Aaron Naparstek

Park Slope Neighbors, a group that I co-founded and work for, has organized a petition drive in response to the Department of Transportation's plan to turn Sixth and Seventh Avenues into one-way streets. Volunteers were out on the streets this weekend. The petition reads:

The Daily News and New York Sun have more details on DOT's plan to speed up buses on Broadway south of Houston Street. 

In response to the deaths of three cyclists on Houston Street in two years and the ensuing community pressure to make the area safer for biking, the Department of Transportation is proposing to establish two new bike lanes along streets running parallel to traffic-heavy Houston Street.

Nope, that's not Lower Manhattan. It's an example of a "bus bulb" in Edgewater, Chicago, a neighborhood known for its thoughtful planning and pedestrian-friendly streets.

Yesterday, the Department of Transportation announced the publication of its Truck Route Management and Community Impact Reduction Study. The study, which began over eight years ago (PDF), recommends the establishment of an Office of Freight Mobility, new educational materials and public outreach efforts, improved street signs, better enforcement, and some policy and regulatory changes -- for example, requiring trucks over 26,000 pounds operating on city streets to be equipped with a convex mirror to help reduce blind spots.

Below is a letter from the Park Slope Civic Council to Mayor Bloomberg and local elected representatives regarding the City's plan to transform Sixth and Seventh Avenue's into one-way streets. It's lengthy but it's worth a read (and full disclosure: I'm a trustee of the Civic Council):

Crain's reporter Erik Engquist gets some more information about the Department of Transportation's plans to convert two Park Slope Avenues into one-way streets. DOT's press office is now saying:

Last Wednesday we learned about the Department of Transportation's plan for a major reorganization of traffic flow through Park Slope, Brooklyn. In Streetsblog's comments section, Andy Wiley-Schwartz of Project for Public Spaces asked: What problems are DOT's traffic engineers trying to solve with this particular set of solutions? Or, to put it another way: What triggered this initiative? Why now? I put the question to DOT and here is what the press office came back with:

While Michael Primeggia, DOT's Deputy Commissioner for Traffic Operations is trying to sell one-way mini-highways through Park Slope as a pedestrian safety improvement, his boss, DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall, is hawking the exact opposite. On Thursday, March 1, at the City Council Transportation Committee oversight hearing on the Mayor's Long-Term Planning initiative, Weinshall touted two-way streets as successful traffic calming measure for Downtown Brooklyn. From her lips to your ears: