Year-Old Mother Crossing Ocean Ave (News)
  • Driver Hits and Kills Man, 54, in Long Island City (News)
  • De Blasio/Astorino Plea for Federal Transpo Funds Becomes Political Grist for Cuomo (DNA)
  • 12 of 16 Brooklyn CBs Voted Against de Blasio’s Housing Plan (Bklyn Paper)
  • MTA: Splitting the M5 in Two Would Make It More Reliable (DNA)
  • Cap’n Transit Looks at the Effect of Uber and Lyft on Traffic
  • Daily News on the LGA Shuttle Bus Makeover Idea: Go For It
  • More on the Advent of an Open-Data Platform for Bike-Share Systems (Post)
  • The Lede for This Bklyn Paper Piece on Reynoso’s Bike-Yield Bill Is Exactly What You’d Expect
  • If You Can Stomach It, Here Are Some Photos of the Old Penn Station Getting Torn Down (AMNY)

More headlines at Streetsblog USA

  • Alexander Vucelic

    another weekend, another 3 New Yorkers killed in traffic caranage

  • Adrian

    Has anyone done any analysis on how many New Yorkers have been killed by MTA bus drivers since the right of way law was weakened at the behest of the TWU?

    Just from memory, it feels like it was 0 in the first 8 months of the year, and 5-10 in the last 3 months.

  • Bob

    downtown west side hwy bike lane (in front of brookfield) is completely open!

  • Matthias

    Just in time for the winter biking season!

  • Matthias

    Is the AMNY article being sarcastic when it calls the destruction of Penn Station a “renovation”?

  • Alex

    My disagreement with the Cap’n Transit piece comes quite quickly. “A month later, some new information came out: taxis were sitting idle on the streets of Greenpoint”
    Until the numbers show that more cabs are sitting idle than are being replaced by app-based competitors, FHV apps will worsen congestion by adding cars to the supply with demand remaining generally the same.

  • Bob

    Ha, nonetheless, glad it is done

  • BBnet3000

    Wow, about time after 7 years. Now if only there was a comprehensible and clearly marked route between there and the East River bike path (several blocks of which have been indefinitely detoured through pedestrian space).

  • Joe R.

    So long as there isn’t snow, winter is the best time to bike in my opinion. Traffic levels are usually lower than when it’s warm. There is no chance of sweating unless you overdress. The only time I might say otherwise is when we have a colder than average winter. Average NYC winter temperatures in the 30s through 40s make for fine cycling.

  • Vesey Ann Gold Fulton.

  • Alexander Vucelic

    true , winter commuter cycling is great in the city.

  • That is just nuts. Winter is painful. Winter is evil. When I am king, there shall be no winter.

    I hate winter riding. Of course, I still do it — in fact, today on my way home I will surpass my personal record of 6443 miles for a year, which I set last year.

    But riding at any time outside of summer is merely work that I do in order to stay in shape. When it gets into the 50s and 40s, the layers multiply, as do the hassles. And riding when it’s freezing is just terrible.

    Nevertheless, as I said, I still do it. But don’t even try to compare it to summer riding. In the summer, riding is a joy, a passion, a quasi-orgasmic pleasure. I come alive; I cannot wait to get out there in the life-giving heat. I save up all my vacation days to take them in the summer on the hottest days.

    I have averaged 1000 miles a month for July and August of the past two years. By comparison, I am lucky to get to 300 or 400 miles in a winter month. I will fall just shy of 400 this month.

    Do not give me this winter crap.

  • kevd

    Depressing that the “solution” to late buses is splitting the route in two – forcing 1600 daily riders to transfer…. Instead of say, dedicating street space to bus lanes, and then enforcing those lanes. NY is pathetic.

  • Matthias

    Buses should never ever get stuck in traffic. Ever.

  • qrt145

    Are we going to have extensive debates too about whether chocolate is more quasi-orgasmic than strawberry? Why not leave it at “some people prefer different weather than others” instead of bringing up the same tired arguments over and over?

  • Joe R.

    50s, layers? I ride in a t-shirt until it gets under about 55°F.

  • SSkate

    Does anyone know exactly when it opened? I spotted it yesterday, 11/29, and enjoyed the skate. But I noticed a week ago that it was almost ready, with workers laying down the last of the markings. In fact there were joggers sneaking onto some sections then.

  • SSkate

    Meanwhile I just set a personal record for miles skated in a month, skating close to 400 miles in November. I’ll be out on the streets as long as the streets are clear and dry. To each his own.

  • Sabina

    The path through Battery Park opened up too. (It was full of peds this weekend, but it’s there). So now just the segment in front of the Battery Maritime Building is missing.

  • BBnet3000

    These things are always full of pedestrians in part because they are often really poorly marked. This city really needs to discover green pigmented asphalt.

  • Mark Walker

    Yes. For me, this effectively means that if I’m south of the cutoff, I won’t take the M5 at all. This is the kind of solution that creates a larger problem.

  • bolwerk

    Not just NY. They’re doing it in Philadelphia right now with the 23, probably one of the oldest and probably longest extant surface routes in the country. Doesn’t seem to be making people happy.

    (The 23 was a trolley route in 1993 or so, and they keep promising to convert it back at some unspecified future date.)

  • Because I am cranky from riding in near-freezing weather this morning.

  • Mark Walker

    I used to love getting on the M5 at the terminus on Houston St. and taking the slow boat up to the West 90s where I live. It’s never been the speediest way home, but I suspect on-time performance worsened when the M5 was combined with another route farther south (can’t recall which one) in a larger round of ridiculous subway and bus service cuts. I used to work in the financial district and quickly learned that the streets there are among the most gridlocked in the city. The MTA should restore the M5 to its original route and give it dedicated lanes all the way.

  • Toddster

    So it sounds like if it’s say 52, which is in the 50s, you’d eschew your tshirt for layers…Glad we’re all in agreement about personal preferences.

  • Joe R.

    I think it’s the strong winds this time of year which are more annoying than the temperatures. I was out at 4 AM when it was 35 or 36. That’s perfectly fine if it’s calm but the winds were making it mildly unpleasant.

  • Perhaps the MTA could consider digging a trench for the M5 to travel in, a below-road-level alignment would avoid conflicts with surface traffic. I was intending to be at my local trans committee’s meeting next Monday where they discuss the M5 and I will bring up the trench option to planners then.

  • ahwr

    > M5 was combined with another route farther south

    M6

    http://web.mta.info/nyct/service/ServiceReduction/part5.htm

  • Mark Walker

    Presumably the trench would be shallow enough that pedestrians could step into and out of it?

  • My back-of-the-envelope design would have stairs and mezzanines down to boarding level every eight-nine blocks or so.

  • Andrew

    Maybe call it the “Sub-Way”?

  • Joe R.

    While we’re at it build a parallel trench for bikes. That seems to be the only way we’ll ever get safe, efficient cycling on crowded streets.

  • fdtutf

    No, that’s a pedestrian underpass. How about “the Tube”?