Noah Kazis

People riding shared public bicycles appear to be involved in fewer traffic crashes and receive fewer injuries than people riding their personal bicycles. In cities from Paris and London to Washington, D.C. and Mexico City, something about riding a shared bicycle appears to make cycling safer.

Ready or not, come September 28, 2012, Brooklyn will once again be home to a major professional sports venue. The Barclays Center at Atlantic Yards is scheduled to open by next fall, while progress on the rest of Forest City Ratner's mega-development is lagging far behind. In the words of local City Council Member Letitia James, "All we're getting is an arena and a large parking lot."

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

While it's shocking to think that, in this day and age, a New York City police officer would stop and harass a female cyclist for biking in a short skirt, as Jasmijn Rijcken said happened to her last month, it also seems to fit the zeitgeist, coming amidst the well-publicized NYPD bike crackdown and following the sordid trial of two cops on rape charges (and their stunning acquittal). But when Streetsblog and Gothamist readers discovered that Rijcken touts her expertise in "guerrilla marketing" on her LinkedIn profile (sample prose: "We provide marketing in disguise and make YOU the talk of the town"), rumors started fluttering on Twitter that the story might have been too perfectly placed. Was it all a ploy to drum up publicity for the bikes that she was in town to promote?

With five bus lines, two subway stops, a busy commercial strip, the only entrance to the Hudson River Greenway for blocks, and major bridge crossings at both ends of the street, Washington Heights' 181st Street is a tangle of cars, buses, bikes and pedestrians. For years, DOT has been looking to redesign the corridor entirely, with the goal of finding a way to serve all those different needs.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

When Jasmijn Rijcken, the general manager of the VANMOOF bicycle company, traveled from Amsterdam to New York in late April, she was excited to see what she'd heard described as a city that had embraced bicycling. It wasn't NYC's new protected bike lanes that defined her ride through the city, however, but the New York Police Department, currently in the midst of a major crackdown against cyclists.

The traffic and transportation committee of Brooklyn CB 10 endorsed the concept of a weekend street closure along Bay Ridge's Third Avenue Wednesday night, but due to a large number of unknowns, they held off on voting for the actual proposal. The elected officials supporting the Bay Ridge Summer Streets plan -- State Senator Marty Golden and City Council Member Vincent Gentile -- are now working to find answers to the community board's questions in time for the full board to vote on the plan.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Pedestrians over the age of 60 are particularly at risk when walking on the streets of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, a new report from the Tri-State Transportation Campaign shows. According to "Older Pedestrians at Risk," an updated version of similar research from last year, the pedestrian fatality rate for those over 60 is more than 2.5 times as high as for those under 60. Senior citizens over the age of 75 are likelier still to be killed by cars while walking, with a fatality rate 3.1 times higher than for those under 60.