Friday’s Headlines: Nice on Ninth Edition

It’s been making the New York Post lose its mind over the past two days, but the wins keep coming for the livable streets movement.

The latest improvement (beyond safer school zones and an end to the criminal crackdown on cycling) comes Thursday’s announcement by the Department of Transportation that it would go ahead with a great design for Manhattan’s Ninth Avenue.

Long championed by CHEKPEDS, the venerable Chelsea-Hells Kitchen pedestrian advocacy group, the plan between 34th and 50th streets calls for more pedestrian space, a widenened protected bike lane, and an extension of the roadway’s bus lane. These changes are meant to be completed before the World Cup this summer, when the agency predicts lots of sidewalk overcrowding on game days as people throng the Port Authority Bus Terminal and nearby Penn Station.

It’s back-to-the-future time for Ninth Avenue, which got the first of our current protected bike lane design way back in 2007.

According to the DOT, the new and permanent redesign of the street will provide a new nine-foot “super sidewalk” with new pedestrian islands at corners. The old protected bike lane will widen from five to nine feet. And another half-mile of curbside bus lane will be painted red, which, the agency said, “will allow more active enforcement of bus lane violations. (The lane will be enforced seven days per week, 7-10 a.m. and 4-7 p.m.) (Read the full plan here; it’s gorgeous.)

Hmm: Benefits for pedestrians, cyclists and bus riders. Let’s see how the Post will spin this as something awful for everyday New Yorkers.

In other news:

• A speeding driver knocked two delivery workers off their e-bikes, killing one and critically injuring the other, in Harlem at around 8 p.m. on Thursday night — reinforcing the cold hard fact that speeding drivers, not e-bike riders, are the #1 vehicular threat on New York City streets. (Daily News)
• And yet, the Post can’t keep writing about how lower speed limits are going to ruin the city — this time, trying to get New Yorkers to believe that a 15-miles-per-hour speed limit will grind the Big Apple to a halt. “Take it from a Londoner,” the article said. “A mayor who’s more interested in winning brownie points from intifada-loving hipsters than in doing his job is not worthy of the office.” Well prefer to count the lives saved and the property damaged avoided from the fewer high-speed crashes.
• The Staten Island Advance, home to leadfoot columnist Tom Wrobleski, also doesn’t like the speed limit cut … but found an odd way to headline its story.
• Meet the new deputy mayor for community safety! (NY Times, amNY)
• … That said, Hell Gate and The City aren’t impressed yet.
• Dan Garodnick — the exit interview. (Vital City)
• Like Streetsblog, amNY covered the gap in the budget of the agency tasked with enforcing worker protection laws.
• Wild West: The Staten Island Advance is the latest outlet to discover that cops aren’t really writing tickets anymore.
• And Fast Company is the latest outlet to write nice things about the promising, but long-delayed, Blue Highway.
• The MTA is starting to replace its oldest subway cars. (NYDN, NY Times)

Listen, have a great weekend. You deserve it.