Ben Fried

It's filled with double-parked cars. On just about every block, drivers stand illegally in bus stops, block the bike lane, and make illegal U-turns. If you've ever walked to jury duty in Brooklyn or biked over the Manhattan Bridge, you know Jay Street is chaos incarnate.

One of the first new street redesigns of the de Blasio administration calls for upgrading the northbound section of the Lafayette Street bike lane, between Spring and 14th Street, from a buffered lane to a protected lane. Manhattan Community Board 2 will consider the proposal tonight, and if you want a safer Lafayette Street it's important to turn out and tell CB 2 why this project matters.

Before there were hashtags and #sneckdowns, there was Michael King, taking pictures of residual snow on NYC street corners. A principal with NelsonNygaard, King is an architect by training and a pioneer of traffic calming street design in the United States. He captured these images to show how much asphalt can easily be claimed to make streets safer.

Probably the dumbest part of a stupendously dumb Post story about double-parking tickets and the Columbus Avenue bike lane is this:

The winter of #sneckdown isn't done with us yet. After the weekend thaw, freezing temps and snow are coming later this week. So after you wrap up at the office on Wednesday, head over to Building on Bond in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, to warm up with Streetsblog and Streetfilms.

NYC DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg was on the Brian Lehrer Show this morning to talk about Vision Zero, improving surface transit, and expanding Citi Bike. And filling potholes.

Taking up one of the contrarian slots in today's "Room for Debate" segment about Vision Zero and pedestrian safety in NYC, Jennifer Lynch of The Electronic Frontier Foundation staked out the civil libertarian position against automated traffic enforcement. EFF does great legal and policy work in general, but Lynch is way off base here. At this point, there's a mountain of evidence that traffic cameras save lives, and it's highly irresponsible to suggest, as Lynch does, that we need more data before taking action.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and several of his agency commissioners released the administration's Vision Zero report at a school on West End Avenue this afternoon. Streetsblog's Stephen Miller will have more from the mayor's event later today. In the meantime, here's a quick rundown of the major takeaways from the report [PDF], which outlines both an ambitious multi-agency approach to reducing traffic violence that City Hall can pursue on its own, and a legislative agenda that asks Albany to let the city control its speed limits and traffic enforcement methods.

Streetsblog will resume publishing after the President's Day holiday.

Thanks to a friend of the blog, we have 10 pairs of tickets to the next week of shows for "Bikeman: A 9/11 Play" to give away to Streetsblog readers on a first-come, first-serve basis.